Career Services Concept Development at the Rastor Institute
Career planning skills play a vital role in our career paths, both during transitions and as we advance. Through career planning, we build a seamless and cohesive professional identity, a significant part of which is an individual process that helps us connect with our work and develop our skills and ability to be lifelong learners.
In the future, people will hold multiple different jobs and roles simultaneously, which requires individuals to develop and renew their skills throughout their lives. We can expect professional transitions to increase and the nature of work to continue changing in the future as well.
Supporting career planning and career readiness is a significant part of the Rastor Institute’s operations. The Rastor Institute set out to meet the changing needs of its student clients by co-developing up-to-date career services under Kuulas’s leadership, in collaboration with staff and clients.
"At the Rastor Institute, we want to be the go-to resource for career transitions, career turning points, and career development. Our collaboration with Kuulas has been a unique and valuable experience as we’ve created a new career guidance model and a career partnership mindset within our organization."
Susanna Valkeus,
Director of Pedagogy, Rastor Institute
Project objectives
A core part of professional identity is shaped through ongoing dialogue, where strong career planning skills play a vital role in supporting employees. These skills guide not only external career progression, but also the internal journey of self-awareness, reflection, and continuous growth. In today’s fast-changing world of work, these skills are essential, enabling individuals to continuously adapt, develop, and take ownership of their careers.
At the Rastor Institute, we wanted to embrace this change and find solutions to support our student clients on their career paths in an increasingly holistic way. We launched a co-design initiative using service design methods to identify client needs and build effective solutions for them.
During the project, we piloted various career services for student clients and developed the services based on the feedback received. The purpose of the pilot was to determine, among other things:
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What kinds of needs do our clients have regarding career-related topics, and how can we help them?
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What kind of added value do the services bring to the student’s path?
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What kind of implementation approach would best support our student clients?
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Does the content resonate: does our client base find the service necessary?
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How should the career services be developed?
Project phases
We began building the model by gaining an understanding of the clients, and then aligning this with our understanding of the industry. The development work was advanced through guest presentations, benchmarking, and brainstorming workshops. Co-development continued during a two-month pilot designed for student clients, during which the goal was to gather as comprehensive feedback as possible to support the tested methods and exercises that had emerged in the previous phase of the work.
The project led to the development of the Career Care model, integrating key work-life themes identified by both students and alumni. The model is delivered through a versatile mix of individual coaching, group training, and webinars. Career guidance was redefined through the introduction of digital coaching, informed by best practices from professional career coaches. The result is a distinctive, modern approach to career development within an educational setting—one that has received outstanding feedback from both students and alumni.
As a result of the collaboration, Rastor Institute developed a way to produce and offer career services in a modern, customer-centric manner, supporting students’ identified needs along their career paths.
Rating: 4,6/5
The overall rating for the pilot was 4.6 (out of 5).
Respondents reported gaining new ideas and tools to apply in their careers with a rating of 4.5/5. Interaction between staff and students was rated 4.9/5.
In the open-ended feedback, participants highlighted the assistance received from Rastor Institute’s Career Support Center regarding the following themes, among others:
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New tools and perspectives (for tackling new challenges)
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New ideas for clarifying one’s own situation
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Help in identifying one’s own strengths and articulating them
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Encouragement, support, and motivation
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Insight into one’s own situation / life
The feedback also highlighted the importance of timely support, which has helped prevent students from dropping out.
“The Career Care has been absolutely amazing for my current life situation. It has opened up new perspectives, helped me cope, changed my way of thinking, and provided tips, etc. Studying on my own wouldn’t have worked; I might have dropped out. With the help of the Career Care, I was able to organize my thoughts and realize that many things are actually going well. I gained direction on how to move forward during this time of change."
Anonymous student feedback
Want to learn more about our services?
Kuulas & Co is a design and training services agency specialized in organizational development. We help our clients align their strategic skills development needs with their employees’ career and learning aspirations. At the same time, we coach employees to become visionary developers of their own work and their work community. Let’s shape the future of work together and learn together!