Professional Standard As the Basis for the Interaction of Education and the Labor Market

The interaction of Russian education and the labor market, not easy at all times, is currently complicated by a large number of agencies and companies seeking to receive a specialist from the university according to their own ideas about the required competencies of the graduate.

     Settlement of the relationship between education and the labor market in Russia is particularly important for relatively young kinds of activity such as the organization and carrying out  sociological research.

     In Russia  the establishment of common requirements is achieved by the development of professional standards as a basis for the interaction of vocational education and labor in order to increase the competitiveness of Russian specialists in the domestic and international labor markets.

     Do the representatives of education sector have to participate in the development of the professional standard? The expediency and even the necessity of participation of educational organizations in the development of common requirements for professional activity is confirmed by the experience of our team of developers of the professional standard "Specialist in the organization and carrying out sociological research." The group consists of both - employers and university representatives including the developers of state educational standards in sociology.

    As a result of collaboration the problem zones of interaction of education and labor market in the field of sociology are revealed: the lack of an agreed and settled vocabulary, the insufficiency of the regulatory framework, the lack of a common understanding of “the structure and content”. Based on the study of these problem areas there was developed a functional map of activity for organizing and conducting the sociological research with a detailed examination of labor functions , as well as the knowledge and skills to implement them. There was developed the draft of the professional standard for this type of activity.