#TheWeekInCareers - Episode 25

Welcome to?#TheWeekinCareers! If you are a first-time reader (and congratulations if so, you are now part of a 1800+ strong community!), this newsletter is my attempt at summarising some of the key?#Careers-related news from across the?#Careersphere?each week, along with some of the talking points I feel are worthy of further debate amongst the?#Careers?community! So, without further ado, on to the news!

Careering Around the World - Episode 1???

Inspired by last year's Global Careers Month and some of the discussions and connections that took place off the back of this initiative, I was keen to use #TheWeekInCareers to dig further into what the #Careers landscape looks like in different countries around the world. After reaching out to a range of fab careers professionals currently plying their trade in North America, Oceania, the Middle East, Asia and other areas around the globe, I'm excited to share a series of articles as part of our #CareeringAroundTheWorld series, which will be dropping in the newsletter periodically throughout 2023! Up first, Paul L. Rainey, PhD gives us a fascinating insight into HE careers work in the United States...

Career Services in the United States: Current Practices and Emerging Potentials

In 2013, university career services leaders Emanuel Contomanolis and Trudy Steinfeld published the book Leadership in Career Services: Voices from the Field. An edited volume, it brought together established and emerging voices from the collegiate career development. A collective - and arguably representative - view from the United States, Contomanolis and Steinfeld's book portrayed the work of career services as captured in that moment. With an assessment of practitioners’ potential for impact on the transformation of career (the plural “s” dropped in U.S. parlance) development work, its pages held aspirations and disappointments of those who strive to deliver impactful career services.

Ten years after the book’s release, career development work in the U.S. has remained ossified in some ways, yet fundamentally changed in others. But to analyse and understand the current state of career work, it is crucial to acknowledge career practitioners occupy two separate but related spheres. The first is the field, which contains its own orienting norms, theoretical dispositions, and forms of professional capital. The second is the organisations in which career development work happens - for this article, that means universities.

The U.S. career field is ensconced by a relatively low barrier of entry. Except for those who conduct career advising alongside mental health counselling, career practitioners do not need to hold a licence or possess any specific higher education credentials. Nonetheless, some advisors pursue certifications representing standards of expertise. For instance, individuals can obtain the title of Board Certified Coach (BCC) through the Center for Credentialing and Education or various coaching designations through the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Other credentials exist for specific micro areas of expertise, such as the Certified Interview Coach (CIC) designation administered by the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches (PARWCC) and the Nationally Certified Online Profile Expert (NCOPE) title through the National Resume Writers’ Association (NRWA).

While there is no educational requirement to practise career advising or coaching, those who tend to practise in formalised environments often hold postgraduate degrees in an area of cognate disciplines: human resource development, psychology, communication, and education. Career advisors in university settings may hold a postgraduate degree in student affairs or student personnel. Other practitioners hold counselling degrees. While all U.S. counselling trainees take a career counselling course, several programmes—such as one housed at The Pennsylvania State University—offer a concentration in career counselling. The only dedicated career advising degree programme in the U.S. had previously been offered at The College of New Rochelle, which unfortunately closed its doors in 2019.

Theory guides U.S. career advising to a limited extent, but the theoretical corpus is segmented, creating an ununified reference point of practice. Practitioners’ work may be informed by an overarching ontological framework, such as person-centred counselling or career construction theory, while others may approach career advising from a more utilitarian perspective, focusing on advisees’ interests, skills, and values. The most influential theories continue to originate from the consecrated figures of the field - Donald Super, John Holland, Frank Parsons, Mark Savickas, John Krumboltz - while emergent theories, such as kaleidoscope careers, protean careers, and career ecosystems, have minimal influence—at least in formal application. U.S. university career practitioners do engage with a semblance of employability theory, referred to as career readiness—a concept developed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), defining a graduate’s workforce preparedness as efficacy in eight competencies: career and self-development, communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, teamwork, and technology. Arguably the most recent shift in theoretical influence came in 2016 with publication of Designing Your Life, a book by engineers Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, which details a systems approach by encouraging people to experiment and fail fast when exploring careers. Higher education institutions such as Stanford University and John Hopkins University have established career advising and programming offices to disseminate guidance based on life design principles.

Most university career advising takes place in established on-campus offices, where career services are considered a subset of the student affairs function. Offices may be centralised or decentralised. Some offices, such as mine at Texas A&M University, are organised as a liaison-model, where advisors work in a centralised office but advise a portfolio of students studying in a designated college or department. More recently, some offices have instituted an industry-cluster model where staff advise students based upon their ultimate sector target - for instance, an advisor may be responsible for guidance on environmental careers, advising both students in ecology programmes who want to work as field scientists and philosophy students who plan to attend law school to practise environmental law.

Many offices are bifurcated into two operational areas: advising and employer relations. Advisors conduct one-on-one sessions, as well as design and execute programmatic efforts. Advisors may approach their work exclusively from a narrative perspective or employ career assessments like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Employer relations focuses on building relationships with employers to recruit students for internships and permanent positions and executing large-scale programmes such as career fairs or employer information sessions. Most career offices maintain a customer relations management (CRM) job board, the two preeminent vendors being Symplicity and Handshake.

Office directors remain concerned with scalability of services, with many offices leveraging instructional design approaches to deliver standardised career guidance to a wide segment of students. Long before ChatGPT’s arrival, career services had been using AI to assist with resume reviews (of note, resumes and CVs are related but different types of employment documents in the U.S.), employing it to teach students formatting and content mechanics so individual advising sessions could focus on strategically using resumes. Despite technological innovations, career offices frequently face difficulties reaching most students on campus. This is largely due to career services being an ancillary part of the student experience rather than an embedded component of the academic curriculum. Some higher education institutions have demonstrated innovation in synthesising career development with the traditional academic experience - Wake Forest University perhaps being the most notable example to do so - but the challenge of completely integrating career services into the curriculum persists because of the modern university's loosely connected structure and ambiguous lines of organisational control.

A consequence of declining birth rates starting two decades ago, U.S. higher education institutions anticipate a country-wide enrolment decline beginning in 2024. Rising tuition costs coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic have raised societal questions about the true value of higher education. When Contomanolis and Steinfeld released their 2013 book, they had not foreseen how macro-level changes could affect career service work. But some institutions have realised the value proposition career services offers in this volatile environment and have elevated career offices on campus, promoting directors to senior leadership positions, such as Associate Dean or Vice Provost, to have wider institutional impact on career development education. Despite unease hanging in the air about higher education’s future, the environment is poised to make career services the differentiating element between institutions’ wider impact on the U.S. economy.

Paul L. Rainey, PhD is a Senior Career Coordinator at Texas A&M University where he provides career advising and programming to masters and research doctoral students. Along with his colleague, Marilyn Yeager, he is a Fellow of the NIH-funded pd|hub Collections and is currently working to disseminate an Individual Development Plan career exploration model to universities and professional societies across the U.S.

We'll be dropping new articles in the #CareeringAroundTheWorld series via the newsletter throughout the year - if you are interested in sharing your perspective on the #Careers landscape in your country (outside the UK), please do get in touch! ??

#MyWeekInCareers?Vol. 5???

It's time for another edition of?#MyWeekInCareers! For those unfamiliar with this new segment, it's an opportunity to hear more about the day-to-day reality of careers work from different careers professionals delivering quality CEIAG with clients in a range of settings! This time around, we hear from Nick Oakhill , a careers manager working in an 11-16 school!

Name:? Nick Oakhill

School/Company:?Soham Village College, East Cambs

Position:?Careers Manager

My Background:

• After graduating from Royal Agricultural College in 1995, I had two long, successful but different careers in the Fresh Produce industry and then Rural Insurance. A third change of direction (Planned Happenstance theory!!) resulted in moving into my current Careers Manager role in Sept 2017.?
• In July 2020 I gained my Level 6 Diploma in Careers Guidance and Development, as well completing the Level 6 Certificate in Careers Leadership
• In April 2022, I successfully led the Careers Department to gain the Quality in Careers Standard?
• Member of the? Career Development Institute

Monday

First job of the week is to double-check all my plans are in place for the Year 11 Mock Interview day on Wednesday. This is the biggest careers event I organise, with 30 volunteer interviewers to find and 260 students to get ‘interview ready’. The planning started back in the autumn term, and I am happy that all looks in order.

I meet with a couple of Yr11 students who have queries about their college guidance meetings, and reassure them that their applications have been received and they will soon get their meeting invite. This is always a stressful time for Yr11s, especially when they hear that their friends and classmates have all had their meetings and have received offers. But with a dozen or so different Post-16 colleges they can choose from, each has its own process which requires some careful management.

The rest of the day is spent reviewing the Yr10 ‘Your Future’ questionnaire students recently completed. This helps me understand where each student, and the year group as a whole, is with their Post-16 and career planning thinking. I use a range of evaluation tools and processes to help me tweak the careers programme to the students’ needs.

Tuesday

My Careers Adviser Julie works Tuesdays and Thursdays each week, so before she has her first student meeting we have a quick 10 min chat about who she is seeing this week. We also share information about ongoing work or issues I feel she needs to know. As we both make up the entire Careers Department, it is easy to keep each other updated, and I feel it’s important that she is aware of the bigger picture to help her do her job to her best ability.

I am in the process of planning in-school activities for National Careers Week. We hold our week a little later than the official week due to mock exams taking place then. This requires several emails sent to my alumni and business network to ask them to come in and speak to students about their career pathway. I also meet with several of my Careers Champions in the various subject departments to tell them what my plans are and what support I need from them. I set this network up a few years ago and it provides a valuable link directly into the departments, so I can share resources and possible opportunities for students. My Champions are very enthusiastic about the careers programme and support a lot of the work I do.?

Wednesday

The big day has arrived! Yr11 Mock Interviews. It starts with a message that one of my interviewers has car problems so can’t attend. Panic stations, and contact made with my Enterprise Adviser Rebecca (who is also one of my interviewers) who works for a large local agricultural company and within 30 minutes she has found a replacement from her team.

The day is a total success. Interviewers enjoy some excellent refreshments and a networking opportunity before I hold a short briefing with them, after which they move to their tables to prepare. The first group of students arrive, all very well dressed and the majority looking quite anxious - but within a minute of them all meeting their interviewer the energy in the room is electric. I hear some amazing conversations going on, and it is so rewarding to see the smiles (and looks of relief!) on students’ faces as they leave.

The impact of this day is immense, with all students hopefully taking at least one thing away with them that will support them in their future. I am eternally grateful to my band of volunteer interviewers who also get a great deal out of the day.??

Thursday

A quieter day today which is very welcomed. A quick catch up with Julie, our Careers Adviser, before she heads off to see her students for the day. I spend the morning reviewing the mock interview day – reading through interviewer feedback forms, making notes for next year’s event before I forget them, and emailing interviewers to thank them for their time.

I also spend a little time updating our social media presence. I’m a great believer in shouting about the school’s successes and achievements, and so use LinkedIn and Twitter to share events and activities. It’s also good to see what other schools and institutions are doing from a career guidance and development perspective. I am a member of Facebook’s Careers Leader group which is a valuable networking group with members supporting each other in so many ways. I used it extensively when I was new to role, and I am happy to now support colleagues who were in my position several years ago.

I catch up with my Enterprise Adviser in the afternoon for a mini planning meeting – her business does some brilliant work supporting the careers programme and our students and I’m very excited about what’s coming up in the near future.

Friday

I always start my Fridays planning next week – I used to do this last thing on a Friday but invariably a last-minute issue comes up in the afternoon which makes my planning rushed. I like to come in on a Monday morning and get straight into the week. I carry out a few admin tasks such as updating Compass + with careers activities and 1-2-1 meetings from that week. I also have a few letters to send to our Admin Team who send them onto parents – Post-16 college open event dates to Yr10s, and details of a careers fair being held by a large Cambridge city centre school to all parents. I send my regular email to the teacher who produces the weekly student bulletin, in which I include a ‘Career of the Week’ slide and any other key information to share with students.

I work very closely with our SEND team and staff in the ISLE (where students who are on Alternative Provision programmes are based), so I spend some time with them during the day. I discuss specific students with the staff, finding out their needs and requirements for activities I am planning. I also meet with some of the students based in those areas which I really enjoy. Sometimes their needs are quite complex and so it’s all about ensuring they are getting the right level of careers support and guidance, delivered in a way they can understand and appreciate.?

Reflections...

I have developed a dynamic and inclusive careers programme in the school over the last few years and love being able to provide so many opportunities for students from Yr7 through to Yr11. The planning and organising can be hard work, but on the day of the activity all that effort is worthwhile when I see the impact on the students.

I am supported so well by my senior team and other staff, who get what careers education is all about. This makes my job so much more manageable. I also realise that I am in a privileged position as a careers professional in a school – I have no teaching responsibilities and so can dedicate all of my time and energy into delivering the programme. I know plenty of colleagues who only have a few hours per week to try and deliver their programme, and more needs to be done in terms of funding and recognition from senior teams in order to give all secondary school children the best support possible.

Above all, I am constantly amazed at the resilience and maturity of our students as they move along their education and future work pathway.

If anyone wants to talk to me about what it’s like to be a Careers Manager in a large secondary school, please get in touch. I’m always happy to talk about my programme, my experience of studying the L6 Diploma and/or the Careers Leader training course, as well as working towards the Quality in Careers Standard.

A massive thank you to Nick Oakhill ?for being the latest member of the?#Careers?community to share his?Week in Careers?via the newsletter - the Year 11 mock interview event sounded fantastic! ??

I am very keen to use this segment in the newsletter to highlight just how diverse the?#Careers?sector is in terms of job roles and the work that we do, so if you are interested in sharing your?Week in Careers?as part of a future newsletter, please just drop me a line! ??

#TalkingAboutCareers - Part 1???

As #NationalCareersWeek in the UK approaches, the #Careers sector finds itself grappling once again with an all-too familiar conundrum - how do we make the most of the increased focus on the #Careers sector while ensuring that we aren't watering down messaging about what career development work actually involves? There are a number of factors at play here, including:

• The need to engage - for some school-based careers professionals in particular, #NCW can be the main (if not the only opportunity) they get in the school calendar to shout about #Careers with young people, meaning the pressure to create immediate, engaging activities is high (believe me, I've been there!) This can potentially mean it's easier to sell high-profile, quick wins and one-off events (such as the BBC Bitesize Careers livestream on Friday 10th March, hosted by comedian Russell Kane) rather than a comprehensive and more diverse whole-school schedule of #NCW activities.
• The need to kick on - #NCW should in theory be an ideal platform for raising the profile of #Careers work in schools/colleges but as many careers practitioners discover each year, there is also the risk that it can be seen by time-starved school leaders as a 'quick fix' or a 'box tick' for meeting particular aspects of the Gatsby Benchmarks in a single week of the academic year. Kicking on from #NCW is not always as simple as it might seem, no matter how engaging a schedule careers leaders/advisers may have assembled!
• The need for a common language - This is where we come to the nub of today's piece - how do we ensure we are using a common vocabulary around #Careers when celebrating #NCW with young people and other stakeholders outside the sector?

Part of this challenge, which I'll be looking to explore in today's newsletter item and continue via next Friday's issue, is the lack of an agreed nomenclature even amongst the #Careers community itself - we saw this highlighted recently in a really valuable LinkedIn comment thread connected to Katherine Jennick RCDP 's post following our #CareerClusters episode of #WeAreCareers with Lucy Sattler (you can watch the full episode HERE). In discussing the #CareerClusters survey, Hannah West (RCDP) made the following observation, which kicked off a really interesting dialogue about what we mean when we talk about a 'Career':

I then responded to Hannah West (RCDP) 's comment with the following points:

It's an interesting question, Hannah West (RCDP)! I actually veer more towards describing my work history as multiple 'careers' - for example, although I've generally worked in Education, I tend to tell people I've had three careers in this area; 1. As an FE teacher of Maths/English, working specifically with 16-19s who had not been successful in mainstream education; 2. As a TEFL teacher, delivering language classes in the UK and abroad; and 3. As a careers professional (although I've arguably experienced two different career paths in this field alone, already, thinking about the different nature of my work in schools/colleges vs HE!)

Would be interesting to hear how other careers professionals frame language around this! For me, I tend to see a 'job' or 'role' as either something that is part of a wider pattern/career or is a one-off experience (e.g. I worked as an exams invigilator for one summer, so I wouldn't describe this as a career), whereas if I've undertaken 2-3+ jobs in a particular field (or developed my practice over time in a single role), I tend to frame that as a 'career' (particularly if it's also involved retraining/reskilling as part of the experience)

Obviously, overarching all of this you have the broader, more holistic concept of 'Career' as 'life's work' (encompassing personal life, work, lifelong learning, leisure etc.) but potentially harder to frame when we're talking about something like the Clusters!

As you can see from my comments above, I'm not even 100% clear on where I stand regarding the concept of 'Career', given that I subscribe to the use of the term in its more holistic sense (e.g. the journey through work, study and life) but also often use it when talking more practically about my work history. Hannah West (RCDP) then came back with what, to me, is an even nicer way of framing the concept of 'Career' ("I see career as the movement between roles/fields: like a car careers down a road, humans career through life (and CDPs help keep this as controlled as possible!") and well, you get the point - settling on an agreed language for something as complex as Career can be tricky!

We can also find disagreement within the #Careers sector around the use of language in other contexts, such as the hidden narratives associated with popularised terms like Employability, Resilience (as deftly outlined by Ronald G. Sultana in his article for the Career Guidance for Social Justice site) or Meritocracy (as covered by Pete Robertson in his recent piece for the same site), and even the timeline associated with well-established expressions like 'Non-Linear Careers' - Mike Grey FRSA 's recent post on this subject is well worth a read for the comments thread alone, as numerous careers professionals, including Tristram Hooley , Jim Bright , Lisa LaRue, RCDP and David Shindler , identify just how well-used the term 'Non-Linear Careers' really is, even if it might seem to have gained greater prominence in recent years:

As Ifza Shakoor 's recent blog post on her Doctoring a Career site attests to, the #Careers landscape can be complex enough even for professionals, so it behoves us as a profession to think about the importance of language and where we could make the concept of 'Careers' and the vocabulary around this space easier to process for those who are less familiar with it. I'm quite prepared that a number of careers professionals may disagree with my assertions in this newsletter item (e.g. maybe Careers is too complex a topic to ever be condensed into a simple, universal lexicon?) but what I'm most interested in is where others in the sector sit on this subject - do we need more of a common language around Careers and if we had this, would it actually make our work with clients and other stakeholders any easier? Answers, as always, on a #TheWeekInCareers postcard! ??

We'll be picking up this topic in Part 2 of #TalkingAboutCareers in next week's newsletter - in the meantime, please share any thoughts, comments or challenges you have in the comment feed below and don't forget to check out next week's #WeAreCareers show with Bella Doswell CCDP, RCDP and Katherine Jennick RCDP , where we'll be discussing the recent #SoMuchMoreThanTalkingAboutJobs flashmob / social media campaign, with how we move towards a common language for #Careers one of our talking points for the show (stay tuned to the Career Development Institute LinkedIn page, YouTube channel and Facebook Community of Practice for links to next week's show, which are dropping later today!) ??

The Best of the Rest: My Hot Picks from the wider?#Careersphere

Pre-16 technical education pathways proposed?- We kick off this week's #BestOfTheRest with news that the Baker Dearing Educational Trust are seeking to create new technical education pathways in secondary schools based on the existing UTC (University Technical College) model. The proposal, which is currently being scoped out via a consultation, seems to involve setting up arms (or 'sleeves') of UTCs in mainstream schools in order to provide more of a direct pathway into technical education for those under the age of 14 (the age that students can start at a UTC), something that has already been piloted with purported success at institutions like Abbeywood Community School in Bristol. Will be interesting to hear how the consultation progresses, particularly in terms of how schools respond to the prospect of an in-school preparatory pathway to T-Levels and the implementation of a skills-based, employer-informed curriculum to sit alongside the existing national curriculum.

Job centre staff to get bonuses for getting people work?-?Some slightly dispiriting news up next, with the announcement that the UK government is setting up a 'job centre league table' with cash incentives for the JCP advisers who get the most unemployed individuals into jobs, as part of a pilot scheme in 60 job centres aiming to get more Universal Credit claimants into employment. To give the government the benefit of the doubt, this approach does at least seem slightly less cynical than the notorious benefits sanction 'hit squads' of the 2010s but is no less simplistic and as usual, the absence of career development professionals and the benefits of high-quality career guidance in this discourse is glaring. Will this policy have the impact that the UK government hopes? Let's just say I'm not holding my breath...

EDI 101: Unlocking the Power of Language?- Ifza Shakoor has been putting out some excellent blog posts in recent weeks (see above!) via her Doctoring a Career site and this article is a valuable exploration of the often-complex nomenclature of EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion), which has grown considerably in its usage in recent years. In this piece, Ifza Shakoor deftly summarises terms from Allyship to Global Majority and Marginalisation to Intersectionality, while reminding us why this language matters to careers professionals and our clients and how language around EDI is never fixed and constantly evolving.

Why is there a recruitment and retention crisis in teaching??- With the recent news that the number of individuals undertaking Initial Teacher Training (ITT) has dropped again this year, this piece from Micha-Shannon Smith in Prospects Luminate is a timely reminder of some of the driving factors behind the staffing crisis the Education system in England is currently experiencing, including the pay and workload issues that have precipitated recent strike action. Most worrying of all (IMO) is the impact on retention of more senior teachers, with figures showing that although 88% of teachers who qualified in 2020 were still teaching one year after qualification, this percentage quickly drops the longer teachers stay in the profession (with only 60% of teachers who qualified ten years ago still teaching). With things the way they are, it's hard to see initiatives like the mooted teaching apprenticeship for non-graduates even scratching the surface...

Reflections on changing personality?- Our final news item this week is a really nice piece from Prof. David Clutterbuck on the importance of not assuming personality is fixed when working with clients in a coaching capacity. This might sound like an obvious health warning to intone but Prof. David Clutterbuck makes some valuable points regarding the potential danger of using tools like MBTI and the Big 5 for helping individuals understand their personality type, rather than acknowledging that many people can and indeed do bring about deliberate changes in their own personality, referring back to the excellent mentoring question - Who is the person you desire to become? A must-read for the weekend!

I'm always keen to hear what people think of this weekly newsletter format (e.g. Is it helpful? Does it add value to what is already out there on LinkedIn? What might make it better/more digestible?) so please do drop me a DM if you have any thoughts!

See you all in the?#Careersphere?next week for?Episode 26! ??