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.

life space drawings

I thought this was such a powerful tool to have available and am really keen to try it out in practice. What I am intrigued about is how different people will react to it. For example would some of my accountant friends feel able to sit and draw pictures or would they be more comfortable with some kind of numerical based approach - maybe rating different aspects of their lives then taking it from there. I actually thought having to draw gave the freedom to think about things in quite a different way, and allowed me to put things down on paper that I wouldn't have wanted to verbalise.

Centigrade interviews

I found my Centigrade interviews a bit sad in some ways as it just seemed like the pupils I saw hadn't really absorbed much from whatever careers education they had received. They really seemed just about as clueless as I was at that stage, although at least I had the excuse of really having received next to no careers guidance. (The careers adviser at our school did a talk to our maths class about becoming an actuary. Even with my very limited knowledge of the world of work at that stage I knew I had as much chance of that happening as I did of becoming an astraunaut! He really lost all credibility after that talk as far as I was concerned.)

Anyway the first girl was swithering about medicine, nursing, pharmacy, or bio-chemistry. Fair enough partly it depended on grades but she didn't seem to have any idea of whether a job working with people in a caring profession was what she wanted or whether she'd prefer to be behind the scenes with very little people contact. I just felt that was a really fundamental thing to know before having to make a decision. I know they are so young and its very difficult but it would be good if school kids all got some kind of exposure to different work experience and knew a bit more about who they actually are before they leave school. I was wondering if kids at private schools are the same at that stage or if they are more self aware, from the opportunities and activities they get to take part in. Maybe its a big ask I'm making but there just seems an awful lot of potential for mistakes to be made in career choices if you leave school not knowing much at all about yourself. Maybe more focus should be put on this rather than filling in applications forms and other activities further down the decision making process.

Professional ethics

Sorry to wind the clock back a bit but I've been meaning to post something on professional ethics. I do find it pretty alarming that there isn't a proper code of ethics issued by the ICG. I also find it really worrying that some of the existing codes in place for counsellors can be seen to be just for the protection of the professional themselves. A well written code of ethics shouldn't be about that at all. It should instead highlight danger areas and potential pitfalls that we could get ourselves into that might compromise our integrity, independence and professional opinion. When integrity, independence and our objectivity go out the window that's when we're not doing our job properly, and the client isn't getting the experience that they deserve.

I think a new much more comprehensive code of ethics for careers guidance needs to be welcomed, yes we need to read it carefully and not just take it at face value, but if its been written properly then we don't need to be overly cynical about it.

Carl Rogers, the cuddly man, himself

I can't help thinking that Carl Rogers approach is absolutely essential and fundamental but, and its a big but, not sufficient for careers advisers.
I can't see that we can get very far at all without being congruent, having positive regard, and empathic understanding. Clients will never open up, trust us, and be in a place that we can truly help them without these being in place. I can see that the approach demands flexibility in what we do as well, in that it is person centred and doesn't allow us to impose our own structure and expectations on what takes place in an interview which to an extent has to be a good thing.

The problem though is that if the approach Carl Rogers advocates is sufficient then there is no need for professional career advisers. Anyone with these attitudes could act as a career adviser. Most people's mums would qualify in this category but I don't think they would necessarily offer good careers advice.

A session with Carl Roger may offer a warm happy feeling immediately after, but on reflection, other than perhaps deepening their own understanding of self, I don't think clients would necessarily believe that they had received the careers advice they hoped for, and if we were honest we would often know we hadn't done a good job either afterwards. Surely as professionals we actually have a duty to impart information and advice that the client isn't necessarily asking for, and this advice may not leave a warm happy feeling. Some of our advice may give clients food for thought, challenge their assumptions, and potentially put them back to the drawing board with their plans for the future. This might be unpleasant for them at the time, but ultimately in their best interests. Grant gave a brilliant quote about a friend having to be as soft as a dove and as wise as a serpent. I think our wisdom in this respect has to come very much from our professional expertise.

Carl Rogers approach seems to be very much about drawing people out of themselves and getting them to come up with the solutions. This maybe is the right approach to take when someone has suffered some kind of personal trauma, (which I think Carl Rogers' clients often had) but I just don't think its the best approach for careers advice - we have to pull our tool box out to help as appropriate, be that careers information, matching approach, or good old common sense.

Disabling Professions

I thought that Illich was spot on with some of his analysis and a million miles wide of the mark with the rest! His comments about the growth of the nanny state interfering with every aspect of our lives rang very true however some of what he said about the medical profession "ill become illnesses to be treated by doctors and people lost their will and ability to cope with indisoposition, or even discomfort" led me to wonder whether this man ever had a day's sickness in his life. How much "discomfort" would he endure before putting his total distrust of professionals aside. In this vein he goes on to talk about people's extensive visits to medical practioners. Prior to such availability people endured tremendous physical suffering and most lived to about the age of 40 if they were lucky.

I agreed with what he said about consumerism and the fact that people buy so much "stuff" they just don't need, and that doesn't satisfy them however I'm not sure this really does arise from professionals telling them what to buy, but rather quite simply from the fact that the majority of the population have extra cash to buy more than basic food, shelter and clothing.

Illich's comment about the control of antibiotics by professionals seems totally misguided - surely they are controlled for good reason otherwise we would be awash with even more super bugs resistant to antibiotics than we are already.

His comments about not getting the specification you want in new cars sounded a bit suspect too. Yes the specifications you want may not instantaneously available but if you are willing to allow a bit of lead time, I thought you could get what you wanted. Having never felt strongly about getting leopard print seats though I could be wrong in this!

His comments about professionals going into kindergartens rang true to a certain extent however early intervention is really important with an awful lots of issues - speech therapy before a child becomes an object of fun, social workers for their safety.

His comments about homes becoming hygienic apartments again had a grain of truth. A friend once told me she knew someone who spent £40 a month on cleaning stuff (and her children had asthma) but again I think that was down to personal choice. Yes there's lots of adverts for cleaning products but I can't think many people go to such an extreme.

Illich seems to be incredibly cynical about professionals. Yes there are problems but let's not ignore that the vast majority behave responsibly and do their work well. I think that many of the problems that come about are due to professionals not being allowed to behave as professionals - that managerialism creeping in again. Only in recent years did doctors have to focus on budgeting, likewise headmasters. They are no longer able to make decisions based just on their professional judgement. We really have to be able to take that step back, review our own practice and not become routinsed in what we do.

The Crisis of Confidence in Professional knowledge

I found this an interesting read as in my last job I helped train students to become Chartered Accountants, and part of my role was looking at the competencies and work experience required to qualify as a CA.
I thought the article was quite negative and seems to ignore the fact that over 99% of transactions dealt with by "professionals" are successful. Of course there has to be a question over who is being referred to as a "professional" here. Certainly the traditional professions invest a huge amount of time and energy qualifying, and I believe rightly deserve to be rewarded for that effort.
That having been said there are of course problems in every profession as the media is very quick to report, the current banking crisis being a case in point. I can only really speak from an accountants perspective but I see many of these problems arising from three related issues:

1. as the article points out technological change - this has brought about a demand from clients for solutions to problems NOW. In CA offices 70 hour weeks are common place amongst many staff trying to meet client deadlines. The fatigue and stress resulting from this can affect professional judgement.

2. information overload - again just looking at a CAs position, year on year, the syllabus required to qualify expands and expands. Much of this is as a consequence of fairly academic research bringing about new legislative requirements. Whether these actually add value to the end product produced is questionable. it has become more and more difficult to be a "generalist" dealing with accountancy, tax and audit over the past 15 years or so, the volume of technical material to keep up to date with being fairly monstrous.

3. and thirdly good old fashioned greed. I think this relates to the mangerial/professional conflict that Grant mentioned in the lecture. In accountancy firms partners are also extremely cost conscious leading to cuts in budgeted time to complete work. This has definitely led to corners being cut in some instances. In addition to this there is always the fear of losing a big client, along with all the fee income associated with it. Again this can impact on the professional's independence to make judgements, and disagree with the client when necessary.

In recognition of these points ethics has assumed a much more important part of the ICAS syllabus in recent years. There has always been a comprehensive ethics handbook, but students now receive ethics lectures where attendance is compulsory (the only part of the teaching where this is the case) and they must prepare a case study on ethics. This emphasis should hopefully help result in the next generation of accountants being more robust and aware of when their professional judgement is being compromised.

I'm not sure where all this leaves careers guidance. I think there is certainly a case to develop a much more in depth framework of ethical guidelines to follows. As we saw in Pete's PORG lessons there are definitely situations we could find ourselves in where its difficult to know what's the right course of action to take. The managerial/professional conflict definitely exists in practice too within careers guidance, and again its important to know when your professional judgement is being compromised.

Welcome

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