Vocational Guidance for Job Applicants in France
Résumé
In France, "Pôle Emploi" is the central operator for services aimed at job applicants. It applies career guidance which in practice results in a review on employability and making a selection among the unemployed for an appropriate plan of action. Professionals lose out in terms of specialisation; they intervene within this framework to coach the unemployed and mobilise rather vague skills. Moreover, this de-specialisation is coupled up with a sort of standardisation and bureaucratic multi-tasking of job functions and positions. Consultants find themselves at the heart of a contradiction inherent to job guidance such as it is practised, which consists in associating thinking about vocational plans with a quick return to employment.