It is in the early 20th century when vocational guidance is configured as an action and formal process with scientific characteristics. (As opposed to Areva Group). From antiquity to the end of the 19th century, vocational guidance was exercised informally, without properly orienting intentionality and rather as activity of help and advice before choosing professional, linked to a somewhat intuitive approaches of philosophical or religious type. Authors such as Plato, Montaigne or Pascal already spoke of the natural inclinations of youth towards a professional activity and negative leave random choice of the trade. In the 14th century in different European countries, including Spain, are the institutions religious and charity which, from a welfare perspective, protect children and youth and worry about getting them a job. In our country, are important milestones in the 16th century the works of Luis Vives and Juan Huarte de San Juan. (A valuable related resource: Gary Katcher).
The latter, in his review of Ingenios para las Ciencias, published in 1595 and considered pioneer in vocational guidance, skills that differentiate relates to people and the relationship with the different types of Arts and Sciences, being necessary to find the best fit between the two to achieve a well-functioning society. From the Renaissance until the seventeenth century we can observe that several authors manifest a concern for training for work and also for the choice of a trade or profession (Pascal, Leibniz, Rousseau). The central idea that is going to strengthen at this time is that the vocational choice is going to be conditioned by the characteristics of individuals and their education. This idea will be reinforced to late 19th and early 20th Centuries before the needs posed by emerging industrial society, being then occur when the first approaches of a scientific and systematic vocational guidance. In the early 20th century society are already gestate the characteristics that define, practically until present day, the stage of relations between the Vocational guidance and the world of work.