Career advice for teenagers – absolutely useless or fit for the purpose?
Posted on 8:27am, 15th March 2010 • 5 Comments
Does state-funded career advice for teenagers do what it says on the packet?
Four-fifths of the more than 500 young people recently surveyed (details below) said the career advice for teenagers they’d received was either unhelpful or only “a little bit helpful”.
Is this a fair assessment of most career advice for teenagers, though? You’d expect us to agree with it as teenagers and graduates unhappy with the public sector’s free educational and career advice services are important client groups.
We don’t – at least, not entirely.
Unlike the young people, we’d say the state’s national online and telephone careers information provision services are “EXCELLENT”. Learndirect, Connexions and Prospects all provide superb, easily searchable online information about a huge range of careers. There are web sites covering the whole range of university courses provided in the UK and providing detailed information about individual universities and courses at the click of a mouse.
The Careers Advice telephone service (providing information about qualification courses and other formal training programmes plus brief discussion-based advice) is available 8.00am – 10.00pm, 7 days a week.
So why are young people deeply unimpressed by state-funded career advice for teenagers? We think it’s because of the inadequate career guidance work. Guidance is vastly more expensive “per head” than providing automated careers information. The state seems unwilling to meet the costs of funding career advice for teenagers that’s truly “fit for the purpose” and young people suffer accordingly.
The following survey quotes show their disappointment and frustration:-
“Advisors were good at directing me towards the right resources but didn’t give me any particular ideas of careers based on my interests and aptitudes, which is what I was hoping for”.
“I felt as though I was a bottle in a factory on a manufacturing line, through the careers guidance machine and subsequently given the ill-fitting job label of news reporter’”.
“There was no real matching of ability and the job market; I had to draw my own conclusions”.
We’d argue effective career advice for teenagers depends on each individual having a significant amount of one to one discussion time with a trained, experienced and well-supported careers specialist. In every case where wrong career decisions would be costly (eg choice of degree), worthwhile educational and careers guidance should include thorough psychometric assessment.
Going to university now may leave students with £30K debt to pay off. Shouldn’t career advice for teenagers be of a much higher standard now it’s to decide whether and how they invest £30K of their future earnings?
** Young people’s views on finding out about jobs and careers – British Youth Council, NCB and Young NCB online survey.
The HTML link to the report itself still works (the pdf one doesn’t) – it’s
http://www.byc.org.uk/asset_store/documents/careers_advice_and_guidance-final_151009.pdf.
Parents put a lot of effort into trying to help their offspring get a good education (eg keeping in close touch with the school over their child’s progress, moving house to get into the catchment area of a good school and so on). They don’t seem to be so involved when it comes to making sure their teenagers get good careers advice and help with planning their further education. Why?
Lynda W • 25th March, 2010 at 10:35 am
I work at notgoingtouni.co.uk and I have just discovered this site. You raise a very valid point regarding careers guidance in the UK and I agree that we have some fantastic services in place. However, the perception amongst teenagers regarding the quality of careers guidance is probably due to the fact that they generally receive it far too late from teachers with no background in that area.
Research carried out at Southampton University indicates that choices form over many years, and by the time guidance is offered the teenager is often merely seeking information to bolster a decision they have already made, rather than making a real choice. If teenagers haven’t already made a choice by the time careers guidance is offered then things can get really tricky…
The fact that 85% of teachers feel there is a clear progression route for academic qualifications but only 35% of teachers feel there is the same clear progression route for vocational qualifications compounds the issue still further for the majority of young people (approximately 55%) that do not wish to follow the traditional academic route.
At notgoingtouni.co.uk we show young people the opportunities that exist outside of university including Apprenticeships, Foundation Degrees, Distance Learning, Gap Year options and ways to get a degree debt free. We are not anti university but we do feel it is important that young people make an informed decision before committing themselves to a huge debt gained through study. Keep up the good work!
Sarah NGTU • 27th April, 2010 at 4:05 pm
It’s not just careers advice that needs an overhaul. They really need to address the issue of graduates leaving university without the faintest idea of what graduate jobs are going to demand of them. You can have the best degree in the world in an important subject but you’re still going to get a smack in the eye if you don’t have the soft skills needed or not a shred of experience to your name.
If you ask me, universities need to start incorporating compulsory work experience into their courses. It would need to be more structured than the Year 11 stuff, more targeted towards the individual. But I doubt it’ll happen.
Nic • 24th June, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Like your idea, Nic.
Obviously it’d be more difficult to develop relevant compulsory work experience for some degrees than others but it wouldn’t be impossible (eg Archeology students could plan and negotiate dig permissions with developers and local authority planning staff).
Perhaps university Careers Services could use a compulsory work element to raise their profile with freshers, course tutors, etc. I think careers advice is still seen by too many as a bolt on service at the periphery of university life.
Careers Partnership (UK) • 24th June, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Excellent advice there, everyone should be focusing more on their career when the recession puts such strains on the labour market. Start with the bottom up I say, you can’t command respect from others until you have respect from yourself, that sort of motto. Do you know your cv well? career development is all about retrospective learning and self awareness.
http://www.tobiasbishop.blogspot.com for my upcoming career blog.
Tobias • 4th July, 2010 at 2:38 pm