The Practice of Career Guidance in a Northern Portuguese University

This study aims to analyze the practice of career guidance in a northern Portuguese University. In the process of selecting a profession, we are increasingly faced with great difficulty on the part of young people to carry out educational, formative and professional options. Based on the Bologna Process and the purpose of improving the employability of graduates, expert guidance has become a quality factor in college education. In this quantitative research, we used a Likert Scale questionnaire. Two hundred twelve finalist students configured the representative sample, (50,9% of the student population), distributed by 18 courses in five different university departments. The results show that the career guidance available does not fully satisfy the student’s needs. The guidance received by the students is characterized as being informative and focused on academic and professional issues. The main guidance agents are the teachers, and the main actions related to career guidance occurred during the last year of the course. The difference between College departments demonstrates that the Management area is the one where its students received more career guidance for the transition into the job market. In relation to the guidance services, there is a difference between the information available and its actual use.