Occupational Profile
Luminiţa T ĂSICA
Institute of Educational Sciences, BucharestHistory
Occupational profile is an instrument of information and guidance that everybody
involved in career counselling can benefit from.
In order to understand its nature, structure and usefulness we have to go back and make a
comparative analysis with other related instruments that were at the origin of
occupational profiles in the current form. We mean by that professional
(micro)monograph, professiogram, psychogram, and occupational / professional
standard.
Trade description was done as early as a few centuries ago, once guilds and crafts
associations appeared, interested in passing on the secrets of their work to next
generations of apprentices.
In the industrial era, in the beginning of the last century, drawing up a “catalogue of
trades” became a necessity in order to train the workforce required by a rapid economic
growth. This is how professional monographs emerge for the first time in Europe:
elaborated by Fontegne (France), Christaens (Belgium), Moede (Germany), Myers
(England), and Munsterberg (United States). In the USA these are still a subject matter
for the final years of the graduate school under the title “the world of trades”.
In Romania, the first professional monographs – for industry – are elaborated and
published by Roşca, Cupcea and Peteanu, then by Nestor and M ărgineanu.
The importance and role of the instruments mentioned above for the world of professions
contributed to the emergence of a new science – professiology – which studies the