University Students' Career Dilemmas - Part 1 The Autumn Term

I'm involved with a study that is trying to find out what issues and dilemmas clients bring to career practitioners. I think it's a bit surprising that no-one has done this before, because I think it's really important. Of course, anecdotally, we all have some kind of sense of the questions we most often face from clients, and there is some decision literature which gives us a starting point. But I don't think anyone has done any kind of rigorous analysis until now! 

I'm working with university careers services, finding out about the issues that they discuss in careers interviews and have now had a go at analysing the first set of data from the autumn term. The advisers involved were each allocated a week during the term, and were asked to record the details of every interview they did during that week. We've got data about 249 individual one to one interviews with 24 qualified careers advisers based in 10 universities across the UK.  It should provide us with an interesting snapshot of what was going on. 

What did we find?

The careers interviews this term took place between September 15th and December 15th and lasted on average averaged 27 minutes. This is longer than I might have anticipated, and shows that the longer careers interview is still alive and kicking. Clients were mostly female (60%) and about evenly split between UK and non-UK. More than half the clients were undergraduates (58%) with 26% post-grad students and 15% graduates. 

1. Client issues are complex

The client dilemmas were generally complex, with each client bringing on average four different issues to the interview. Even those just asking for help with their application forms were generally complex with 80% of students bringing CVs to check had at least one other issue. This is interesting - I wonder what this means for some of the cost-cutting approaches we are seeing at the moment such as using untrained graduate students or computer programmes to help with CV checks, online guidance and shorter interviews? 

2. Lack of information and anxiety were the two most common types of query

The most common issues which arose during the term were those to do with information, with over 50% of clients specifically wanting information about applying for jobs. This is perhaps to be expected, particularly in the autumn term when so many students are applying for training schemes. More interesting, and troubling, was the finding that over 1/3rd of the clients were displaying clear anxiety, generally about the uncertainty of the process, but also significant numbers who were worrying about the outcome of the process and comparisons with their friends. This interests me because I'm not wholly convinced that we usually train our career practitioners to manage anxiety - perhaps this is something we need to consider for the future. Low confidence and lack of self awareness were also fairly common issues.

3. Practitioners found nearly half of the interviews challenging

The other interesting thing we asked the practitioners, is to make a note of any particular issues they found difficult. Practitioners found 57% of the interviews straightforward, and struggled with 43%. I feel this is quite a high proportion, although I guess it's good to be challenged in your work. 

4. Most difficult issues are clients expecting the practitioner to tell them what to do and clients with low confidence

The career dilemma that practitioners found challenging most often was clients' unrealistic views of how to make decisions, in particular, clients who thought that the adviser would be able to tell them what to do. This will be familiar territory for all advisers working in higher education but perhaps this finding highlights clearly that we need to make sure that practitioners are equipped with the skills to handle it effectively. Practitioners also found it difficult to deal with clients who were struggling with external conflicts (for example, those who disagreed with their parents as to the right course for them to pursue), and those who were low in confidence. External conflicts didn't come up that often during the term (in only 6% of the interviews), but practitioners found nearly half of these instances difficult. Low confidence was a more common issue, seen in 20% of the clients. 

5. Least challenging are interviews which focus on information 

At the other end of the scale, practitioners tended to find interviews which focused on careers information easiest, with only 8% of the interviews about the job hunting process (including CVs), and 4% of those focused on how to research options rated as challenging. Whether these are perceived as straightforward because they are, or because they come up so frequently, so advisers are very skilled at dealing with these issues was not examined. 

So what do we do with all of this?

Some interesting findings so far. I think I'm most struck by the high proportion of our clients who are struggling with anxiety. Mental ill-health is a hot topic in Higher Education in the UK - we know that students find university life hard. But it's quite stark to see how many of them are finding career development problematic. I wonder if this is an interesting one for careers services to consider. Might it be possible to offer more support for this psychological side of the careers process?
It was also interesting to note that practitioners found nearly half of the sessions challenging in some way, and I wonder if we need to think about how to make sure we equip ourselves to deal with some of these most challenging issues. 

What next?

We will get more data coming in throughout the year and I will report back on the findings as we go.