Career guidance services are relatively new in Mongolia and therefore the government has released a set of policy documents and strategies to develop career guidance system recently. As described in the UN documents, the term youth regards 15-25-year-old people. Mongolia is a country of children and youth, and by the statistics of 2018, young people are about 15.0 percent of the whole population. Main findings of our empirical research show this target group made the career decisions mainly without valid and reliable information or professional advice by career counselors.
Two-thirds of students, who participated in the survey, have limited information or nothing about the career choice. Almost half of the students do not know about career counsellors, and twenty percent of them do not have such services at their schools. The students, who participated in the survey, responded that it is very important to have career information and to meet with a career counsellor. The main issues with regard to career choice of students are that first, one-third of them worry about couldn’t find jobs in the labor market, or low wages, 25 percent are worried unstable employment and 20 percent have limited information about job opportunities. The key criterions of their career choice are job image, reputation (20 percent), personal development opportunities (20 percent), wages and job guarantee (13 percent), job availability (11 percent) in the labor market. Approximately two-thirds of university students were planned future professions, but 40 percent of them are dissatisfied with their current profession. Therefore, after graduating from university, there will want to study and work abroad.
Based on results of our research, we outline challenges for further development of career guidance services, especially demand oriented information management and counseling methods, as well as counselor training and organizational development.