This article describes the relevant careers counselling services in Germany for school leavers, with a focus on the characteristic German "dual system" of vocational training. By the time they have reached the end of their school lives, most students have already made key decisions about their subsequent working lives and possible career paths. "Bad" decisions regarding training and higher education are often a factor in dropping out of vocational training or higher education (Frey, Ertelt, & Ruppert, 2016), affecting approximately 25% of all dropouts from vocational training and approximately 30% of all dropouts from university (Frey, Balzer, & Ruppert, 2014; Uhly, 2015). It is therefore imperative to investigate whether career counselling services address the right target group, when they are mainly targeting school leavers. According to data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), from which cohort 4 (SC 4) was analyzed by descriptive data statistics, on various careers counselling offers, the influence of parents on young people's career choices is greater than that of teachers, of career counsellors or of occupation-specific information from the internet. Based on these findings, the authors recommend strengthening the parents' competences in order to enable them to better assist their children in making suitable career choices. Thus career counselling services could indirectly improve decision-making behaviours.

The future that adolescents are growing up to live and work in becomes increasingly complex and vague, making job choice a moving target. Thus, adolescents develop and are confronted with a number of different options for what job they wish to take up and have to balance their own and their social environment’s job aspirations for them. Prior research has suggested including more dynamic approaches to understanding career choice and counseling. In this research, we therefore draw on the possible selves approach and aim at understanding how far imbalance between adolescents’ own and their social environments’ expectations for their vocational future will cause stress. In an online mixed-methods study, 163 adolescent participants, aged 14–22, reported their own and their parents’, teachers’, and friends’ emotions, future orientation, and perceived stress regarding the career choice. Results showed a variety of expectations for future careers held by participants and their social environment, as well as emotions regarding these expectations. Positive deactivating emotions (satisfaction and relief) negatively predicted adolescents’ stress and strain and the older and closer to final job choice participants were, the more they reported stress and strain. These findings suggest including adolescents’ social environment in the career choice process.

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