Delayed Reaction

Although there was further confirmation of the dire job situation from the AGR, we still have not seen a flood of students seeking help. But then university life ends with a whimper really; most people who have not been busy seeking jobs, and lots of those who have see summer as breathing space – perhaps the last one before the ‘career’ sets in. The bleak reality of the job market will set in on the 4th of September.

I have been listening to an account by Stephen Minger – top stem cell scientist – of his ealry career – 5 years as a fork-lift truck driver before returning to University – and then years of hard grind learnniog how to be a reseach scientist.

The London Graduate Fair.

This was last weeks big event. Enjoyed doing an interview workshop with John Childs and an Application form session. Also liked doing a lengthy stint of CV feedback. Keeps me in touch with undergrads.

The Any Questions session I suggested seemed to go well enough though you do have to warm the audience up. They only started asking questions towards the end – and the questioners were older graduates.

 

I followed up with a session on the Guardian website on Friday afternoon. My first experience of doing this online advise giving. Had to reain in my initial grouchy response to some of the questions. Did not write ‘Get real’ at any point. Mind you I cannot bear to look at what I wrote. On reflection I think this ability to give speedy responses – even of not totally well-judged, is an important one – the problem is that your first thoughts are there for everyone to see and judge – and you are bod to get it wrong on occasion. Rather like blogging really.

Interviewing for Careers Advisers

A day of interviewing for Careers Advisers. Its really useful to do this. You get so many insights into the interview process. Its also rather humbling. You know you have a limited number of opportunitis and a plethora of worthy candidates. And here they are, in their suits, working hard at giving a good presentation of themselves – because they need the work.

You also know that some of the candidates will be dumbstruck when they do not get through. Some have qualifications and experience well in excess of the minimum requirement. What more do they need to do to get a job?

When reviewing the interviews the one thing that they could have done to make a difference was:  give an account of why you want the job – make it credible and go below the surface. Say something beyond the obvious – show evidence you have done some research. Cover the job and the organisation – thats two separate areas.

Social Networking and recruitment

One of our recent graduates is getting job offers via his Linked-in presence. Is social networking going to usurp the old Bolles Information interviewing idea we frequently promote. Or will it be a fad and in 5 years time the notion of putting info about yourslef online a quaint, faintly ridiculous or frankly dangerous activity.

Email from student

Hello,

could you guide me which jobs I could get with my MsC ?

Thank you.

The text of an email from a student. The title of the email was ‘urgent’. He did give the title of his masters, but still, its not a lot to go on. Is it a cry of panic? Depair? Or is it a half baked half notion that all you need is a list of job titles that you can pick off at your ease? And then there is the notion that a masters leads to particular jobs. It can do of course, but most are not connected to jobs in that way. I have replied suggesting this briefly – but will my reply be seen as helpful? Probably. Another student who feels the service did not help him. Where was he at our Careers Fairs, our Careers forums, our lunchtime lectures, did he join our special interest groups? Did he do Prospects planner and explore the Prospects website?

Careers Adviser Meeting

We have started a series of meetings just among the advisers to discuss professional topics.

Todays agenda was to talk about the Options 2009 programme. We have over 100 students signed up. The possibility that the rooms would overflow with students was mooted. We wish!

The main discussion was about Careers Education sessions in departments. Everyone wanted to do work in the departments but there was a problem about the imbalance between departments that could accommodate everything we offered and those which had no idea about what they wanted – or else wanted nothing. We decided to devote the next meeting to mapping what we were plannning to do in departments next session.

There was a debate about the ‘How’ to series – which had poor rates of take up: where these a sensible way forward? Or should the How-to series be repositioned into the departmental offer?

One idea was to run a lot of very short – 20 minute talks covering very basic CV / application forms / Interviews. Then there could be specific sessions that were targetted: – UK CV’s for LLM’s or MACCI’s for instance. Becca was going to circulate the QM method of short sessions with a view to proposing the idea to Jenny

Future topics – reviving the preer review process and knowledge sharing.

William Wordsworth and MBTI

Something very exciting happened last night. Bear in mind that in the rather workaday world of your careers adviser ,excitement can come in the shape of an advertising jingle or brick patio: the bar may not be so high here, is what I am saying. I have been speculating on the MBTI types of writers and my researches lead me to conclude that William Wordsworth had to be ISFP: all that emotion recollected in tranquillity, indeed all that ’sensing’ recollected and resonating in his work and his imagination. So my conclusion – dominant  intraverted feeling with auxilliary extraverted sensing and inferior extraverted thinking  (his thinking on many public issues was famously ropey).

With this in mind I consult my “introduction to type” on ISFP and what do I find?

“They often have an affinity for nature and for beauty in all living things – people plants and animals.”

What I wondered is the one thing that people know about Wordsworth? There is much more in the summary that seems absolutely right. All those early poems about the lives of poor people whom he met on his travels – revolutionary in their way and the way after initial enthusiasm he recoiled from revolutionary France after seeing what it became in reality; as the manual says -liable to reject or not take seriously logical systems – unlike Coleridge for whom logical systems were endlessly fascinating. Coleridge’s type – I am fairly certain he was ENTP. Keats ? Definitely N, definitely F, probably P. I think Intuition was his dominant, which suggests E. More work required though.

A day in the life

On the day a client complianed about the quality of my interview with her and asked for her money back I got this email:

“I just wanted to say thank you for yesterday, it was incredibly helpful and I have lots of ideas for potential areas to explore.
I really appreciate the time and skill you brought to yesterday’s meeting and am very grateful for it”

Which all goes to show something. What I take from this is that it is possible to do bad interviews and still be an effective adviser. With the complaining client my own deficiencies in skill and preformance were presumably a factor. But my hunch is that a bigger factor was the ‘contract’ – the purpose of the interview the client desired and the one the Adviser delivered. If these are 2 different things then the failure of communication is the responsibility of the adviser.

In college the client just gpes away and grumbles. In consultancy, they might just ask for their money back.

London Careers Fair

My current task is to organise the programme of talks for the lengthily titled ‘Guardian London Graduate Fair from the Careers Group’.

I always find this a trial – organising not one of my fortes- I blame it all on my Inferior Intraverted Sensing Function. Anyway it seems to be coming together well this time. I try to get as much consultation as poss before I allot duties to the advisers. I worry about fair allocation – I guess thats fair Fair allocation, but I secretly think that most people look for their names and get on with it.

Actually everybody should be capable of doing any one of the tasks.

Have failed in my inention to put my document on the wiki. Really must learn how to do that this year.

Institute for Archaeology

Did a days training with IFA staff on short-term placements. Worked with Kate and went through skills and how to evidence them. We included a writing exercise. This was the only thing that got negative feedback – and only from one person. However,  I am having second thoughts about including it on future occasions. It is potentially divisive – what with dyslexia. The real reason for questioning the inclusion though is that it was hard to extract learning points from the texts produced.

However it was heartening to get the strong positive feedback from delegates and organisers.