What do people think of Careers Advisors?

[Somethingkindaoooo]

So, for people who work in education... what are your thoughts?
I work in a few places atm, so secondary, college level, and adult work.
I generally love my job. I have many many years of experience, and I believe I do help people.
But dealing with academic staff is sometimes so challenging. I get spoken down to constantly. People don't seem to understand the role , so when I do my actual job, people often get a bit shirty.
So, I'm curious- do academic staff value careers advisors at all?

Anyone? 😂

Not sure if you're looking for opinions from only academic staff but as a parent of a current yr 13 pupil, the careers advice available to us has been no better than it was 25 years ago when I was a teenager (and it was pretty poor then).

For several years, ds has been clear he doesn't want to go to uni but there has been very little guidance from anyone at school as to what path might suit him as an alternative.

A disappointing experience for us.

Academic staff here- depends how you go about doing your job. I’ve worked with 2 one is my hero, listens to the child and gives specific advise to aid them, works hard with kids on applications and involves staff and parents in what is happenings. Second is the bain of my existence- rude to kids as ‘they know better’, pushes the more academic into uni and limits what the lower able want to do, talks down to staff as we ‘don’t know what we are talking about.
All in all it depends on the approach.

Very poor experiences as a student and as someone who works in education

@clutterfreeintraining what about an apprentice ? This year they have been reformed and are highly recognised now in the workplace as they are now under Ofqual guidance and have to meet a lot of criteria ... lots of options as well (finance, admin, teaching, manufacturing, customer care etc)

I only have a point of view as an end-user so to speak, but the careers adviser when I was at school was absolutely useless.

A few years ago, I used to tangentially work with a team of people whose background was careers guidance. The degree they ran had the worst employability scores in the whole university (and was a big red flag for the university leadership). The whole team seemed to have very little idea about career options beyond going on to PG training for a professional role in education or health and social care. It was really mind boggling.

Obviously I realise that employability is not the only or most important thing in higher education. But you’d think that career guidance counselors should be good at improving people’s job prospects and helping the to see a wider range of career possibilities. Apparently not. Of course, they may have ended up where they were because they hadn’t been very good at career guidance in the first place.

I manage careers advisers and used to be one myself. I'm in Scotland so much more money has been invested in CIAG here. My staff have great relationships with academic staff and get very positive feedback from students. It was crap when I was at school though.

The careers advice at my high-flying uni was hilariously bad.

Pretty much 'do you want to join a big four firm or do a law conversion? Neither? Oh perhaps you should google....'

I have never received good careers advice.

Academic here , the young people we see come with terrible advise and haven't had there options explained to them properly.

Really valuable if done properly but I don't think institutions have the budget to do it properly so you end up with a rushed and far less useful process.

I've yet to meet a useful one.

Unhelpful, useless, give bad advice.

Yet to find a useful one here either.

If you know what career you want but don't know what qualifications you need - just Google it.

If you don't know what career you want and have no idea where to start - then they can't really help you apart from telling you to read The Big Book Of Career Ideas. Which you could find yourself in the library anyway.

So I don't really know what kind of useful help they can actually offer.

Pretty pointless in the internet age. And unchanged in the 30 years between me getting ‘advice’ and my children getting advice.

It's hit and miss. It seems you issue is less your profession than how others view you and it's your confidence and self-esteem you have to boost. If you know whatever you're bringing to the table is good then who cares about a few teachers looking down their noses at you.

Outdated in my experience. Careers as they were are a thing of the past.

I think it’s a pretty redundant job tbh. There’s nothing they can do that anyone else can’t.

Depends - my DD went to her appointment in her y10. The person heard ADD and dyscalculia and offered "forget it".
Luckily she did'nt listen and is now at uni.

I think it could be useful to have a 1:1 about careers and what might suit and then a follow to see what the pupil has come up with. Then drilling down into qualifications, options and work/university might be how discussions go forward. If none of that happens, it will be the least fortunate in society that suffer and don’t get what they need. As ever.

It's so underfunded. Welsh government have tried to revive proper careers advice her and the ones I have dealt with here are very good. It's not a political priority for most and it should be because it could be a valuable tool in improving social mobility.

Oh and, for the most part, academic staff look down on all professional services staff so don't take it personally.

It’s also a problem in that it’s a service schools purchase. It’s seen as an option. When it was provided by the LA, and the LA had the budget the Careers Service was professional and mainly staffed by former teachers. Not that I think that was always best but they had great links with schools and were respected. It doesn’t seem to have the same level of professionalism now.

As I said, in Scotland it's a fully funded all age service. We're all graduates with a pg qualification, although we're also developing a work based learning qualification.
It's not about providing information, although up to date labour market information is invaluable, and I'd add that the internet also contains a lot of nonsense.

A lot of it is about supporting young people and adults to develop career management skills and it's not a one and done interaction. But then, I'm biased!

My dc went to 3 different schools and all were given very poor career advice. My son in particular was advised to do a subject that we later discovered was not accepted at degree level. My own career guidance teacher was rubbish. That was nearly 40 years ago and i still remember the crap (and wrong) advice she gave me. I think in general most people have a poor opinion of them tbh.