Design and Development of Career Guidance and Counselling Service Prototype-evidence from Higher School of Economics

In recent years the revolution of technology and development of the Internet have become more significant and spurred to dramatic changes in educational sphere and labour-market area throughout the world. The recognition of this perspective direction by the higher education establishments has led to the incipience of career guidance and counselling services. Russian universities that have enough technological capacity do not have comprehensive career services, which can give students ongoing access to res ources for successful transition to professional life after graduation. The main purpose of the research is to investigate the theoretical background of the existing Career Guidance Systems and design the prototype of the system, which focuses on a localization of career guidance theory and strategy in order to match graduates’ competencies and actual situations on the Russian employment market. The following research tasks are required: • Observe the existing career services and the main theoretical approaches to career decision-making process • Investigate the cognitive styles of personality • Identify the basic parameters of the design of cultural and cognitive personality profile; • Describe functionality and features required to develop the prototype of the service; • To make recommendations for the creating of the user interface • Describe and design the interface of the Career Guidance Service Professional significance of this study consists of the computer-assisted career guidance development, which helps graduates on their way to gaining professional experience and gives universities an opportunity to focus on employability skills. The result of the work is developed and well-functioning prototype of Career Guidance Service, which can be useful not only for graduates and students, but also for recruitment processes of companies. The next steps of the work are developing of the additional modules and enhancing of functionality.