Balancing of competences as awareness building and identity-generating process

Abstract

As traditional occupational profiles have lost their function of orientation and regulation and the labor market access does no longer depend on formally regulated career paths, many people have lost the consciousness of their abilities. They cannot describe them any longer in terms of occupational titles. Methods of competence measurement as far as proposed by labor psychologists are not feasible alternatives with regard to the needs of career and employment counseling of people who do not identify themselves by occupational titles. The article points out some interactive methods of balancing of competences that enable clients to get a new approach to their abilities and to describe them in a new way within the context of counseling.