A recent Guardian report quoted City and Guilds’ CEO Kirstie Donnelly as saying the UK has around 42,000 UK job vacancies in construction, 60,000 in transport, 170,000 in food and accommodation and 200,000 in care. Days later the government issued its latest update on shortage occupations, where it was offering skilled worker visas: it highlighted health and care managers and frontline workers, scientists, engineers, IT (eg business analysts, programmers, software developers, web designers), vets and architects.
Ask career advisers at City of Bristol College and they’ll cite skills gaps in green technologies, IT, logistics, hospitality and customer services (particularly the virtual side). Regionally, Bristol airport remains strong in customer service opportunities although, in line with national trends, recruitment for its popular engineering jobs and apprenticeships is currently taking a hit because of the impact of lock-down measures on business growth.
Skills gaps since Brexit, made worse by the pandemic, nevertheless present FE colleges with a big challenge and responsibility. And in the vanguard of a national push for more skilled workers sit college career advisers.
To venture into the ‘every day is different’ world of career advice, you need a broad range of skills to be able to support students both in and outside colleges on how to choose the right career path and qualifications.
Charlotte Phillips, who joined her college’s careers department last year, is a former secondary school teacher in art, photography and textiles and comes from a creative arts background. “I realised through my teaching that I really enjoyed looking at students’ progression, their next steps and helping guide them in their choices - during lockdown I noticed their aspirations seemed to drop off a bit so, for me, moving into careers advice was a natural progression.”
Choosing a future career path can be mind-boggling for students starting out with options wide open. “You’ve got to be able to communicate well and really empathise,” says Charlotte, “particularly if a student has not got the grades they wanted to follow a particular route.” Organisational flexibility is essential as the job can get quite demanding at certain times of the year when there is an influx of students at any one time and they all need that kind of support.
“You never know what each day will bring,” says Charlotte’s fellow careers adviser colleague, Sam Hopwood, who had long experience working with and advising a wide variety of young people on career choices before joining the college’s careers department five years ago. “You might have gathered certain information about an individual or a group of students and when they sit in front of you and can ask questions you have to think about how to redefine things. You’ve got to have a passion for exploring and giving them enough information to let them make their own choices.”
Lateral thinking is key. Charlotte says she may have a couple of students booked in to discuss a specific career and then during discussion she may be able to suggest something else they had not considered. “It’s great to explore options with them.”
Do people need a certain mindset to work in careers advice? “You have to trust you really know where to look and can offer as much information as possible,” says Sam. “You don’t have all the answers - but that’s okay - you can’t be master of everything. It’s all about knowing where the right places are to look.”
Also crucial is having a wide knowledge of the different qualification levels and the varied ways a student can progress. You can always resort to networking with people within or outside the college, says Charlotte. “If, say, a student is looking at engineering you can do the prep work and look at the curriculum on offer to check on the career opportunities available.”
Are there particular time pressures? “Yes, absolutely! September is the busiest by far,” says Charlotte. “A student might have just got GCSE or A-level results. Year 11 students might visit the college with their parents and want to discuss different courses and qualifications - should they go down the BTec, A-level or apprenticeship route? There may also be external adult learners trying to match their own aspirations with a suitable college course.”
Government post-Brexit reforms to tackle the problem of yawning skills gaps across UK industry have been part of a resurgence of interest in careers services - and thus more job opportunities for would-be careers advisers - as more responsibility has fallen on colleges to produce skilled workers.
Only last year the government published its white paper, Skills for Jobs - lifelong learning for opportunity and growth, in which it pledged to continue extending coverage of careers hubs to local communities across England and support more schools and colleges to ‘deliver world-class careers education in their areas’.
Yes, Brexit and covid have had an impact on student progression and what options might have been potentially open, says Charlottle. “It’s very much about using labour market information to reassure students what is still available to them.”
The push on careers has seen more people with no previous affiliations now go to their local FE college for careers advice. “Your day can be quite planned when all of a sudden somebody can come into college unannounced and want to explore the options,” says Charlotte. “You need to focus on them there and then.” It just gives an added element to the job to make it that much more diverse, challenging and interesting.
Positive student feedback is what really makes Sam and Charlotte’s day. “I worked with a 17- year-old student who was tearing her hair out before Christmas wondering whether to carry on or become a potential NEET,” says Sam. “I talked through lots of options and she eventually stayed on her course. That was pretty amazing.
“Then there was an adult not linked to the college who got himself the job he wanted after I’d advised him over the phone; I found that very rewarding. Things like that are great to hear, especially when former students you’ve advised sometimes stop you in the street and thank you.”
Charlotte cites a young female student really struggling on her course due to personal reasons, but when they’d sat down and talked about what she was actually interested in she ended up transferring over and starting an apprenticeship.
Each working day can be very different, says Charlotte. “You might have two or three appointments booked in with students - and then someone outside the college might just turn up wit a course query. We’ll often also give talks to different classes using local market information and cover subjects such as progression routes via university, completing CVs and job applications, and preparing for interviews.
“We also get approached by different companies and organisations to provide student cover or part-time work, which we’ll then advertise internally or link in with curriculum support staff. We’ve recently been approached by engineering construction companies offering degree apprenticeships” - true gold dust within the current post-lockdown climate of cutbacks and training opportunities put on hold.
For budding careers advisers, Charlotte says you need to be able to think on your feet and work out the factors being laid out before you by your ‘clients’ during an advice session. “I aim to find out as much background information on my students as possible. They may have been with us for two or three years and I’ll need to see if and how they have progressed. Then you can explore options further.”
Recent tasks include attending a couple of local external career fairs in Bristol comprising various employers and education providers. “It’s reaching out to the public and publicising what our college offers, and how people can progress in or switch careers. If someone is considering taking up FE teaching, for instance, I’d make sure they fully understand the role and what it involves - we’ll use our own or external resources to go through it with them … we give them as much information as we can so they fully understand. What we don’t do is just say this is the course for you, we’ll put you on that straight away.”
Diagnostic tools play an important role. The college hosts an online assessment tool based on personality types and the sort of jobs people tend to go for. “If they have an idea of what interests them but have no experience, we might help them get some work experience,” says Charlotte.
Sam sums up: “We don’t have answers but we do have access to information. We can’t tell someone what to do, it’s up to the individual … but we do try to make them as informed as possible. If they want to walk on the moon, we’ll help them get there!”
AoCJobs, part of the Association of Colleges, connects teachers and support staff with schools and colleges for online job opportunities.