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?

Very bad rep. I had a physical issue which was effecting my work, I went to a careers advisor in a job cenre, mostly to look for alternative work as it was hard doing what I was doing, they really weren,t helpful at all. Gave absolutely no suggestions. (I am nw working in my original line of work.)

Dreadful when I was at school (70s), totally incompetent, could not have been worse. My DC's experience was that they were useful but not actually harmful.

*useless !

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

I’m not sure this is actually true.

In any case, the useless career guidance people I had to deal with were all academic staff. And absolutely adamant that they were doing exactly the right thing despite their students finding their employment prospects no better (or sometimes worse) than if they hadn’t bothered with the degree.

I was told by a uni careers advisor 'not to expect too much and that I wouldn't get on with people as I'm left handed' Was also told my draft Masters application gave them the 'creeps'.

I was going through a really difficult time and was crushed.
I

Me again, sorry. Staff in job centres aren't careers advisers. They're not qualified to that level. CAs have big issues about relating advice to benefits as it's a big part of our ethical standards to be non-judgemental and non-directional, which would never work with sanctions etc.

It doesnt help that jc staff are called wotk coaches 😂

Seriously no toast? That is awful, as a fellow left-hander! Though DH's sister, who was born in 1986, was forced to write with her right hand!

I think it's one of those jobs where it really matters how good you are, how much training you have been given, how you perceive your role, how flexible and open to changing circumstances you are, how able you are to relate and adapt to the needs of people who are very different to yourself. Believe the ones at our uni are genuinely respected and do a good job. Had bad experiences myself at school but that is a loooong time ago. The guidance ds had was very much about pushing the army as the career option for non-academic boys in the poorer demographic. Was not impressed.

I am actually amazed to hear that career advisors still exist. The ones in my day (late 80s/early 90s) were completely useless and people I know who are a decade or so younger than me have said the same thing. I have various nieces/cousins etc who are age 18 - 21 who don't seem to have any experience of career advice and going by many threads on here (or similar on local Facebook groups) the current set of teens are getting no advice either.

Not good

Didn't know they still existed. Neither of my dc got any careers advice at school.

Bit pointless really as dont have the specialist up to date knowledge that you can now google!

@ReadilyAvailable

Do you mean that there was a department of academics who were also qualified careers advisors?

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

I think that's the perception in a nutshell.
I know I do a good job. You can tell when you have shifted someone along. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but most times it does.

It is saddening that people have such bad experiences of careers guidance.
The system is completely broken though.
It is really difficult to find a full time careers job that pays enough to live on. Most advisors I know need to have more than one job. In the last few years, people have left the profession in droves.

Students are forced to have a guidance interview in secondary school. We can only work with they they ( students) present us with on the day. So if they're grumpy because they got pulled out of their favourite lesson, or they woke up that day and decided they want to be a cowboy or a youtube star, that's what we have to work with on the day. And we normally only get one shot at it.

Well, it was a team of career advisors turned academics within a department, @KillerofMen. I think many of that team might still be there.

It’s actually one of the few services that’s been de-professionalised. It used to be well paid in my LA. Certainly on a par with teachers and very well paid at leadership level. I think people can find info but plenty don’t bother and take the wrong A levels for the course they want. Or go to university when an apprenticeship would have been better or even take the wrong degree for the career they want.

Were they better academics than they were career advisors?

De-professionalised is the right word for sure @bubblesbuddy

No @KillerofMen. They were not. 😆 They thought they were brilliant though.

Several of them used to go to meetings outside their team and boast about the amazing employability classes they’d built into their degree. And offer to advise other programmes to emulate them - internally and externally.

I (and others) would be sitting there thinking: but your programme is red listed for employability. The graduate outcomes from it are shocking. Maybe you should be taking advice from literally anyone else in the university (who’re all doing a better job of it) about how to make your students more employable.

Their department leadership seemed to just accept that it wasn’t their approach that was the problem though. I could never work out why.

@Somethingkindaoooo How do you become a careers adviser? How do you learn about careers if you've never done them? That's not a sarky question btw!

I'm afraid my experience echos many of those above. She was (genuinely!) called Mrs Pamphlett and I was handed some leaflets and told I didn't need physics a-level to do an engineering degree. Not true if you're on target to attend a red brick uni! She also had very strange ideas (even to me at 16) about what a career in engineering would involve. I appreciate it's hard to get the measure of a student in 30 mins though.

And this was obviously years ago now, my kids aren't old enough to experienced any current careers advice.

How do you become a careers adviser? How do you learn about careers if you've never done them? That's not a sarky question btw!

I'm the first to put my hand up to say I don't have experience in every career. I don't pretend to, and I don't want to. Nobody can!

What I can do is have discussions with people about what they enjoy, to think about what goals they may have, what skills they want to develop.
I want people to gain as much information as they can, so they can make a decision that is right for them at the time.
I hope I help people identify their strengths, and find ways through any perceived barriers.
Googling doesn't always give you all the info. I may not know what it's like to be a chemist ( but to be fair, lots of chemistry teachers have never worked in industry either). But I do know how to show people information and pathways they hadn't known about before.

I think good careers guidance is about helping people feel confident about the next step. It isn't about making a30 year plan.

Totally agree @Somethingkindaoooo , but as long as people think it's about googling careers, they will never see the need.

I think the traditional careers guidance model of a one-off interview with no prior relationship is pretty much an impossible task. As a teacher I see pupils roll their eyes when the phone call comes asking them to go to the careers office for their appointment, and I have had some ask me to pretend that we are doing a vital test and I cannot release them from the lesson.

The careers service at my university was good primarily because the staff were custodians of a huge database of alumni who had voluntarily signed up after graduating, meaning that in almost every sector there was someone who was happy to be contacted by current students for specific advice. The careers advisers themselves followed a coaching model for their sessions.

The best practice I've seen in schools is similar, with careers staff facilitating events with employers and FE providers, interview practice days, etc.

All 6 of my tribe were given the same advice at school by the careers teacher- go to Uni, life will be awful for you if you dont. Thank God the didnt listen. One son bought his house by the age of 21, 50% cash, He could never have done that if he went to Uni. All the rest are well on their way.

At the last place, they had one who was a teacher wanting part time hours, multilingual, absolutely brilliant at finding placements, the best courses and fantastic employers for apprenticeships. She worked three days a week and kids could go and see her anytime for advice on jobs, careers, options, legal matters - she even helped parents with benefits issues.

New management came in. They clearly saw her a lowly admin, so instructed her to do such useful things as covering photocopier boxes and files with coloured paper so it 'looked more professional' and to put things up on noticeboards in the week leading up to work experience and informed her that, as a member of support staff, she should be part of the Reception Rota during work experience 'as it's not as if the children are in' and the other staff can do the visits.

Once they told her that her job was to tell them to find their own placements, they could write their CVs in English lessons (oh God, they were shit) and, by the way, why was she not getting at least ten children into Oxbridge every single year (because two Bs and a C isn't good enough?), she decided to retire early.