From traditional model of vocational guidance to holistic lifelong counselling: case of Finland

there is a gap of supply and demand in both Russian labor market and educational services market in terms of professional qualifications. The gap is caused by several reasons, and one of them is that high school students’ vocational guidance system is traditionally aimed at choosing a university/ college rather than building an individual career path taking into account market demand (based on the example of Finland). Nowadays Finland has both an advanced and unique lifelong counseling system. This system has been developed through three principal stages, namely: vocational guidance; holistic counseling; life design concept. Being at the third stage in its career guidance development, Finland is striving to implement a number of innovative tools such as «co-careering» concept; «VIP-model» for counseling, IT- technologies for individual career paths. The purpose of this article is to study advanced Finnish practice in vocational guidance aimed at future career path designed by each person independently and including elements of psychological support, social comfort and inclusion.