Human-Centred Guidance in an AI-Driven Labour Market: New Roles, New Responsibilities

Across Europe, career guidance systems and career guidance as a profession are undergoing a process of rapid transformation due to the advent and integration of artificial intelligence in learning, working, and career planning. From labour market intelligence tools to personalised skill profiling tools, artificial intelligence provides unprecedented opportunities for widening access, engaging clients, and making evidence-informed decisions. Often, AI-powered LMIS is understood as career guidance. However, these opportunities present a series of critical challenges for career guidance practice. This keynote will explore how career guidance professionals can continue to add their unique human value, based on ethical judgment, empathy, and understanding, while at the same time effectively working with artificial intelligence tools. Based on policy initiatives in Europe, emerging research evidence, and examples from career guidance practice, the keynote will identify the key competencies required by career guidance professionals working in environments where artificial intelligence tools are increasingly present, from evaluation and critique to facilitating clients' digital literacy for career planning. Instead of replacing practitioners, AI encourages a rethink of the profession: no longer about information provision, but sense making; no longer about expert answer giving, but co-constructed career learning; no longer about transactional guidance, but support through complex transitions. The keynote encourages a human-centered, values-based approach that ensures that AI enhances, rather than undermines, the social purpose of career guidance in Europe