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?

For both of my children, the careers advisors at school, college, HE college and university gave generic, irrelevant advice that was little or no use to either of them.
In several cases, it was literally a tick-box exercise that ended with suggestions probably generated by an algorithm. Such as ‘Hat Designer’

I'm in my late twenties, spoke to several throughout school and university (undergrad and postgrad). The first one was quite useful, I liked science but didn't want to work in a lab, got a few suggestions.
All the others I saw over the next decade gave me almost exactly the same suggestions. I knew I wanted to do something analytical, not working with lots of customers/clients, etc etc.. but never got any suggestions that weren't completely obvious to anyone who knew a bit about the world and how it worked. No suggestions of all the 'hidden' scientific roles that aren't obvious if you aren't already knowledgable about the industry.

Tbh, I've always slightly felt like anyone who is a careers advisor is not someone that can actually give me useful careers advice

@Rivergreen are you an engineer? If not, what do you do?

I had in school careers advice when I was 15. I was one of 7 people at my school studying triple/separate sciences and we were all told to be engineers. No further information about being an engineer was given.

@KillerofMen I am actually, although not as a result of careers advice!

I wanted to be a chemist of some description, but then at as level found out about materials engineering (which, in its fundamental state, is a mix of the bits I liked in chemistry with a practical use outside the lab). So I studied that at uni and have based my career around it ever since.

My careers advisor didn't even know what materials engineering was! But it's an area with a huge shortage of skills in the UK and is in demand in pretty much any industry. So much so, I got a PhD level job with just my undergraduate degree.

In general actually, the lack of understanding about engineering in the UK really annoys me. Even more so when the people who should know don't!

This is depressing to read. I don't work at a university, so I can't comment.
I have worked with adults. There have been times I've felt out of my depth, but I'm pretty upfront about it. If I don't know, then normally I can point them in the direction of someone who would know.
How sad that so many people have had such poor perceptions/ experience.

That's great @Rivergreen - sounds really interesting. I haven't heard of materials engineering, will have a Google and learn more.

Our careers advisor at school was awful. We all had to have an appointment with her in Year 11 in groups according to what you wanted to do, and everyone seemed to come out of it saying that she just said you couldn't do what you want to do. At the time I was thinking about doing Medicine, and she said "You'll need a string of A*s, science A levels and weeks of work experience, and there are lots of people competing for it, so the chances are slim to none, basically" and that we should do something else. She didn't know any of us or our grades or anything at all (she served several schools in the area), and for all she knew everyone there was a straight A student who had already done some relevant work experience. Thankfully, no one listened to her and a fair few people from our sixth form did get into uni to study Medicine (including some who were in the same meeting as me). I decided that it wasn't for me for reasons totally unrelated to her, but that "slim to none, basically" quote has always got to me, and it really makes me angry that she could have put people off aiming high. I know she needed to make us aware that it would be tough, but the chances were not none

It sounds like you are genuinely helping people though @Somethingkindaoooo and are doing a much better job than my careers advisor!

I think one of the big problems for careers advisers in schools (if the schools buy in the service and don’t just rely on a teacher) is that the routes into careers are wide and have grown whilst at the same time routes through just getting a job are less. Therefore they need to know more about careers and routes and what’s required. It’s probably impossible.

I think it’s better for a school to try and break groups of DC down into interests and have speakers in or visit universities/ providers of training that are relevant.

The advice at my uni was hit and miss. They were good at help with CVs, but couldn't see outside of a very limited box of careers. You were either teaching, healthcare, or administrative it seemed. There seemed to be a massive push on just doing a random PG course too and very little thought to actual career building instead of just job hunting if that makes sense?

I’m not academic staff, but I guess people are coloured by their own experiences at school or university. At school they didn’t seem interested in anyone who was going to university, they just helped to look in the UCAS book to see what grades you needed. At university I felt embarrassed when I made an appointment because I genuinely didn’t know what I wanted to do. They told me to come back when I’d thought about what sort of things I’d like to do. I never went back (and I still don’t know).

Absolutely hilariously bad ... my careers advice was sexist and set low expectations but my 26 year olds is laughable .She completed questionnaire and was encouraged to be

1. A horse whisperer
2. A farrier

My daughter has never been on a horse 🤣🤣🤣🌈

It's interesting ready about engineering. I know several people who work in engineering - but I have very little clue what their jobs actually involve and what they actually 'do'. Schools are forever talking to teens about 'stem' subjects and how good it would be to get a job/career in a 'stem' industry. But they rarely say what those jobs might actually be.

'reading about engineering' I meant to say.

I actually remember doing a quiz thing at school that I thing was called a 'jig' test (I assume jig stood for something). Lots of yes/no/maybe questions and your perfect career would be revealed. Unfortunately my school failed to give us the results. So who knows what I was destined for.

I did a physics degree and the careers advice was hilariously bad. They just didn't know what to do with us and spent three seminars discussing either medical sciences or the chemical industry. They seemed to have put us in the "science" box and as the science with the smallest number of students hadn't bothered to do any research into likely roles out of a physics degree. Most of my fellow graduates work in the finance and data analytics areas now. I hope it's improved in recent years.

bookmum08: there are many branches of engineering and many people are termed engineers even though they mend your washing machine. If you want to know about professional engineering then you can read up about the different strands on the website
www.engc.org.uk. It covers everything you could want to know!

I do wonder though, when students do a degree, what do THEY expect to do with it? They must have some idea, or decide further work in that field isn’t for them because they have their eyes on something else. My DD did MFL but knew fairly quickly she wanted to be a barrister. MFL is fine for that but she didn’t need a careers service to tell her what to do. She decided for herself.

Bubbles I probably could research into engineering and find out more. It's just one of those vague job description phrases that I have had people say to the "what job do you do?" questions. "I work in engineering". It could mean anything to be honest. I also have know people whose answers to 'what job do you do' are just as vague - "I work for a charity/I'm a project manager/I'm a research analysist"

When I was at school mid 90s, the careers advice consisted of filling in a questionnaire to reveal your 'ideal job' - mine came out as a fish monger. There was no guidance beyond that.

I would like to think things have moved on since then

Careers advice when I was at school was run by the Geography teacher and you had one 1:1 with her for 10 minutes.
Her careers advice consisted of University if you were really bright or Teacher training/nursing school for those in the middle or Secretarial college for those trailing at the bottom. Or shop work.

Dds school was a specialist school and academic lessons were well down the list of importance. Absolutely no careers advice.

Ds was HE and I went through lists and lists of jobs and careers. From when he was about 13/14. He did endless careers tests and we found Ds his perfect career.

He managed to get into the college’s level 2 course and came top of the class with perfect and near perfect scores in all his tests and assessments.

Problem is they changed the entry qualifications into level 3 so no one who passed level 2 first time including Ds was able to continue.

Just wish everything wasn’t so academic.

I had terrible careers advice. Always wanted to be a teacher. Completed the jigcal questionnaire and it said teacher. Had a meeting with the careers advisor who basically told me I wasn't clever enough to be a teacher, and so sent me to go and visit a bank to become a cashier on the yts scheme, 30 years later, I'm a teacher! I have taught since I was 21 and am currently working towards my doctorate.

My daughter has recently had her careers appointment and that was equally shocking. She was in two minds about either being a doctor or a physiotherapist. At her appointment, they were looking at work experience placements and her careers advisor said the hospital wouldn't take her, and so she should go and work in an OAP home. Except the hospital does take GCSE placements if you apply direct. Unfortunately my DD didn't get a place, but her friend did. So that advice was total bollocks too. Not had good advice here either I'm afraid.

"Welsh government have tried to revive proper careers advice her and the ones I have dealt with here are very good."

Careers Wales told me to move to England. Seriously.

DD's current school has a fantastic careers advisor. Any student can make an appointment and they will advise around subject selection, entry requirements etc. They provide a "careers update" in the weekly newsletter and make students aware of things like open days, scholarships and closing dates. Her previous school was shocking, the only option was to pay for a session with an external provider (despite being a fee paying school). She had some family tie to the school and was absolutely hopeless.

The problem is you can pick your career and be doing the course or actually be qualified and working in the career of your dreams then they change the goal posts

Your course progression stops or you are made redundant because suddenly you have to have a certain qualification that no one told you, you needed before starting.