On Monday I was invited to speak at the Norwegian National Forum for Career Guidance in Oslo. This is the annual meeting between the government’s Higher Education and Skills Directorate (HK-Dir) and key stakeholders including employers, trade unions, regional leaders in career guidance and the professional association.

I presented on the importance of investing in career guidance and drew on a number of papers that I’ve written including Effective policy frameworks for the organisation of career guidance services, Investing in careers, and Lessons for career guidance from return-on-investment analyses in complex education-related fields.

The argument that I was making was essentially this one: Countries need to build a high quality lifelong career guidance system. Investment is needed in order to make that a reality. An obvious message, but one which governments and policy makers need to be constantly reminded of.

Here are the slides that I used…