Career Theories in Action: What and How

I'm involved in a couple of projects looking at the use of career theories in practice. I've been talking to a lot of career practitioners about their use of theories in practice, and can't help but feel that we're missing a trick. 

The careers advisers I've been talking to do, all, draw on theories, but not that many theories, and not all that often. I feel that something has gone wrong with the system: either we're not coming up with the right theories; or they are not written usefully, or published accessibly; or careers advisers don't value them; or don't know how to use them. 

I've been thinking about why this would be, and I wanted to spend a bit of time unpicking my own assumption that theories are useful. I love a theory, but are they actually useful? Are career conversations better when they include some theories?

Career Theories in Action: What

I think there are two broad types of theories I use in my practice (NB I'm using the word 'theory' very broadly here, to include approaches, models and frameworks).

Theories which inform the process of career coaching. 
There is one approach I use ALL the time, and one I use fairly often. The one I use all the time is Roger's theory of person-centred counselling (AKA humanism, client- or person-centred counselling). I use this as an underpinning philosophy, and it informs my whole understanding of the process: who has the answers (the client), how I should talk to them (open questions, lots of reflective listening) and how I should strive to understand them (unconditional positive regard). This one informs every single career conversation I ever have. 
Next up is the GROW model (or T-GROW, or RE-GROW, or GROWTH), which is my go-to structure for most of my conversations. Specifically, I am entirely sold on the need to set goals for a session, and the value of identifying specific actions for my client to take away. 
Then I think there are half a dozen other approaches that I use quite often. My favourite ones at the moment are strengths, possible selves, ACT, solution focused coaching, art therapy tools, narrative coaching, career style interview, motivational interviewing, MBTI and transactional analysis. 

I draw on two or more of these in every career conversation I have, and I definitely think that these theories make me a better practitioner and add value to my clients. In fact, I might even go so far as to say it is these theories that make me a practitioner - without them, I'm just having a chat.

Theories that help me understand careers  the content of my career conversations 
There are more of these kinds of theories, and I think I can put them in four groups (a slightly artificial division - but this is how I see them):
1) Theories that tell us about people's motivations - what drives them and what makes them happy.
2) Theories that help us to understand career transitions - how and why people change direction, and how they cope
3) Theories about making decisions, and what kinds of factors influence people's choices
4) Theories about how people make decisions - how they learn about jobs and the process of career decision making.

I've identified my go-to theories here, those that most often actually help me to understand my clients' career journeys. I am interested by the fact that less than half of them are career-specific theories most are broader psychological theories. I've also noticed that there are a number of big-hitting career theories that I haven't included. I haven't included them because they don't help me, but I might need to spend some time working out why that is. 

Career Theories in Action: How

As I mentioned earlier, it's easy to see how the process models influence my practice, but with the theories that help to explain the nature of career, the influence is a bit more subtle. I think I can see four ways that they help

1. They help me to understand what is going on with my clients - they offer a shortcut which can help me to see what's going on. This is useful because:
1. It helps me to empathise which makes me a better practitioner
2. It helps me to work out what to do next - what questions to ask, what approaches to use and what direction to take the conversation in
2. I sometimes share the theories explicitly with clients. This offers clients:
1. Validation: it's amazing what an impact it has when clients can see that they are not alone, not strange, not abnormal, and that what they are going though is 'a thing' that lots of other people have experienced too. 
2. Reassurance: if clients can see that other people emerged unscathed from this process, and have found a way through, it can be hugely encouraging to them.
3. For me personally:
1. It's interesting. I'm just interested in people's careers and I just like understanding how this part of the world works
2. It boosts my confidence. I feel more certain that the approaches that I'm using are the right ones and are likely to do what they need to
3. It helps with my credibility. The joy of a Rogerian, person-centred approach is that the client solves all their own problems and provides all of their own solutions. This involves a huge amount of skill on the part of the practitioner, but the more skilled you are, the less the client notices what you have added. But the career theory aspect of my professional expertise is more visible, and makes me feel that my skills and knowledge are more likely to be noticed. This is of course linked to the previous point about confidence, but I think that it's important to our clients and to our profession as a whole that we are seen as experts from the outside.

So that's what I use and how I use it, and I definitely think this makes me a better practitioner and adds value to my clients. 

I haven't come across any research evidence that using theories adds value in career conversations, and I'm sure that career conversations can be hugely helpful without any of this. But that's what people get from talking to their friends and family about careers. What they get from us needs to be a bit different, otherwise what is the point? We need to offer something that our clients can't get elsewhere, and for me, a knowledge of these kinds of theories offers exactly that. 

There is still a job to be done, in making sure the theories are relevant and accessible, making sure that practitioners have the time and motivation to learn about them, and making sure we are all equipped to integrate theories in our practice. And some empirical research would be great, if anyone has a bit of time on their hands...

Career inaction and the psychology of doing nothing

I've come across a new theory that I'm quite excited about. The Theory of Career Inaction (Verbruggen and de Vos, 2020) seems to offer a good explanation of a phenomenon that I have come across many times in my coaching, but haven't ever quite understood. The theory unpicks what's going on with clients who know where they want to go and know what they need to do, but who still do nothing. There is, apparently, a whole wealth of research into 'the psychology of doing nothing' (who knew?) and Verbruggen and De Vos have taken some of their understandings and findings and applied them to career development in the form of their new Career Inaction Theory.

I'll try and give an overview here, but the details of the paper are at the bottom if you want to find out more. 

There are, it seems, two typical human tendencies which are to blame: the tendency to delay decisions, and the tendency to avoid taking action. I'm sure we can all recognise these in ourselves, or others.

The doing-nothing psychologists talk about three inertia-enhancing mechanisms.

1) Fear and anxiety. This stops people from taking action, and these feelings are often exacerbated by uncertain outcomes.

2) Short term-ism. People are more focused on what happens in the short term than the long term, leading them to prioritise short term comforts over long term gains.

3) Cognitive overload. When decisions are too complex, or involve too much information or too many variables, people may become paralysed and avoid the issue altogether. 

These three things which prevent us from acting are all quite powerful, but are implicit, meaning that we don't realise the impact they are having on us. This makes it hard for people to identify or articulate them.

Thinking about career decisions in the light of these three 'inertia mechanisms', it becomes quite clear why career inaction is so common: 

1) career decisions almost always have an uncertain outcome - you don't ever really know what the new job is going to be like until you actually do it - so that contributes to fear and anxiety

2) career choices very often involve short term losses - giving up a stable, familiar, known-quantity, and sometimes an income and a secure future, for the possibility of a better future, some way down the line.

3) Career decisions are complex and uncertain and there are too many variables and too many options. This all places huge demands on our brains, leading to cognitive overload.

There some situations that make career inaction either more or less likely, and it can be useful to spend some time exploring these factors with your clients.
1) A clearly crystalised desired future. If clients can find out more about the options they are considering, and put some time into visualising a clear positive future, this can lead to less fear and anxiety, and less cognitive overload.
2) Making a small change is easier than making a significant change, so if individuals can either identify a small first step, or reframe their plans to make them feel less major, they may feel that it is a less risky thing to do.
3) A deadline helps. If there is no clear window within which the individual has to make the decision, they are much more likely to believe that something better will come up, and will be less motivated to take advantage of any opportunity. Encouraging a client to set their own deadline for action can be useful.
4) Social norms. People's views about the acceptability of changing direction will be shaped by the norms of behaviour in their social circles. If their friends, family and colleagues are comfortable making changes, the individual will feel that their choice is less risky. A coach could help by encouraging the client to identify people they know who have made changes, and reflect on whether their own views have been unduly influenced by others.

Career coaches can thus have a useful part to play in encouraging action, but they can also have a positive impact when working with clients who have already failed to act. 

People who have let opportunities pass them by through inaction will often spend time thinking back to what might have been. The authors describe this as counterfactual thinking and suggest it can focus on what they could have done (the process) or what they could now be doing (the outcome). 

For some, these counterfactual thoughts can be linked to regret, in which case they can lead to self-blame, low satisfaction, low self-esteem and even poorer physical health. For others, who have managed to find a good story they can tell themselves to explain their behaviour, it can lead to a sense of relief. To help clients deal with a sense of regret, coaches can encourage them to understand why they made the choices they did, and help them to forgive themselves. 

The authors also noted that career inaction can easily lead to what they call inaction inertia: having refused to strive for one career opportunity, people seem less inclined to strive for another. The reason for this is that it's more difficult to convince ourselves that ignoring the first possible opportunity was a good idea, if we subsequently make the decision that we want to pursue to second opportunity. Career coaching can help clients unpick these complicated subconscious reactions and can free people up to make better choices in future. 

That's my brief summary of the theory. I think it's really interesting and gives us some useful ideas to help us identify what's going on with our clients, and some practical ways in which we can help. 

Verbruggen, M., & De Vos, A. (2020). When people don’t realize their career desires: toward a theory of career inaction. Academy of Management Review, 45(2), 376-394.

Does career coaching work? A look at the empirical evidence.

Career coaching is a bit fuzzy and ill-defined. It's been around as a term for some time in practice, both within the career development world, as an alternative or adjunct to career guidance or careers advice, and as a specialism within coaching. But the empirical evidence base to offer support for its effectiveness is sorely lacking. 

Just to clarify what career coaching is, my definition (Yates, 2013) suggests that it can take place in a one to one or a group context, that it is underpinned by a non-directive, non-judgemental, humanist philosophy, and that it draws on the practice or understanding of theories, models and approaches from the fields of both coaching psychology and career development. 

Career coaches looking to feel confident about the empirical evidence base behind their work, can take comfort in the evidence base underpinning coaching (see my earlier blog post for an overview: https://coachingincareers.blogspot.com/2018/03/) and career guidance (see Everitt et al., 2018 a review). But if you are looking for evidence that explores career coaching specifically, there is much less to draw from. 

The last few years can offer a few examples of studies that show the positive impact of career coaching. 

Evidence suggests that career coaching leads to higher psychological capital (Archer & Yates, 2017); reconciling work and life roles with values and needs (Brown & Yates, 2018); reduced career ambivalence (Klonek et al., 2016) (through MI); career optimism, career security and career goals (Ebner, 2019); and career optimism, and career planning (Spurk et al., 2015). It also leads to enhanced job search performance (Lim, Oh, Ju & Kim, 2019).

Group coaching has been shown to have a positive impact on career decision making self-efficacy, career planning and career decidedness with German adolescents (Jordan, Gessnitzer & Kauffield, 2016).

Some studies have also looked at career coaching within organisations, finding that the career coaching itself improves staff retention (Dugas, 2018) and job satisfaction (Fassiotto et al., 2018) and also that even having a policy that includes an offer of career coaching is linked to improved institutional satisfaction (Ling, Ning, Change & Zhang, 2018).

These papers provide an interesting starting point but we really need much more - qualitative exploratory studies, and quantitative studies to offer broader generalisations. 

References

Archer, S., & Yates, J. (2017). Understanding potential career changers’ experience of career confidence following a positive psychology based coaching programme. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 10(2), 157-175.

Brown, C., & Yates, J. (2018). Understanding the experience of midlife women taking part in a work-life balance career coaching programme: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 16(1), 110.

Dugas, Jerelyn, "Career Coaching: A Study of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Leaders'" (2018). Dissertations. 210. https://digitalcommons.brandman.edu/edd_dissertations/210

Ebner, K. (2019). Promoting career optimism and career security during career coaching: development and test of a model. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 1-19.

Fassiotto, M., Simard, C., Sandborg, C., Valantine, H., & Raymond, J. (2018). An Integrated Career Coaching and Time-Banking System Promoting Flexibility, Wellness, and Success: A Pilot Program at Stanford University School of Medicine. Academic Medicine (Ovid), 93(6), 881–887.

Jordan, S., Gessnitzer, S., & Kauffeld, S. (2016). Effects of a group coaching for the vocational orientation of secondary school pupils. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 9(2), 143-157.

Klonek, F. E., Wunderlich, E., Spurk, D., & Kauffeld, S. (2016). Career counseling meets motivational interviewing: A sequential analysis of dynamic counselor–client interactions. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 94, 28-38.

Lim, D. H., Oh, E., Ju, B., & Kim, H. N. (2019). Mediating role of career coaching on job-search behavior of older generations. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 88(1), 82-104. doi:10.1177/0091415017743009

Ling, F. Y. Y., Ning, Y., Chang, Y. H., & Zhang, Z. (2018). Human resource management practices to improve project managers’ job satisfaction. Engineering Construction & Architectural Management, 25(5), 654–669.


Spurk, D., Kauffeld, S., Barthauer, L., & Heinemann, N. S. R. (2015). Fostering networking behavior, career planning and optimism, and subjective career success: An intervention study. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 87(1), 134–144.

What makes a good day at work?

There has been considerable interest in the literature in happiness in the workplace. We already know quite a bit about what makes one person happier than another, but we have very little understanding of what researchers call 'episodic happiness': what makes one day (or one episode) better than another. This is potentially a really useful area to explore. The factors that make one person happier than another at work are generally fairly stable, and a high level of job satisfaction is down, in large part, to the characteristics of the individual - there are simply some people who enjoy work more than others. Whilst this is of course interesting, it's not very useful, because there isn't much we can do about it. An exploration of what makes one day better than another, however, puts the spotlight on the external factors - the things we might be able to change. If we can find some common themes, then this could be a great starting point for organisations trying to improve the work-experiences of their employees. 

A couple of years ago one of our students, Natasha, conducted a study into what makes a good day at work. It was this that piqued my interest in the topic, and this year the whole cohort of students helped me to collect some qualitative data exploring this topic. The students interviewed 40 adults, currently working in the UK about their jobs, and asked each of them to describe two different good days at work and reflect on what made them so good. 

The analysis of the data revealed three key findings. Good days involve i) making positive contributions,ii)  having positive relationships, and iii) a boost to self-esteem. 

Positive Contribution: what I do
A positive contribution is focused on the content of the participants' work, and at its best, involved people working hard and achieving a lot of useful stuff. This was the most dominant of all the themes and could be seen in every single narrative.

Central to a positive contribution usually was a tangible achievement, as people really enjoyed seeing the fruits of their labour or making clear progress towards a goal. These achievements tended to be particularly satisfying if the project was hard, beset with challenges, daunting or if the success was unexpected. It's interesting to see that (almost) the worse the project is, the more people gain from finishing it. 

People also found their work more rewarding if they could see its value - either working on projects that they believe are important, or through seeing that their work had a positive impact on others. The last feature of 'a positive contribution was feeling productive. The good days identified by the participants were often described as long, tiring or busy days, and people said that feeling worn out at the end of a day made them feel they had been productive. This was also seen in the number of people who spoke about the satisfaction they got from being able to cross things off their to-do lists. 

Positive Relationships: who I am with
It will come as no surprise to hear that other people featured prominently in people's good days. 
Participants enjoyed the opportunity to connect with others, both catching up with colleagues and making connections with new people. As well as social relationships, people reported enjoying collaborating with colleagues, working together on projects, or just being with others who shared the same values, mindset or goals. Finally, the idea of support came up frequently in the narratives: people's good days often included either feeling supported by others, or having the opportunity to support others. 

Positive Self-Evaluations: how I feel about myself
Two thirds of the participants' good days involved an incident that boosted their self-esteem. This theme never appeared on its own in the narratives - it seems that on its own, a boost to self-esteem isn't enough to make a good day, but it is much appreciated alongside another positive incident. Sometimes, these were moments when they realised that they were learning things, were actually pretty good at the job, or had achieved something quite tricky. More often, these moments were linked to feedback from others. Feedback was appreciated from every quarter, with participants quoting positive feedback from co-workers, clients, patients, pupils and their parents. But most impact came from being praised (particularly publicly)  by their managers. In fact, even just being noticed by managers seemed to give participants a positive boost. 

So what can we take from this?

• Managers should feel ok keeping staff busy. People enjoy working hard, so giving people extra work (within reason!) is not necessarily a bad thing. Taking on difficult or daunting tasks reap particular rewards, so should not be avoided. 
• A detailed to-do list, and an opportunity at the end of the day to tick things off and reflect on everything we have achieved might well help us to feel more productive.
• In terms of relationships, there are good things to be gained from social connections, so we should all be making time to talk to our colleagues (or clients, or students, or stakeholders) about non-work things. Managers should encourage this kind of informal interaction and support workers developing personal relationships with each other. 
• Finding ways to boost our own or others' self-esteem is important. Obviously giving workers the training and support they need will make sure that they are more likely to learn, develop their skills and expertise, and succeed in their projects. But on top of this, a culture of praise and specifically public praise can be a great way to offer extra ego-boosts to staff. Senior managers can help substantially here, as praise from them carries particular weight, and managers should remember that even just attention and engagement with their staff can make a huge difference. But it's everyone's job to help with this - giving positive feedback to anyone, whenever we can is going to help. 

And what's next?

There are lots of theories which try to account for well-being more broadly, although they haven't generally been used to help us understand episodic happiness. One of the most well-known is Seligman's PERMA model (2011) which suggests that well-being is made up of: 
Positive emotions - that's probably most similar to self-esteem in this study
Engagement - this wasn't really explicit in this study, although perhaps is linked to productivity
Relationships  - as above
Meaning - that emerged as part of 'making a contribution'
Accomplishment - closely linked to the 'positive contributions' from this study. 

So, this study does a good job of showing that Seligman's model might apply to one-off episodes at work as well as broader life experiences, but as a qualitative study, we can't be sure that we can generalise this to a wider range of people. Perhaps that should be my next study?

What kind of shoes does a social worker wear? And does it matter?

I’ve just had a paper published which describes some research about prototypical social identities – the image that we conjure up in our minds’ eyes when we think about a ‘typical’ member of a particular profession.

As a society, we have become quite wary of stereotypes. We know that they can be inaccurate and can foster discrimination and so we try to eradicate them. But actually, stereotypes are a very natural and normal part of human cognition. Our brains have developed all sorts of mechanisms to maximise the amount of information they can process, and minimise the amount of effort this takes. Stereotypes are one such mechanism and whilst it is clearly wrong to set too much store by them, it’s important to recognise that they are inevitable, and therefore I think we need to learn a bit more about them.

The study

I gathered some students together for some focus groups (24 psychology undergraduates in four focus groups) and asked them to close their eyes and imagine a typical member of four different professions: primary teacher, organisational psychologist, clinical psychologist and social worker. I then asked me to describe these prototypes. Their stories were fascinating.

The first surprising thing was the amount of detail my participants were able to give me. I was keen to push them to see how far they could go with their descriptions. Although they were a bit slow to start, once they got warmed up, they were able to give me all sorts of details about their prototypical characters. They told me what their prototypes looked like, what they wore, what their homes were like, how they spent their holidays, their weekends, their money, who they were living with, what their children were like, what they ate, what they drank, etc etc etc.. I pushed them hard but they met me step for step, and I couldn’t find a question they weren’t able to answer. How amazing to think that they all had this wealth of data about these professions, lurking in the back of their minds!

The second strange thing was that they seemed much more fluent when talking about their imagined prototypes outside work, than in work. A couple of them voiced concerns at the start about their lack of knowledge about the jobs – they said that they didn’t know what an organisational psychologist was, so weren’t sure that they would be able to contribute to the discussions. I told them not to worry, but just to close their eyes and see what came up. And despite not knowing any details about the job itself, they were able to tell me that their imagined organisational psychologist lived in Clapham, had a golden retriever, enjoyed skiing, lived with someone who worked in finance and liked a cocktail bar. It was intriguing to me that these personal stories could be so vivid, when the knowledge of the job itself was so shaky.

The prototypes described seemed to be based on a mix of societal stereotypes and personal experiences. There were clearly some characteristics that the participants’ images of the different professions had in common: the clinical psychologists were intelligent and a bit quirky; the social workers were warm, had clear left-wing values, and lived in slightly shabby homes, and they wore comfortable shoes - this came up surprisingly often. These aspects felt like socially-shared stereotypes, shared by many of the participants and probably influenced by things that we all have access to - the media, fictional characters from tv, films and books, and cultural stereotypes. But the participants’ also described some particular characteristics which seemed specific to them and were based on their own individual experiences – some spoke about primary teachers they remembered from their school days, and psychologists they themselves had met, and they clearly drew on their own experiences when imagining their prototypical professionals.

One final interesting thing was that the particular features of the prototypes described seemed to be clearly linked to personality characteristics. The comfortable shoes, slightly shabby sofas and hearty casseroles of the social workers all seemed to conjure up a warm personality. The colourful accessories and off-the-beaten-track holidays of the clinical psychologists sounded quirky. The dungarees, the karaoke and the comedy tv programmes illustrated the primary teachers’ playful nature.

So why do we care?

It seemed then that the participants had a vast wealth of knowledge about each of these professions, hidden slightly below their consciousness: they didn’t always know that they had this knowledge, but with a few questions and just a little bit of focused attention, they were easily able to bring it to the forefront of their minds. I think it’s inevitable that this information will have an impact on their career choices. How could it not? If they think of themselves as a warm person, they are bound to be more drawn to a profession whose prototype they see as warm. If they like the idea of being seen as a playful person, they are going to be more enthusiastic about choosing a profession they associate with this characteristic.

The career guidance profession is rightly concerned that people should be making their career choices on the basis of up to date, accurate and relevant careers information. Of course this is important. But if people are using their own prototypical ideas to inform their opinions, then we need to be aware of that, so that we can draw this information out, and get them to scrutinise it. If they can identify their own preconceptions, work out where their ideas have come from, and consider whether the information is accurate or relevant, then we can help them to base their decisions on the right kind of information. If we ignore the fact that our clients have a vast array of existing information then we are allowing it to influence their choices, regardless of whether it is accurate, up to date or relevant.

My suggestions might lead to some unusual career conversations, which could touch on some topics that have traditionally been outside the typical carer guidance remit. But that’s no reason to avoid them. If it helps clients to explore their ideas fully, then surely it’s worth a try?

The paper

Yates, J. & Cahill, S. (2019). The characteristics of prototypical occupational identities: a grounded theory of four occupations. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling. Online first. 10.1080/03069885.2019.1706154

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.

'As a man it's easier': a qualitative study into the experiences of women engineers in the UK

I've blogged before about the challenges facing the engineering industry as it tries to create a more diverse workforce, and we know that women are more reluctant to enter the profession and quicker to leave it. Previous studies suggest that one of the key reasons for women's dissatisfaction with their jobs is that they are frustrated with their career progression, feeling that the are not being as well paid, as quickly promoted or as valued, as they deserve. 

We wanted to find out a bit more about what was going on here, so interviewed 50 women working in one global engineering firm based in the UK, to find out about their career development experiences. We asked them how it felt to be working in a male-dominated environment, what impact they felt that their gender had on their career development, and how they accounted for the gender pay gap in their organisation. 

Before I describe the key findings, I need first to introduce the Intelligent Career Framework. This was developed by Arthur, Claman and Fillippi back in 1995, and offers advice on how to navigate your career. According to this framework, you can really enhance your chances of career success through Knowing How, Knowing Whom and Knowing Why. Knowing How is about your actual work-related skills - do you have what it takes to do the job well? Knowing Whom is all about your networks - do you know people who can advise and inform you, and who will put career enhancing opportunities your way? Finally Knowing Why is all about motivation - being clear about your career goals and your professional identity and having the drive to work hard. High levels of all three Knowings combine to give an individual the best chance of career success. 

And trawling through our women's interviews, it became clear that for each of the three Knowings, women were disadvantaged. 

Knowing How: This one is about having the right skills to do the job, and whilst the women we spoke to all were highly skilled and competent, they found that their skills were not give the same value as their male counterparts'. The participants talked about the assumptions which they saw all over the place that showed that women had a lower status than men in the organisation. Women's achievements were devalued (she only got that promotion because she was flirting with the boss / they wanted to promote a woman); feminine characteristics were devalued (empathy, emotions and sensitivity were looked down on); and women were assumed to be less capable than their male peers (women were asked to do lower level tasks than their male colleagues). The examples given were often quite subtle, but the message was clear: although women were just as capable as their male peers, their skills and abilities were always considered to be a bit inferior.

Knowing Whom: This one is about social capital, and when it came to developing useful networks, we found that men seemed to have two advantages over women. The first was that the men seemed to be a bit more comfortable putting themselves forward. They tended to talk more at meetings, brag about their achievements a bit more and ask for promotions and pay rises more often, so they generally did a better job of making themselves known. The second advantage was to do with friendships. The women talked about how much easier it is to make same-sex friendships, and they could see that the men were more likely to share common interests and just felt more comfortable with each other than they did with women. There was a lot of talk about the banter in the office, which cemented the men's friendships, but risked sounding flirtatious when it was seen between men and women. The men weren't trying to exclude the women, it was just that they more naturally gravitated to other men, and in such a male-dominated organisation, this meant that they had plenty of opportunity to build good relationships with a large number of influential colleagues. 

Knowing Why: This one is about motivation, and only started to be problematic for women once they because mothers. At the heart of the problem are two ideologies - two ideas or templates, of an 'ideal'. The ideal mother (according to our current Western culture) is one who is always available for and devoted to her children. The ideal worker (according to this organisation) is one who is always available for and devoted to the organisation. You can immediately see then how this puts mothers in an impossible situation: they simply can't be the ideal mother and the ideal worker: something has to give. The women we spoke to explained that they made the choice to leave work on time to pick up their children, they accepted calls from the school when their children were ill, and they sometimes choose to work part time. This all meant that the organisation got the message that they were less than 100% committed to their organisation, and so were less keen to put career enhancing opportunities their way. 

So with lower value accorded to their abilities, less chance of developing useful networks, and conflicting motivations for mothers, the women were disadvantaged on all three aspects of the Intelligent Career Framework. No wonder they found negotiating their careers an uphill struggle.

The framework was intended as a tool to help people to work out how to navigate their own careers, and assumes that it's down to the individuals to put the effort in, and that people are in control of their own career destinies. This study suggests that the problems are far more entrenched than that. Think about the example of conflicting ideologies: where do these ideologies come from? Of course workers don't need to be 100% devoted to their organisation to make an excellent professional contribution. It is quite possible to do an excellent job at work, but still feel that your children come first; but as soon as you make your dual loyalties apparent to your employer, they assume that your commitment to work has plummeted to zero. And there are many different ways to be a good mother - who is to say that the idea of total devotion is the right one? But these ideologies are deeply entrenched, and embedded within individuals, organisations and the whole of society. It's just not as easy as suggesting that these women should Lean In a bit more. 

So, what can be done?

One obvious solution is to make sure that the culture reflects the policies. In the organisation we were looking at, there are many good policies in place to support career development, to ensure that selection for promotion is fair, and to allow for flexible working and shared parental leave. In practice though, the culture did not support the policies. In reality, the systems for promotion were opaque, so the senior men could promote their (male) friends without anyone noticing; the family friendly policies sound great on paper, but in practice, women were penalised for taking advantage of them, and men certainly don't feel that they are encouraged to take paternity leave or work part time. A culture shift is not easy to manage, but it would certainly make a difference.