Cool

I heard an employer describe some scientific papers as ‘Cool’.

What is ‘cool’? How do i recognise it? Could I become it if I wanted to?

It seems to be used always in a positive way but the rules elude me – rather liek the rule of Mornington Crescent.

Speaking of Radio 4, i heard a recent graduate say he had recently discovered the station and how amazing it was. Welcome my son. Soem of us have been here for decades but labourers who arrive at the 11th hour are just as welcome as anyone else. You may even thrill at the way that the Archers is handling the credit crunch.

But I susprect we have moved form ‘cool’  to ‘tepid’ two words that could refer to the identical temperature – but still be a world away form each other.

Vist the Bank of England

But not to advise on quantitative easing. Its a presentation on how disabled students deal with the job market. There was an impressive panel – one lady was  head of diversity recruitment at Merrill Lynch, and another lady who had worked in one or two of the FMCG companies in sales and marketing roles, before setting up a consultancy to advise blue chip companies on diversity. She had been in a wheel chair since babyhood.  The report produced by the consutlancy who organised the day wss not particularly earth shattering, but it did suggest that disabled Students use the same recruitment methods as any other students. Specialised diversity publications were not widely favoured – which was reassuring I think.

Guidance in a Recession (again)

My colleague has just returned for delivering his ” How to get a job in a recession” How many do you think showed? Just the 2. Thats not 200, by the way, that is 2 in the sense of 1+1.

Weird thing is I know that at some point  in the next year some college graduate is going to say how poorly prepared they were for the job market and the  recession. At which pint I will quietly seethe and fume.

David Willetts

Article in the Times by David Willetts – conservative education shadow actually said the conservatives would give young people the entitlement to a careers interview. Conservatives are often more positive about careers services than Labour – odd really.

Guidance in a Recession

One of the things I like about Careers Group is that we do do good training – of which the best is often ’self-training’. We did a session in our Guidance Forum series last friday on the aboove topic. My question was whether guidance in a recession was actually different - particularly for us working as we do with students in privileged institutions. And not working, as we don’t, with graduates in the labour market.

All of our discussions are about scarcity or ‘difficulty of access’. There aren’t enough of the jobs that people want. That is why they talk to a Careers adviser. How to improve the chances of getting into a job that seems aspeirational as opposed to an economic need.

My first Careers job was in 1976, a recession was in full swing ( though that makes it sound like a party). The issue of Youth unemployment was a large one and a series of initiatives WEEP (Work Experience on employers’ premises), short ( literally 2 week) skills courses were being offered. These were to flower into a more integrated programme called YOP. Most young people then left school at 16 with 6th forms offering A levels or an O-level retake group. FE offered more vocational options mainly through City and Guild and RSA.

It spawned a new cadre of Careers Officers called the Unemployment Specialists. These were like CO’s but with worse hair – plus they wore jeans to work.

The sound of one hand clapping

Well sometimes Career Guidance is like this. You devise a session with the Diversity Department to deal with the issue of disclosure of Dyslexia in employment applications. It is publicised – you book a room. You allocate an afternoon. Then you wait for your audience which turns up – on time – in the form of a single student. And guess what -she is a second year medic. So disclosure for her is less problematical  and less immediate than, say, a law finalist. Not sure i taught her anytihing useful but she taught me something. Some dyslexics have real probelms with multiple choice questions on computer. Its much easier for them to be asked a question then write the answer. Something to do with processing the ‘grids’.

Anyway I guess that if you come to a sesion about disclosing your dyslexia you are kind of – disclosing your dyslexia. Maybe the session had a design flaw all along.

A new office for the Careers Service

We have just opened our new careers centre. It is near the student union facilities – the bar, the cafeteria etc. We are all very excited becuse it is the first time we will have a purpose built space in the heart of the college. We anticipate higher usage rates as students throng the building. it wil be intersting to see how it develops as the other initiative this term is the start of career interst groups on Face-Book. Bring it on…

ISJ’s

Two ver shy clients came in ages ago. They were interested in MBTI after a talk i had given on the subject soem time previously. We get them to do the instrument and try to fix a feedback time. Oh no. They are very busy preparing for finals. Can we do that after finals (a month or so away)

They both score as ISJ’s

Here is what I read about ISJ’s from Leonore Thomson:

 

It should be recognised that ISJ’s pursue their interests in a way that scarcely suggests the the passion and curiousity that actually motivate them. NISJ’s organise and apply their information with their secondary function Extraverted Thinking or Feeling. No matter how excited they are about a subject they tackle it methodically and somewhat myopically. Their attention is consumed by what they are doing and they’re concerned with every detail. They may be unable to finish a project until a particular detail striks them as perfectly realised.

Bullseye.

Feedback on feedback

Dear Feedback,

Thanks for your helpful comments on the work I have been doing. No thanks for the much larger number of useless comments.

But can you from now on do a lot less. Basically I know that my sessions are quite sound. I have been developing them for about a decade, so they should be. I know that some students find them very helpful, some find them qiuite helpful and some firnd them not very helpful.

Some find them too long and some find them too short. The pre-course arrangements are subject to cock-ups, and the hand-outs inadequate especially when i do not give out hand outs.

I am sick of the appalling waste of time and paper forcing people to make comments they do not wish to make – or allowing people anonymously criticise work that I put great effort into but which may not meet their needs on that particular occasion. Such people would be better employed asking the tutor to address their needs either in the session or in a subsequent session. Feedback as we currently operate colludes with a consumerist notion that is alien to the purposes and methods of education.

Tell me what you think. Tell me what you need. Negotiate your learning.

I will delegate the reading of feedback forms to someone else. I am too busy trying to get my courses right.

Thankyou and goodbye

Guardian Podcast

Went to do a podcast att he Guardian’s Farringdon Road Building. It does sort of sound impressive – at least it impresses me – perhaps I set the impress bar a bit low.

In fact it involved chatting to a few people about the Guardian London Graduate Fair by the Careers Group. Easy enough  to do – hope its what they wanted. It will go up on the Fair website in a week or so.

I seem to be ina bit of new technology phase at the moment, as i will do another podcast for the Graduate School website next week. Also experimenting a bit with Facebook – though I do not exactly know what I am doing with it. The atttraction is the potential to communicate with a bigger group of students – at some point.