The goal of the project is to create, with the support of USB, SUA and BBU soft skills modules for the ANAU Career Center, to develop an evaluation of career counseling at ANAU and to create a monograph of soft skills in career counseling. Teaching new soft skills modules will increase the competitiveness of ANAU graduates. Evaluation ensure continuous improvement. Monography spreads knowledge. The implementation period of the project is: 01/07/2024–31/12/2025. The total budget of the Project is 22,145.00 Euro.
Current issues. ANAU is the only agricultural HEI in Armenia. The ANAU Career Center offers students and graduates consultations on the preparation of resumes and motivation letters. It also invites its clients to educational events realized by the newly built Soft skills development center. The goal of the Career Center is for as many students and graduates as possible to obtain qualified employment on the labour market. Unemployment in Armenia currently exceeds 13%. A high proportion of Armenians move abroad and seek employment with foreign employers. Foreign employers often offer remote work after the covid pandemic. The project wants to contribute to the solution of 4 problems brought about by the situation described above: 1) Low chance of finding job. It is necessary to succeed in highly competitive job interviews, i.e. the ability of self presentation needs to be developed. 2) Workers do not have enough experience with remote work which is offered after covid. A remote job position allows, among other things, to work from home for a foreign employer, which can solve the situation of many students/graduates who want to continue living in Armenia. 3) The post-covid period brings a significant increase in mental discomfort among young people. This trend is slowly coming to Armenia as well, it is important to prevent mental discomfort. 4) Universities often implement career counselling according to their own methodologies, which are not standardized, the results are difficult to compare between universities and countries and do not allow for continuous improvement and mutual inspiration.

The innovative character of this project lies in the transfer of career counselling from the V4 countries and the targeting of overcoming the challenges that the post-covid period brings to the labour market. The very foreign cooperation of career centres and the agreement to create a common framework for the evaluation and dissemination of current knowledge in the field of career counselling and soft skills for career counselling is an innovation, unusual and much needed activity. For the ANAU Career Center, the project means a significant innovation in the expansion of services offered in the area of soft skills and in the development of evaluation. Students and graduates of ANAU will be prepared to handle job interviews in multinational companies as well as to possibly develop domestic personnel processes. Furthermore, they will learn the self-management necessary especially for remote work, which often comes up against unlearned habits of self-management, ignorance of the principles of self-management. Last but not least, they will learn to prevent burnout and mental discomfort, the incidence of which has increased enormously among students of the V4 countries. ANAU’s career counselling will acquire comprehensive tools and become part of a wider international framework that has the potential to influence the regional labour market, as ANAU students and graduates will co-shape conditions on the labour market.