It is common to use the Internet to look for career and labour market information; it is less frequent to use computer activities for these issues. The greatest benefit for career guidance comes from Web 2.0 social websites concerning career development and job searching.
WBS – Web Based Job Search Support is an international project which includes the creation of a social website for people looking for work. The countries involved are: Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland and Bulgaria. The project is co-financed by the European Commission within the Education and Culture programme. Partner countries work together on the project; together they are preparing, testing, and implementing the WBS methodology. Each country has its own version of the website and the partnership is currently collecting feedback from users on the beta version of the sites.
The European Employment Strategy states that all unemployed adults should have access to career guidance, so as to better identify their needs, create a personalized reemployment action plan, and provide assistance during their job search. Career guidance delivery is often very expensive because it is traditionally provided by professional advisors and carried out in small groups or through one to one counselling. ICT allow for the supply of effective information and guidance to a wide audience, regardless of distance and business hours.
Recent developments have signalled that ICT-based tools such as social networking websites (websites structured in a way to maximize interactions between users and to create virtual communities of people sharing the same condition, difficulty or interest) are proving to be a powerful means for promoting peer to peer support and improving further access to services.
The WBS website, apart from the main page with information about the project, is divided into four main sections: "Find your career goal", "Be attractive for employers", "Efficient job-seeking", "Be interactive/personal folder". The website's content includes activities for the user to complete. After completing the activities the user will receive feedback.
In the first section one can learn about things to consider while looking for a career goal, by completing such activities like: "Knowledge and skills acquired on the job", "My professional values", "My interests" and by synthesising them in the "Myself" exercise. The section also includes activities that allow organization of the acquired knowledge into information to identify a career goal. The second section is for people wanting to assess their own attractiveness for employers and to learn how to increase this attractiveness. It includes exercises focusing on user's previous educational experience, their current "value" on the labour market, purposes for learning, and educational action-plan. After completing the exercises from the 3rd section the user is familiar with various tools for job searching, and will be able to use them and assess their efficiency. The section includes exercises such as "Find an employment agency near you", "Networking", "Job advertisements in the press and on the Internet", "Individual job-searching plan".
Transitions between the sections will be as flexible as possible. The users will be able to decide which sections to visit and which exercises to carry out. For example, a person who already considers oneself attractive for the employers can skip section 2; a person who knows how to look for jobs can go from section 2 to section 4.
Section 4 is an important part of the portal. It will allow the users to create their own folders with documents related to their job search, and to interact between each other. The folder will have a password, and the user will be able to store the results of exercises, documents (CVs, cover letters), databases (networking, employers), meetings and contacts schedules. The website will include message boards dedicated to users in various situations on the labour market, e.g. persons aged 40+, persons looking for their first job, persons experiencing difficulties with finding a job. There will be a possibility to publish one's own CV so that it is visible for the website facilitators, other users, employers, and to write a blog about seeking a job.
The most important part of the section is the "Job Club", meaning an Internet society of persons looking for a job. The "Job Club" is moderated by a facilitator – a person who will answer questions, give advice on where and how to look for information, help to navigate around the portal, as well as moderate the message boards.
