The effects of career guidance and counselling on development of career management skills of Prague University of Economics and Business’s students

The main objective of the dissertation thesis is to verify the efficiency of the group and individual career guidance provided at the Prague University of Economics and Business and its effects on the development of skills to manage the professional careers of its students and graduates in the school-to-work transition. The empirical part of the dissertation contains two studies. The first study, a quasi-experiment with two non-quantitative groups and three measurements (at the beginning (T1), at the end (T2) and six months (T3) after completion of the intervention), analyses the effect of a 13-week career development programme on a sample of 115 students. The findings indicated the benefits of the career development programme for the transition from university to working life. As hypothesized, the career development programme increased career adaptability and cooperation (H1), career construction (H2) and career maturity (H3) of students and graduates. A second study covers two phases. In the first phase, key topics for individual career guidance and counselling are identified through thematic analysis, namely 1) emotional, 2) methodical and 3) informative support from career advisors. In the second phase, the feedback from participants of individual career guidance and counselling was assessed using textual analysis. The new method used (machine learning) focused on the emotional profile of the text, which speaks to the level of emotional support that is crucial when students and graduates enter the labour market. The dissertation's output includes proposals to improve the effectiveness of careers guidance and counselling at the Prague University of Economics and Business.