Digital transformation in career guidance: opportunities, challenges, and best practices

Abstract

Accelerated digital transformation, platformization of work, and the emergence of technology-mediated professional roles challenge the epistemological foundations of traditional career counseling. The directive-diagnostic paradigm, grounded in trait–factor theory, conceptualizes career choice as a static matching process between stable individual traits and predefined occupational profiles. Such an approach proves increasingly inadequate in contexts characterized by digital disruption, algorithmic recruitment, and recurrent career transitions. Within this framework, higher education institutions assume strategic responsibility in redesigning digitally integrated guidance services, as reflected in the UPGRADE project – Enhancing Graduates’ Employability Tracking in Moldova (Erasmus+ KA2), aimed at modernizing university career systems through digital monitoring and data-driven interventions. This study seeks to comparatively examine dominant counseling paradigms and to theoretically and empirically substantiate the superiority of the developmental (activating) model in cultivating digital career adaptability and professional selfdetermination competence.