Canisp's vision for the future....part 2

Sorry, meant to hit "save" and hit "publish" by mistake.

Its a pity that given all the inventions Scottish people have come up with over time that we're not more willing to take risks and have the confidence to be entrepreneurial.

I'd also like to see better links with employers, and for them to undertake a commitment to have work placements both for school pupils and for older adults who have been out of work for sometime.

In terms of training the PG Dip is definitely a good starting point. After qualifying there would be compulsory CPD, from different organisations and trainers involved in guidance, looking at how they carry out guidance and apply that to their client groups, and on a least some of the latest academic developments.

I'm not sure about careers advisers having a totally holistic approach, yes, we should definitely not just focus on careers, but I think there does have to be clear boundaries in place, of what we can deal with and what we can't. Closer partnership workings with other agencies and communities should help make these boundaries more seam free from the clients' perspectives.
I think these relationships would necessitate the sharing of information. I don't really have a problem with this, but let's be upfront about that fact with our clients, and respect their wishes if there is information they identify as not wanting to share.

Lastly I'd really like to see the careers guidance profession as having self-belief in what it does, and promoting itself. I really don't think there is nearly enough of this. Given that work, paid or unpaid, is such an essential part of many people's lives, we do have a really valuable service to provide. Let's be confident about what we can provide and how it really is valuable.

Canisp's vision for the future....

First of all the name - it definitely has to have "Careers" in the title. Most people come in thinking of their career, which may, or may not require upskilling. I also like the thought of having something local in the title eg "careers Fife" as I think people feel its more theirs if this is the case, and stops it seeming so governmental. I would definitely like to see better links with community education and social enterprise schemes, particularly in deprived areas, as I think these can help improve confidence and purpose in people's lives, enabling them to move on to greater things if they want to.

It would definitely be an all age service, as I hate the thought of certain groups being unable to access the service, especially as people are likely to need careers advice at several points throughout their life nowadays.

In terms of techniques used I'd like to see the organisation being a bit more "boundary pushing" in order to stay at the front of practice. This could be done by different areas piloting different theories and techniques of guidance to find out what really works in practice.

Lots of emphasis would be on building people's confidence as I think Scotland as a nation still lacks this. Confidence building would have to start early in schools, by getting pupils more involved in different activities, enabling them to have better self-awareness, and this would continue with older groups such as women returners and disabled clients. There would also be more emphasis and links with organisations encouraging people to be entrepreneurial as Scotland has one of the lowest rates of business start-ups in the world. Given all the fantastic inventions that Scots have come up with

Testing testing testing 1 2 3.....

Another experience on placement which I've been reflecting on a lot (well actually feeling pretty annoyed about) was what happened on the first day. There I was trying to create a good impression, first thing on my timetable was psychometric tests. I was made to sit them - verbal, numerical and diagrams, they were marked and the results were fed back to me in what I can only describe as the style of a school master.

Fortunately I didnt' embarrass myself in anyway but I really felt it was an abuse of power, and it made me realise if I had done badly I would have been embarrased and felt like a bit of a donkey for the next two weeks.

This got me thinking about these types of testing being done on clients and how rubbish they must feel if the results aren't good. Its like writing someone off, with very little basis, as of course lots of people do brilliantly well in their jobs, but maybe can't perform in these type of tests. I think if I am in a position where I have to administer these tests to people I will be very careful about how I give feedback, and be telling people just to disregard them if they do badly.

Reflections on guidance on HE

Just a few thoughts from my placement so far!
Its been interesting to see guidance interviews conducted in an environment where there doesn't seem to be any interest taken in how the interviews are carried out - i.e. no particular method is deemed as being the one to follow, and there's never any type of monitoring of what goes on other than the usual numbers game. What freedom to try new things out and test particular approaches! Unfortunately though nothing very innovative going on, person centred to a certain extent, but beyond that no particular theories are evident. Lots of knowledge is imparted at interviews, which appears to be very gratefully received by students.

The university doesn't seem to be very interested in individual guidance due to the small numbers it can reach but rather has focussed money and resources on careers education through the Confident Futures programme. I have to say I think these sessions are excellent on the whole, but many of the students don't seem to be too excited about the whole thing and attendance is poor at some of the modules.

Lots of students don't seem to be at all engaged by anything to do with careers, in fact the majority of people coming in to the guidance interviews appear to be unemployed graduates rather than current students.

There definitely seems to be a need for the careers service to raise its profile and market itself both to the students and to the decision makers in the university. Its amazing how many students have never looked at the careers web-site which has loads of vacancies on it. I guess we're not trained to market ourselves and I think as a profession its caring types that are attracted in, rather than self-promoters. There is a definite need for us to believe in the worth of what we're doing though - that has got to be the best marketing tool there is. This is so important for a service to thrive and move forward.

There's deifnitely some excellent work going on but trumpets just aren't being blown about it.

Parents and guidance! AGHHH!!

Definitely disagreed with the notion of parents coming along to guidance interviews. When I worked in accounting one guy was responsible for marketing the firm and did it really well, however his father decided that marketing wasn't a "proper career" and managed to wangle things with one of the partners for his son to change career and embark on the much more sensible route of becoming an accountant.
I have never seen anyone so miserable at work. He really struggled with it, hated it, became withdrawn and failed his exams quite spectacularly. Maybe mummy and daddy were much happier with his choice initially but it was just SO wrong for him. Seeing this happen had quite a powerful effect on me long before I ever thought of doing careers guidance.
Its a great pity if career advisers don't want parents involved because they're ashamed of what they do and I hope I never fall into that position.
I can definitely imagine involving parents later on if it they were unsupportive of their child's choice, and acting in an advocacy role in that situation, but at the initial stages keep them well away as far as I'm concerned!
Also disagreed with the notion that school is a bad place to carry out guidance. Even from a practical point of view we'd need them to come along in the evening or in the holidays to somewhere if we didn't meet them in school. At least school is an environment they are familiar with. I agree meeting in a school cupboard doesn't sound very appealing from either the child or the adviser's point of view, and if at all possible it should be somewhere like a quiet corner of the library. I have to say as well that meeting in a semi-formal situation with an adviser is bound to feel a little alien when you are at school but its almost like the first practice for the real thing - interviews for college or jobs, and from that point of view maybe its a good thing just to get a sense of what getting together with an adult and talking about what you enjoy etc is actually like.

PS happy ending -said failed accountant is now pursuing career in recruitment consultancy and loves it. Not sure if that's suitable for mummy and daddy to disclose at cocktail parties however!

Community guidance

Yesterday was an interesting lecture on communities. It is a great pity that community feeling seems to be dwindling in some places and I agree that many people must be very isolated. I think that its really materialism that has brought about individualism sometimes leading to isolation. There's a notion that if we surround ourselves with material things then we simply don't need other people beyond our immediate families. If anything happens - kids grow up and move away, or if a couple split up then often isolation can result, and the realisation that material goods don't make up for everything.
In my last job I did a some overseas work, mainly in Kazakhstan where I stayed with a family for quite a few weeks. People had very little materially there but there was a very strong sense of community, people really helped each other so much, and who you knew was really everything. On the surface it was quite inspiring but once I looked a bit more deeply into it big problems were noticeable - we would go to a restaurants with the Dean of the university and no money changed hands. We then learnt that the deal was that the restaurant owner's son would get good marks at university that year in return for the meal. All sort of things like that went on. The black market and corruption were huge. People didn't rely on the state for things but in turn they didn't support the state by paying taxes - the result was that all sorts of things were crumbling apart - power cuts and water cuts (grim grim grim!) every day, rubbish never collected and women terrified of giving birth in hospital. Also people at the bottom of the pile in the community really did have absolutely nothing - there was no state to fall back on for people without human capital within the community.
I think we just have to be careful in not going too far down this line of community. Whilst I see caring for others as a very legitimate form of work and don't think its right that everyone should be encouraged to enter the labour market, in general I think people should be encouraged to be economically active and contribute to the state. That may well involve moving away from home. There are advantages to that - of not repeating cycles of deprivaton through the generations and of not becoming very parochial in your outlook. The sad thing of course that there aren't always obvious new communitites to join for people who move away from home, especially if they're not very socially confident.

Reflective practice

At the Confident Futures class today we did a group exercise where someone (Jurg) was asked to think of a problem they'd encountered on the course, present it to the group, then the group asked the him questions, whilst being really careful not to offer their own opinion. Once quite a number of questions were asked, Jurg then said how his thinking had moved on about the problem just based on the questions we'd asked. We were then also allowed to offer limited suggestions, the point being that Jurg was to come to his own solutions, not ours.

I think the exercise was useful for everyone as although it wasn't our problems being addressed it offered new insights into a situation someone else had experienced, and I certainly got some food for thought from it.

It struck me that this would have been a brilliant technique to have used throughout the course as a sort of debrief after interviewing, placements, groupwork etc. We would all learn from each other's experiences.