Keyword: «value-goal framework»

The relevance of this study is driven by the strategic imperative of ensuring Russia’s technological sovereignty and addressing the acute shortage of skilled personnel in high-tech industries, necessitating fundamental rethinking of approaches to youth professional self-determination. Within the secondary vocational education (SVE) system, a significant gap persists between the competences developed in graduates and the current demands of employers. Furthermore, traditional career guidance practices fail to foster a sustained value-based orientation toward engineering labor and technological entrepreneurship. The aim of this study is to theoretically substantiate and develop a graduate profile for engineering and technological SVE programs, positioning it as the value-driven and goal-oriented foundation for career guidance initiatives. The methodological framework draws on a situational-positional model of professional development and an age-normative developmental concept, both of which frame professional self-determination as a phased progression through stages of problematization, instrumental problem solving, and professional validation. Drawing on comprehensive empirical research, the SVE graduate profile has been operationalized, a three-component diagnostic readiness profile has been developed, and a situational-positional career guidance model has been proposed. This model integrates technopark infrastructure with a collaborative cluster encompassing schools, SVE institutions, universities, and industry partners. The study details four mechanisms for integrating this graduate profile into the educational process: diagnostic-orienting, design-oriented, reflexive-evaluative, and communicative-partnership. The theoretical and practical significance of this research lies in its scientific conceptualization of the SVE graduate profile not as a static competency checklist, but as a dynamic value-goal matrix that dictates the content and direction of career guidance. The proposed models, descriptor system, and diagnostic toolkit demonstrate strong potential for implementation across SVE institutions, technoparks, and regional administrative bodies. They facilitate the alignment of educational programs with industry standards, enhance student motivation for engineering careers, and improve graduate competitiveness in the labor market. The effectiveness of these approaches has been validated through successful pilot implementation in educational institutions across the Nizhny Novgorod Region.