Category: Education & Employability
October 9th, 2013 by matthias
… is causing quite a stir. I’m currently just taking in the news as it’s coming in. If you want a summary on the coverage as I’m reading it, you can follow my bit.ly bundle on it, where I add the stories and write a comment or two.
The best article so far is in my humble opinion the one by Stefan Collini, who puts a sociological perspective to it, far from the sensationalist ‘told you so’ by what I perceive as the conservative press.
There’s more to come, and I’ll withhold judgement until I’ve got more info.
Click here for the coverage (this link will get updated over the next few days, so please come again).
Posted in Education & Employability Tagged with: #cipdl2w, OECD, skills
October 4th, 2013 by matthias
This week, I participated in a placement event, organised by Cogent, the sector skills council for sciences. They asked me to moderate a panel discussion, which I happily did. But the part where I was shutting up and listening was (us usual) the one where I learnt the most. The life sciences sector employs about 150k people in the UK, and although universities churn out 30k qualified graduates per year (according to latest DLHE figures), only about 2k actually start working in their field of study. This leads to two things: companies having trouble finding candidates, and an aging workforce.
It should come to no surprise that placements are being seen as an excellent way to improve relationships between education and the industry, right along the lines of the Wilson review, which recognised their importance. And with some well deserved government funding, Cogent has launched a placements service (www.cogent-placements.com), helping to actively place students – and as part of that they are also launching a charm offensive trying to improve links between higher education providers and employers. Which is where the event fitted in.
It was well attended by more than 20 universities who run specialist courses, and we were situated in a lovely (albeit it hot) room at Nottingham Trent University (of which I’m proud to say – as it’s chair – that they are a PlaceNet member). So I saw some known faces, and met many new placement professionals, academics and employability specialists. Industry knowledge was represented by Cogent themselves, as well as an excellent industry speaker (Anthony Brown from CellCentric) from who showed not only great knowledge about what universities offer, but also a strong commitment to placements in general.
It would be foolish of me to attempt to summarise the whole discussion – have a look under #livescienceplacements on Twitter for details – there are a number of take home points that stuck with me:
The first one was really about the drivers within the industry that affect placements in this specific industry. Budgets are tight, and they affect the amount of resource which can be spent on R&D – which is of course critical in this industry. There has always been an extremely high staff turnover in the industry, which has driven the development of cross-company networks, and the creation of new ideas. Now this may sound useful from a placement perspective (students are a highly flexible, cheap resource), but it may create barriers, as HR departments (who sometimes don’t fully understand the specific skills needs of their labs) can become risk averse or just become ineffective under the strain. And it is of course a (business) risk to take on placement students, who will need more supervision (at first). However, those who do, pretty much invariably appreciate the input of fresh ideas (and questions) being brought into what is a sector which is dependent on curiosity and innovation. The question was raised who will need to make sure placement students have the necessary lab skills to ensure quality and safety standards (I can’t obviously resist from also bringing up the possible creation of a zombie virus in this context) – and some universities prepare their students specifically for this in advance.
But what really struck me was that while there was a lot of focus on the scientific aspects of student placements in life sciences, the panel discussion focused on the classic issues which surround pretty much every discussion about employability. I promise, I didn’t steer this – the panel was put together at the spot by audience participation and the questions they raised (pretty much the same format I used last year at the NUS zones conference) – you ask questions, you move on to the panel. The main issues raised were about balancing the interests of the four stakeholders involved: employers, who seek a flexible, qualified and cost effective resource; students often lacking the confidence and resilience needed to go through gruelling recruitment processes; academic departments who like the idea of industry links, but who sceptical of the employability agenda; and placements staff who feel underrepresented and who are generally often under resourced. Time and again, in these circumstances, the need for strategic clarity and institutional leadership in higher education seems to the deciding factor: if there is more than nominal buy in on the top level of an institution, coordination between academic and professional services, and addressing the classic barriers students face to take on placements (confidence, communicating their skills, and lack of mobility – often in response to economic factors).
All in all, I thought it was a very successful day – and it’s good to see that there is momentum behind fostering placements – from which all involved stakeholders benefit from.
Posted in Education & Employability Tagged with: employability, higher education, placements, zombie virus
September 10th, 2013 by matthias
With the new academic year coming up, we’ve spent a lot of time updating and tweaking our service to improve it for our clients. Fortunately, my university is not driven by the need to cut, so the feeling is one of improvement, not one of the bit by bit amputations many other services have to go through. Like career support in schools. To cut it short, schools have ‘gained’ the ‘freedom’ and the responsibility to find independent providers to cover their obligation to offer careers advice to students. At the same time, council based services like Connexions have been mostly cut to shreds. The national careers service is supposed to jump into the breach and give – mostly telephone, or online-based – support. So a young person needing advice, but not falling under a special needs provision, may never meet a qualified careers advisor face to face, well until they’ve joint a university where advice and guidance are much more coherent. Let’s just hope they get their study choice right. It depends on the financial situation of their school, and the level of commitment and qualification of staff involved. I remember when this happened, and how painful the transition was. Now I know that careers advice in schools never came with plentiful endorsement, but withdrawing it effectively strikes me as foolish. And so does Ofsted, the CBI and the CIPD.
To draw a bit of a parallel (and as it’s one, it’s going to be obviously a bit flawed), let’s just mull this simple sentence for a moment:
Getting careers education from a well developed online portal with some phone support sounds in principle reasonable. It will affect young people in big decisions in their life, and may influence their future significantly.
You’re still with me? Right, now replace the term ‘careers eduction’ in the first sentence of this paragraph with the word ‘sex education’, and mull again how reasonable this still feels. If so – we’re fine. If not, then read on.
This is nothing I’ve learnt recently – it was annoying when it was brought in, and it remains a frustration for the profession – and it’s unknowing victims. What is new to me is how flawed such a service – which is basically a cut price version of something that may have been flawed, but was overall just better – can affect the client: I’ve been always a big fan of NHS Direct – a phone based triage service for GPs and hospitals aiming to reduce the number of people who go to A&E unnecessarily, with a strong backbone of nurses who were able to give solid and credible advice. I have used it for myself and others – and have never been disappointed. Staff always were competent and reassuring.
Recenty, the service is being replaced by NHS 111, which hopes to provide the same service, only cheaper. The triaging is done by call centre operatives, and results have been mostly negative. Why? Because the service has been de-skilled (made cheaper), and the effect has been an actual increase of A&E referrals in some areas. I gave them a call on a minor matter (I wasn’t even sure whether I needed to go to the GP), and my experience was substantially weaker than NHS Direct before: It was like calling my phone provider, only worse. It was clear that the operator had no medical training, and read from a script. It may have been a well written script, but I couldn’t assess that as I had concentrate strongly to deal with the many mispronunciations that made the read out medical advice harder to follow. It was clear that the operator didn’t give advice, but worked off a call, void of any professional authority. It’s probably the equivalent of the apocryphal careers advisor who runs you through an assessment tool and then tells you to become a prison officer, or a research chemist, or a gardener in one session.
To summarise: The presumed need to make cuts has led to a de-skilling of the people involved, which has impacted upon the usefulness of the service. And this is a sobering experience.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability
August 21st, 2013 by matthias
It’s just like magic – even though I’m on holiday, I’m posting on my work blog.
Posted in Education & Employability, Reblogged
July 24th, 2013 by matthias
My colleague @julianchilds forwarded me an article by Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK, in the Spectator (normally not part of my news diet). @rorysutherland made an interesting point – he observed that pressure to succeed in university had led to a culture of drone-like graduates, all driven by the so-called ‘top’ recruiters’ demanding first or upper second class degrees. He stated that there is no evidence that what makes you a great student turns you into a great employee, and therefore thought it would be worthwhile to improve his chances of getting to real talent by looking where none of his peers seem to be looking – the lower seconds and thirds churned out by universities every year, not tainted by conformity and overfishing by large recruiters. In an entertaining way, he describes how he would want to subvert HR’s usual hiring practises by offering references and a fast career track to stoners.
I liked the article a lot (it aligns with my sense of humour, and my disregard for established conventions) – although I don’t really align with his general praise of the economist Hayek (albeit mostly due to lack of understanding on my part), and not really understanding game theory – and it seems to go down a storm with my Twitter followers. And rightly so, as it calls the bluff created by education and recruiters, namely that being told what to learn in advance gives you a) better knowledge, and b) makes you more employable. I didn’t learn this anew, but his quote of Hayek is spot on: ‘Often that is treated as important which happens to be accessible to measurement.’ (see my re-blogged post on performance related pay).
So, what have I learnt? Let’s not even look at the socially exclusive tendency to openly only go for ‘top’ universities – this is a measure to restrict the graduate pool to a manageable number – nothing more, nothing less. I’m not aware of employers actually complaining about the quality of students as students – so his central premise is in my humble opinion a valid one: just being best in class does not make you a good employee. It shows many valuable traits, but the requirements of education and the workplace differ wildly – and from that follows that the degree classification alone is a bad predictor of success as an employee. In fact, in our daily practice at work, we often see high achievers struggle with adapting from a student to a worker identity – and those struggling academically shine in the workplace – especially when given the chance to do a sandwich placement. So I align with Sutherland’s view, in fact I greet it and encourage students to challenge convention – and be proud of their achievements, yes, even if that’s ‘only’ a 2.2 or a third.
PS: This post kind of links to an earlier one on challenging conventions – The power of giving up. Have a look.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability, Reblogged Tagged with: challenging conventions, degree classifications, employers, graduates, higher education
July 22nd, 2013 by matthias
This is what I wrote for work about using Twitter for job hunting.
Posted in Education & Employability, Social Media
July 8th, 2013 by matthias
This is my final update of my last post, about an employability fair organised by the local council, where I volunteered this weekend.
I didn’t get an opportunity to write my final update at the fair, as it got increasingly busy towards lunchtime, and I started helping with channeling people in (and yes, I actually also gave a social media clinic – albeit to another provider). There are a few patterns that made me think: The first one was that about two thirds of people coming into the fair were parents, step-parents, aunts or uncles, looking out for opportunities for their young charges. Sometimes with them, sometimes without them. The other pattern was that many of them came clearly not the middle-class, or upper class background that I’m used to from higher education. Which made me both hopeful and sad. I made me sad, because it became clear that measures taken to support youth employability are problem-centered, rather than developmental – what I mean by that is that young people’s employability is something that is applied to solve a problem carried by young people (such as real uncertainty about their future), rather than an opportunity to grow and develop young people as a chance to improve society by helping young people find their way. I know this may sound naive – but again, my experience is mostly in higher education where that anxiety about the future seems just less prevalent. Yes, I have also worked with many first tertiary education engagers, and bluntly just (economically) poor students – but this was another level of … desperation. I won’t raise class and the barriers to attainment as an issue just yet, but may do so in the future. I just want to point to the emotional impact it made on me, and how that impacts on my thoughts. But there was hope – and that showed with every person who made their way into the fair, especially the parent generation. They clearly knew that education and skills (on whatever level) are the key to attainment and economical improvement (I’m not saying prosperity, as I think the stumbling blocks put in their way are daunting) – and they came to make their children’s lives better. There has been a lot of public maligning of this strata of society, and a blame culture has emerged, which combines attitudes to class with fear of of youths – at the fair, organised by the local council, with local education, training, volunteering and job providers, that attitude was absent. And I can’t thank Mel enough for showing commitment and drive to organise this.
What I’ve learnt – even more than I already knew – is that we (society, media, elected officials, etc.) don’t only need a change of policy, but also a change of attitude. This is nothing young people have to do to for us – this is what we need to do for them.
Posted in Education & Employability, Talks
July 6th, 2013 by matthias
Today I am at a local employability fair, organised by our local council. I volunteered, after finding out about it in a newsletter. So I called them up, and offered giving advice for young job seekers on how to – and how not to – use social media in their job hunt.
As I don’t like handing out paper handouts, I’ve decided to use my blog (and Twitter) as a way to summarise my hints and tips – and comment on any results. I’ll be using the hashtag #cipdl2w for this, as I’m supporting the CIPD’s Learning to Work initiative – and this day is spent with our key stakeholder group – those young people…
I will update the blog throughout the day, from about 10.30 t0 13.30 (hoping someone will actually ask me any questions…)
Update 11:25: Things are going slow, as it’s sunny and shoppers are passing us by rushing their Saturday shopping. So I took to the opportunity to have a chat with the stand next to me, where youth work apprentice Katie is representing www.action4youth.org, an organisation that helps young people realise their potential by providing Summer activities, such as the National Citizen Service, and local community projects. Katie is on a one-year apprenticeship after finishing school. We talked about the challenges of choosing not to go to university, but to pursue what is clearly a professional vocation – helping young people learn new skills and gaining qualifications. Having worked with HE students all of my professional life, it was both refreshing and very interesting to see the world of work in a new light. With the current generation of young people having been given the impression that the only way to professional success is higher education, I found Katie’s perspective, and choice not only interesting, but also admirable – by not choosing the path tread by virtually everyone else, but to focus on what is important to her. And as my lesson for today so far, it’s nice to have a reminder what’s actually really important in the world of career decision making – and that is to do what you believe in.
Update 11:50: Interview with the organiser of today’s fair
Mel, who works for the local council, has organised this fair, because she wants to do something about youth unemployment, bringing together local partners and providers. It’s part of the local child poverty strategy – and Mel has organised similar events before, and will do so again. The fair makes excellent use of the footfall in a busy shopping mall, trying to access young people ‘hanging about town’ on a sunny Saturday. The aim is to get young people registering with the national apprenticeship service (www.apprenticeships.org.uk), sign up for workshops and training. And it’s great to see Mel at work, helping – often parents, thinking of their children – bridge that chasm between school, and the world of work. I join her on the now busy front desk, where requests from all demographics of the local community are coming in. What I really like about her and the fair she has organised, is the obvious enthusiasm and genuine passion Mel shows for this endeavour. What I’ve learnt from this is, is that opportunities to engage with – and help – the employability agenda are sometimes just around the corner.
For the final update, from the morning after go here.
Posted in Education & Employability, Social Media Tagged with: CIPD, employability, Learning to work, social media, young people
June 27th, 2013 by matthias
Last week, I spoke at an event that seeks answers to the question of how to produce ‘better graduates’. Anyone reading this blog will know that I’m fairly bullish about our young people collectively – graduates included. So to say it right away – I don’t think our graduates have to become ‘better’. No – this is not the end of my post – let me clarify my stance a bit: If you’re to believe the NUS, then 80% of students these days are in higher education to improve their employment chances. I’ve never been sure if this should be higher education’s raison d’etre, but there we go – it is now. And if you believe pretty much every university’s marketing materials, then everyone’s doing a great job on that front. Employers are in on it as well – they’re all worried that they’re getting the right talent – out of an endless stream of candidates. So where’s the problem? I’ve taken part in at least four debates on this topic in the last year – and while there’s plenty of willingness to help, often there’s also a cluelessness about how to help. My take on it is that every one lacks one thing in this conundrum: employers lack trust in what young people have to offer – the public view of them is far too negative (thanks, Daily Mail, et. al.) – and employers are part of the public. This view is so embedded in the public consciousness that even amongst employers who are trying to do something about it (I don’t tire of pointing out the excellent work by the CIPD on dispelling negative myths about young people). Universities often lack a true commitment to their graduate’s employability – this is not their fault, they are just being incentivised by the wrong things: destinations and (even more ridiculously) salary data after six months makes them measure employment rather than employability (following my recent discussion on this, professionalism actually seems a much more useful term) – and fosters a short termism that changes our graduates … well … short. No wonder our graduates lack the final piece in the puzzle – confidence. And how are they supposed to feel confident – they know they are being regarded with mistrust, in their abilities, and their alleged Mickey Mouse degrees. What have I learnt from this? I don’t think we need better graduates – we need a better attitude towards them. They are the result of the education system we – the current deciders – have created – let’s not hold it against them. So what I’ve learnt recently (see what I did there?) is that we need to give them a break – what makes better graduates, is a change in the way we view them. Oh, and yeah, they need to learn languages – but that’s another post.
Posted in Education & Employability
June 3rd, 2013 by matthias
When I recently had a chat with a (German) 15 year old, he complained that the IT instruction at school was woefully outdated – all they learnt was Java programming. How’s that going to be useful, he asked? I nodded politely, and tried not to look outdated too myself. One of the most regular statements I hear about graduates, and ‘young people’ in general, is that they don’t have the most basic professional skills – or pretty much any skills at all. Following the stereotype, they are all constantly late (if they show up at all), half-literate due to using text speak, facebooking their future away by posting insensitive comments or inappropriate selfies. Somehow their Java programming skills must disappear into the same black hole my Latin did. Now, whoever reads this blog will know that I have a much more positive view of ‘young people’ than that – and it’s backed up by the CIPD’s excellent research on the topic. Let’s take attitude aside – of course they have skills gaps (it’s probably more about app programming than Java). It’s their job to have skills gaps. The pursuit of knowledge and skill is nurtured by recognizing these, and addressing them. Not via rote learning, Michael Gove style though. I’ve always reacted very badly to this approach (here you call it ‘Victorian’, where I grew up it’s the ‘Nuremberg Funnel’), and can understand any teenager well (and let’s face it, our first years in higher education are teenagers), who tries to subvert it by playing the system, or pushing back. But again – this is not about attitude. So back to skills and knowledge: @vonprond wrote previously in his excellent blog about the fact that you need a critical mass of knowledge in order to understand a topic, and make meaningful judgements about it. I agree, but I want to make clear that classic knowledge (and I consider being proficient in at least one other language than your own one of them) doesn’t have to be taught in a classic way (see above). In learning, as in life in general IMHO, form should always follow function: the how you do something should always be governed by the what you do. Literacy for example is a lot more than just reading and writing on paper – it encapsulates the ability to produce and interpret content; and let’s face it, this will mostly be digital now. To bring it back to ‘young people’ as mentioned above: their natural medium is to use their thumbs and a keyboard to bring their ideas to the fore – let’s not limit them by making them do something they rarely will ever have to do in the workplace (like hand-writing on paper), but help them learning how to produce good content. It might not turn text speak to poetry, but it might help ensure that what is written is understandable and effective. ‘Getting the basics right’ doesn’t mean taking their tools away, and then lambasting them for failing – I think it’s more about ‘us’ (the not so young people collectively) having a gap of understanding of what counts in the future workplace (often combined with a healthy fear of technology). The texting youths we complain about are our (future) customers, they will run the place (and miraculously to the same standard as we do now), and they will also be our carers – so let’s make sure we help them understand our world, and learn with them how it is shaped by technology. And finally, let me just bust a couple of myths about attitude and professional behaviours: people in the workplace now are late for meetings (if they show up – it’s academia, you can never be sure), typos abound in emails (handwritten notes are illegible), and they play with their smart phones in meetings. But overall, we’re still doing a decent job, don’t we?
Posted in Education & Employability Tagged with: digital literacy, professionalism, skills