The author of this article is Nicole Poff, MA, a Career Services Specialist and Online Associate Faculty member at Ashford University San Diego, California. As a Career Services Specialist, Nicole works collaboratively across the university to embed career service components into the classroom

At a recent conference, a fellow attendee complained: “Our students are so over-programmed with university initiatives that our department can’t compete for attention.”

Another attendee responded, “Well, you should consider yourself lucky – we have such a small department that our calendars are completely booked with student appointments, so we have no time to create programming.” Over the next hour, counsellors from across the country shared their career services dilemmas. One small complaint created a domino effect of career counsellors revealing their strongest pain points. Beyond just over-programming and a small department, some of the most common issues were: lack of student engagement, limited funds, low workshop attendance, unprepared students, and overzealous students who expect to become CEOs upon graduation.

Uncertain about how my peers would respond, I anxiously raised my hand and said: “We don’t have a huge budget; we have a pretty small team in comparison to our massive student and alumni population; our engagement is frequently subpar, but we have found that integrating career components into existing courses is working very well for us. In fact, we have successfully integrated career service components into a lot of our education courses, and we are seeing great success.” At that moment, I was met with both curiosity and resistance as other counsellors asked, “Would curriculum integration work for us? If so, how?” Read more

The following article is by Sean Coughlan BBC News education and family correspondent.

Young people in developing countries often have more aspirational career ambitions than boys in the UK, an international survey suggests.

While boys in the UK aimed to be footballers or YouTube stars, their counterparts in Uganda and Zambia wanted to be doctors or teachers.

The findings are from a survey of 20,000 children by the Education and Employers careers charity.

The results are to be presented to business leaders at Davos next week.

The study asked primary school children, aged seven to 11, in 20 countries to draw pictures of the jobs they wanted to have when they grew up.

Gender Roles

The careers charity said the results showed how much gender stereotypes were established from an early age.

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Work-integrated learning grows in popularity at universities across Canada –  an article by  University Affairs CanadaThe child of accountants, Vanessa Paulin-Savoie decided in high school that she didn’t want to follow in her parents’ footsteps. She loved reading and writing and did well in French, so she thought a translation degree at the Université de Moncton made sense.

Her parents weren’t so sure. They persuaded their daughter to apply to the university’s co-operative education program so that she could see what working in translation was really like. After her second year in the program, it took only one work placement for Ms. Paulin-Savoie to realize that translation “wasn’t for me.”

What she did love, though, was the marketing aspect of the work – writing communications materials in French and English for an Acadian heritage site near her home in Caraquet, New Brunswick. With her creative flair and an affinity for data, she found that marketing “uses all the things that I’m good at.” Now in her final year of a marketing degree, Ms. Paulin-Savoie is still in the co-op program.

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The following article is by Nancy Hoffman, Senior Advisor, Jobs for the Future and Bob Schwartz, Senior Research Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Over the last generation, it has become clear that something has gone awry in how the United States prepares its young people for life. In spite of millions of young people pursuing a university education, fewer than one in three young Americans successfully attain a bachelor’s degree, while millions of good middle-skills jobs go begging because of our failure to build programs to equip young people with the skills and credentials to fill them. In a climate of “university for all”, only 20% of young Americans enrol in career and technical education programs, the US version of Vocational Education and Training. This struck us as both a problem and an opportunity crying out for a public policy response. Read more

The following article by Scott Parkin FIEP | FRSA, Chairman, Institute of Employability Professionals (IEP), first appeared in The Skills, Employment & Health Journal.

As the only professional membership institute presenting frontline employability professionals, the IEP are committed to the development of the employability profession and its wider skills and advice sector. We strongly feel that the development of our profession should encompass a shared understanding about the skills, training and qualification standards/ frameworks which are accessible by all those responsible for helping people move toward and into work.

We are extremely pleased, therefore, to be at the forefront of the new Trailblazer initiative aimed at setting standards for the profession that will build better services, delivering better outcomes. The Employability Trailblazer has gained real momentum following the introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy and has provided an opportunity for us, as a sector, to consider and reflect on the day-to-day challenges faced by our frontline employees, now and in the future, and to ensure that wherever frontline staff are operating, they are given the same chance to share learning and access resources so that everyone is equipped with the same high level of expertise.

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As we all have to get to grips with the new the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) this article Maureen Farmer shares her experiences of client confidentiality in the Canadian Careers Sector.

Without a doubt, serving as a career professional is rewarding; helping people win a promotion, get a new job, or change careers is the pinnacle of success. In performing this vital work, you are trusted with important information, which you must keep confidential.

As a business owner and career professional, I have noticed a phenomenon that alarms me: breach of client information. The inappropriate disclosure of client information can derail your client’s career as well as your business. Even an innocent conversation in a coffee shop, restaurant, or other public place can compromise your client’s livelihood if someone hears the discussion.

Protecting your client’s information is your fiduciary duty. Even the fact that a client has engaged in your services needs to remain confidential. Many times, disclosure happens inadvertently; after all, you do not set out to deliberately harm a client.

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In the following short article by Dorie Clark published by the World Economic Forum, Dorie explains why transitioning careers when you are older does not mean starting from scratch again.

Written by Rod Harris, Operations Director, Intequal, this article explores the benefits of blended learning within apprenticeship standards.

Learning while you’re earning is a popular career path for many young people so it’s hardly surprising that, according to the British Council, there are currently over 900,000 people on an apprenticeship in the UK.

Employing an apprentice is now straightforward and 89% of employers say they make their business more productive. But with most apprentices working the equivalent of a full-time job, employers can find it a juggling act to manage workloads if their apprentices have to go off-site for training or to attend college.

This is where blended learning comes into its own, and explains why the practical method is becoming the preferred way of delivering training in many of the new apprenticeship standards.

Blended – or hybrid – learning connects learners with their trainers online through chat rooms and live lectures. This means that they don’t have to leave their workplace in order to interact with their tutors or fellow students. Instead, they can access videos of lectures, track their progress and view supporting materials related to their assignments, like PowerPoint presentations and relevant articles.

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