Is a job for life or just for Christmas?

It is a much vaunted notion that the job for life was once the norm, and is now the exception. It's so widely accepted that I don't think anyone knows where the idea came from or what data it's based on - it's so obviously true that it doesn't need to be backed up with evidence.

I have struggled to really get my head round this as the statistics don't seem to agree with the prevailing view, but also don't really agree with each other. One challenge is that statistics are often fairly blunt instruments. Gregg and Wadsworth (2002) illustrate this nicely. Looking at the data from 1975 to 2000 they highlight that the two following statements are both currently (at least were in 2002) true:

The typical worker today can expect to spend ten years in their current job
and
The typical job will last 15 months.

This is explained by the fact that 'job survival chances rise sharply with duration' which means that half of all jobs last around a year but that the other half are likely to last 5 or 10 years: if you make it through the first year, your chances of staying long term are high.

So that's quite interesting, but has this always been the case, or is this something new? Well, this depends on who you read. Most literature falls down on the side of no change (or little change) but there are some dissenting voices. In the UK, the Labour Force survey suggests no change, but the General Household Survey suggests a bit of a change. There are a number of confounding issues. The data is hard to trace as the question seems to have been asked in different ways at different times, so it's hard to know whether you're comparing like with like; economic cycles have a huge impact, so you have to be sure you're comparing the right times within two economic cycles; and finally, maternity rights came in in 1979 and were extended in 1994, changing women's access to continuous service.

Overall, there is some evidence that men's average tenure and women without dependent children's has gone down a bit, but mothers with dependent children's has increased. The decline in men's long term jobs seems to be concentrated in men over 50. For men, median job tenure has declined by about 20% since 1975.

Gregg, P. and Wadsworth, J. (2002) Job tenure in Britain, 1975 - 2000. Is a job for life or just for Christmas Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 64 (2) 0305 - 9049

Occupational Segregation

Occupational segregation is the idea that certain groups of people dominate in certain occupational groups. It's usually linked to inequality in society and a lack of social mobility.
This study looked at census data from the US from 1970 to 2010 and examined the demographics found in particular occupational groups. Their findings were a bit depressing, and they concluded that the US labour market is a system in which "individuals who are not white and male are predictably relegated to the least desirable roles.".
The authors found that whilst there had been a bit of change in the demographic make up, progress towards a more equal labour force over the 40 years had been slow and limited.They conclude that waiting for this kind of social change to happen naturally is not the way forward and more, and more effective direct action needs to be taken.
There have been some changes. White men now make up a smaller overall proportion of the work force than they did 40 years ago, as women are more likely to work and migration has led to a significant increase in the number of workers from BAME backgrounds. But what is interesting is where these new workers are working. Broadly, BAME workers have entered the workforce in lower skilled jobs. Women have made significant progress within certain previously male dominated arenas (such as law and medicine). But in the hard core male arenas of STEM subjects, women have made next to no progress despite policies initiatives and money being poured into the area. There have been some improvements within education - women in the states now make up about 20% of engineering degree students, but these women graduates don't enter the profession and if they do, they leave it three times as fast as men.
My last little vignette is about vets. This seems to be the one arena in which there has genuinely been a shift. In 1970 this was a profession almost exclusively inhabited by men but by 2010 it had shifted to a near equal gender balance. I couldn't even hazard a guess as to why, but I thought it was worth a comment.

Byars-Winston, A., Fouad, N and Wen, Y. (2015) Race/ethnicity and sex in US occupations, 1970 - 2010: Implications for research, practice and policy Journal of Vocational Behaviour 87 54-70

Reflective Practice

The importance of reflective practice has long been acknowledged in the fields of careers and coaching. It is widely agreed that as practitioners, it's part of our professional duty to continually reflect on our practice and to think about what's working and what could be better.
It is not, however, something that we're usually taught to do. Being reflective is something that we assume that we are able to do, and to a large extent this is probably not unreasonable. But there are some frameworks out there which can help, and I think it's useful for us as practitioners to engage with them.

I have been reading a bit about Schon, whose book 'The Reflective Practitioner' is widely acclaimed.
Schon makes a distinction between reflection-in-action , which is a version of thinking on your feet, and reflection-on-action, which is what you do after the event. Reflecting-in-action involves assessing the new situation in which you find yourself, analysing it, and making links between what's in front of you right now, and your existing body of knowledge, techniques and ideas for action.Reflecting-on-action refers then to the process of post-match analysis, where you think back over what happened, why you made the choices that you did, and what alternative strategies would have led to different outcomes. This can be done individually using for example a journal, or together with a mentor or colleague.

Schon is keen on the notion of building up a repertoire.A repertoire is a collection of techniques, ideas and images that you can draw on. He suggests that every time we encounter a new situation, we make sense of it by linking it to past experiences, identifying the ways in which is it similar to a previous event and the ways in which it is different. A repertoire which identifies a range of actions that worked well in a particular situation in the past can help us easily identify how to act in this new situation. A key purpose of reflection-on-action is to hep to crystalise and cement (am I mixing my metaphors too much here?) these solutions in our minds.

At the heart of Schon's theory is that reflection should be enacted, not applied. So whilst he devised a theory for reflection, he is not particularly advocating that we should all take his theory and apply it to our practice religiously. He seems more keen to make sure that we find ways to incorporate reflection into our daily practice.

There have been criticisms of Schon's theory, with critics highlight the lack of detail given on the psychological processes involved and the exact nature of the link between reflection-in and reflection-on, but many practitioners find this a useful distinction to help them to structure their self-reflective processes.

I think this could be a helpful framework for career practitioners. I like this emphasis on continual reflection. There is some evidence that career practice trainees conduct more effective career sessions than experienced practitioners, and this is thought to be all about differing levels of reflection. If we as a profession start to incorporate reflection as an automatic part of our practice, not as an occasional or a nice-to-have, perhaps using Schon's ideas of journalling or talking with a mentor, or going down the more formal route of supervision, then surely this will be a good thing for our profession and our clients.

Here are a couple of useful websites for further information:

Smith, M. K. (2001, 2011). ‘Donald Schön: learning, reflection and change’, the encyclopedia of informal education.[www.infed.org/thinkers/et-schon.htm. ]

http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/vol7/Pakman_foreword.PDF

Evidence for Career Learning Frameworks

I find the whole arena of career learning frameworks rather complicated. My first challenge is that there are quite a few of them, and they are not, as far as I can see, collected together in one neat little document that I can look through. 

Then comparisons between them are tricky. They often overlap - sometimes using the same terminology, and sometimes using similar terms which might be synonymous, but might not. Other frameworks differ from each other so dramatically that it's hard to compare. Then then are some which have been devised for particular age groups, and it's hard to know to what extent they can be generalised.

But my biggest challenge is that there doesn't seem to be any (can this be right?) evidence that one framework is more effective than an other. So what criteria can we use to make a decision about which to choose? Not only is there this absence of an empirical base to distinguish one framework from another, there is also a lack of evidence to support the use of the particular elements of the frameworks. Take self awareness, for example. This is one of the most widely used elements contained within career learning frameworks, and is very well established as a key tenet of career education. But there is no evidence that a high degree of self awareness actually links to individuals getting a job, or getting a good job. 

There is plenty of published evidence of the factors that do link to positive outcomes from career interventions, and I was wondering, what would an evidence based career education framework look like?

Liu et al. (2014) have conducted a meta-analysis incorporating the findings from 47 studies looking at nearly 10,000 job seekers and this gives us a great starting point. Based on this (and some other studies) I have devised Yates's 5 Step 5 S Evidence Based Career Learning Framework, guaranteed (not really) to get participants into jobs.

Running throughout the framework are motivational elements (motivational interviewing and future time perspective) and active learning - getting participants to actually do stuff, not just sit and listen.

Step 1: Strategy
To be effective and job search needs to be strategic, with a good emphasis on planning. Participants need to start off identifying what job they want, which we might do through a Possible Selves intervention, which helps participants identify what kind of future they want and how to get there.

Step 2: Self efficacy
No job search is going to be very successful if the individual doesn't believe in themselves, so the sessions will include a number of exercises aimed at boosting job search self efficacy. Participants will be asked to share stories of success (their's or others'), will be encouraged to set themselves a lot of small goals that they can achieve, we might do a few cognitive behavioural exercises to help get rid of negative thoughts and the sessions will have a positive and encouraging tone to them.

Step 3: Social support
Job searches are most successful when people feel supported, so I will get participants to identify people who might be able to give them support and ask them to think about how they might harness this more effectively. I will also set up the career sessions in such a way as to encourage the participants to be a support for each other.

Step 4: Skills for job search
Participants need to learn the nuts and bolts of job hunting, so will be give the opportunity to find out where vacancies are posted (and encouraged to use a range of sources) and to think about what information they need and where they could find it. Participants will be encouraged to think about the the factors that lead to job satisfaction (being good at a job, having colleagues you like and having lots of variety).

Step 5: Self presentation
Participants will think about the way they want to come across on paper and in person and develop their best CV and practice interview skills.

So, what do you think? It's a bit tongue in cheek - I'm not really proposing that this 'back of an envelope' career learning framework should take the place over far more thoughtful and considered frameworks. But I'm quite intrigued by this. I wonder if it would work? 

Liu, S., Huang, J. L., & Wang, M. (2014). Effectiveness of job search interventions: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 140(4), 1009-1041

Should career group sessions always be interactive?

I'm thinking a lot at the moment about the best way to teach career education. Career training courses advocate an interactive approach to group sessions, with information interspersed with interactive exercises. My experience though suggests that in practice, career sessions tend to end up being more information based and lecture style than interactive. My view is shaped by my own practice, and my observation of colleagues, and although I'm sure there is probably a lot of really excellent interactive practice going on that I haven't come across, I wonder if in general our career group sessions should be more interactive?

Colleagues I speak to give a range of reasons for lecture style input: it's client expectations, it's big groups, it's time pressures. And this all has made me question whether this is actually the best way - are interactive exercises actually helpful? What makes me think they are any better than lecture style?

So I've found a paper. Michael (2006) has done all the hard work for me, and provides a summary of the evidence that active learning works. Michael's agenda is slightly different from mine. He is looking for the best way to teach science to University students whereas I am after good practice for career education. But even though we are not teachers, we are still in the business of getting our clients to learn, so I think there is a lot we can take from this evidence.

Michael comes out very much in favour of active learning, and feels strongly that not enough of it is seen in university education at the moment.  In his introduction he goes as far as to say "it would be difficult to design an educational model that is more at odds with current research on human cognition that the one that is used in most colleges and universities".

He presents the 'big five' findings from learning research which to my mind, make a pretty compelling case for keeping career workshops interactive.
1. Learning is all about integrating new information with old. We start with what we already know and add anything new we learn to what is there already. If new information is presented without any reference to existing information, then students don't have the opportunity to integrate the new with the old and learning is less effective.
2. Learning facts is different from learning to do something. Simply teaching the facts does not equip students to do anything with the facts. So telling students that filling their CVs with power words is a good idea is different from equipping them to change their CVs; they need to have a go at doing it and then get feedback on their efforts in order to develop the ability to do anything with the facts.
3. Transferring knowledge from one context to another is surprisingly difficult. Giving an example of how something should be done (eg hearing an excellent interview answer on its own does not allow students to see how they themselves should answer a question). Students need to see how they themselves would answer a tricky interview question in order to understand how to use the information.
4. People learn better when they learn together. Talking and listening to others leads to better learning than sitting and listening to a lecture.
5. Putting ideas into words helps people work out what they think.Interactive exercises allow people to talk about their ideas and in articulating them, their thoughts develop and crystalise.

If these really are the key findings from a generation of research about learning, then I think we need to pay attention. There hasn't been very much research into what works in a career context, but evidence in a range of academic disciplines seems to suggest that this is simply how people learn - and there is nothing to suggest that learning about careers  is any different from any other kind of learning.

My confidence is restored. Career sessions should always be interactive. They should always get participants to think about where they are now, and to build on their current position. They should include exercises where they put their own thoughts into words and share those words with others, and they should allow students to try out the skills they're focusing on, not just tell them the theory.


Michael, J. (2006) What's the evidence that active learning works? Advanced Physiological Education  30, 159 - 167

Goal Setting

I've known for some time that goals are good. We've long been told that setting a goal at the beginning of a coaching session is important, and that if we can encourage our clients to identify specific and measurable goals for themselves at the end of a session then they are more likely to put their plans into action. But it was good to read Locke and Latham's paper  (2002) which summarises the research on goal setting and explains why it works.

First, it's encouraging to note that there is good and solid and widespread evidence that it does work. Goals are linked with people putting in more effort and achieving more. And a specific goal results in more effort and better performance than simply encouraging someone to 'do their best'.

But there's more.

I had thought that it was crucial to set appropriate, ie moderate goals. Apparently not always. In general, the harder the goal, the more effort people put in and the more the attain. There is an issue about what this might do to people's confidence (of which more later), but broadly speaking, the harder the goal the better.

Locke and Latham explain how goals work:
1) they direct attention and effort towards the goal and away from other things - both cognitively and behaviourally ie, you think more about making sure that your efforts are linked to achieving the goal
2) they energize. And linked with the comment above, high goals lead to greater effort than lower goals
3) they affect persistence and in particular people carry on working for longer when the goals are hard
4) goals lead to better strategies. People either use strategies they already have, transfer strategies over or learn new strategies when they have a specific goal in mind.

Other important factors are:
Goal commitment
goal commitment strengthens the link between goals and performance. Goal commitment is enhanced when the outcome of the goal is important to the individual, and when the individual has high self-efficacy ie believes that they have the ability to achieve it.
Self-efficacy seems to come up all over the place, but helpfully the authors of this paper give some empirically tested methods for enhancing self efficacy. They suggest that the individuals need to be adequately trained (so that they do actually have the ability to achieve the goal), they need to see role models that they can relate to who have previously achieved the goal, and they need to be helped to develop specific strategies.
Feedback is important so that the individual can see how well they are doing and knows how much harder they need to try.
Task complexity has am impact. Goal setting works better for simple tasks. With complex tasks it seems to be more effective to set a range of small interim goals (ie one for each simple task involved).
Satisfaction: a goal seems to act as a sort of yardstick for satisfaction. Achieving or exceeding a goal leads to satisfaction and failing to meet a goal leads to dissatisfaction. This then presents us with a bit of a dilemma - there seems to be a choice that needs to be made between setting a challenging goal which is likely to lead to a higher performance or to set a lower goal which is likely to lead to higher satisfaction.

There has clearly been a huge amount of research conducted on goal setting, but I am pleased now to have a slightly clearer understanding of what it all means and how and why it works.

Locke, E.A. and Latham, G.P. (2002) Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35 year Odyssey American Psychologist 57 (9) 705 - 717

Careers information: is online the only way to go?

I was given a guided tour of LSE's lovely careers service this week, and was struck by the almost total lack of careers information within the service. Information about careers is now so widely available online, that they simply aren't using paper based information at all, so services have stopped holding it. This makes sense to me - there is no point in wasting space and time maintaining a careers library that no one uses. But I am concerned about the alternative.

The evidence tells us that we are all, in general, pretty poor at taking in information that we read. Studies time and again show us that the process of reading careers information is not massively useful to clients; what helps is the conversations with the practitioners they have before and after their research (Savard and Michaud 2005). This also fits with Vygotsky's theories about language and thought, which explain that our thoughts are crystallised through conversations: we only really know what we think when we have a chance to talk it through.

In the old days, a student would start their trip to the careers library by telling the librarian what they were looking for - this brief conversation helped them to be really clear in their own minds about exactly what they were trying to find. Some might then have an ongoing dialogue with the librarian throughout their visit, but even the most independent researchers would be asked to engage with a brief chat about whether they had found what they were looking for at the end of their visit, and this conversation might then lead to booking an appointment with a careers adviser to discuss what their new information means to them.

These conversations are what make the information meaningful and relevant, and they are what has been lost with the move from a paper based service to an online service.

So what can we do about it? The solution might be in the way that the online services are designed and managed. My very limited understanding of the potential of technology limits my imagination, but I am sure there are ways to work it better.Could we design websites that ask the right questions at the right time? Rather than letting people browse for themselves, could we ask them what, specifically, they are looking for before giving them access to the right information? Or could their web browsing trigger some interactive questions? Or even better, could it trigger some kind of real time, real person contact - actively encouraging interaction on each webpage? Could we get people to sign in with their twitter accounts so that we can tweet them whilst they are searching?

I wonder what innovative ideas other people have? There are probably some great websites out there that do these sorts of things really well. Do let me know if you've come across any.

Savard, G. & Michaud, M. (2005). The Impact of LMI on the Career Decision-Making Process: Literature Review. FLMM