Careertography

I have been working in careers information for many years. I have a lot of experience of dealing with student enquiries. So much that I don't often think about how I do it. What sort of questions do I ask? How do I figure out what information to give them (and how much)? How do I know when to refer them for careers advice (or elsewhere)?

It's good to step back and think about how you do things. To question your questions. Diagnostic questioning is a phrase I have been hearing more about recently in regard to careers information interactions. I was at an AGCAS regional conference in Kent last year, where one of the presentations was about redefining the information team. This included using diagnostic models to assess and triage students accordingly. Recently, I attended a CareersGroup webinar on effective diagnostic questioning techniques and found myself getting increasingly angry at some of the suggestions. It reminded me of the time (many years ago) when we had AGCAS training for information staff on how to question students. I don’t know if the word diagnostic was used, but the advice was similar. That made me angry, too.

I have a number of issues. One of the main ones, I think, is being told what to do by a careers adviser. Not the advisers themselves. The one conducting the webinar recently was very good and had some useful insights. It is rather that they come to the issue, naturally enough, from an advice perspective. So the model they choose to frame the diagnostic questions is an advice model, in this case DOTS. This is a career planning model built around a four stage process of self awareness, option generation, decision making and taking action.

I’m quite partial to theory. And it’s helpful for information staff to have an understanding of where the student is at in their career thinking. However, I am not convinced that this model is useful as a framework for question generation. Otherwise, you might end up with questions like these (suggested in the CareersGroup webinar, one example for each stage):

- What kind of skills have you not had the opportunity to try out yet? - How reliable is the information you already have about your options? - What bad decisions have you made in the past? - How could you increase your chances of success in the transition?

I can’t imagine a situation where any of those questions would be appropriate for information staff to use. However, it also reveals a profound misunderstanding of the role of information professionals and the constraints they work under. We are generally in the front line, on some sort of reception desk, the first port of call for students entering the Centre. Students don’t make appointments to see us ( I am aware that some services offer information appointments, but this is not widespread, and not the issue I am looking at here), there is no explicit contracting involved when they interact with us. We are in the open and behind a desk.

There are two main issues that arise from this; time constraints and knowledge/role limits. Most information desk transactions will only take a few minutes. This might be because other people are waiting (for appointments, events or queries), particularly during busy times of year like autumn term. However, the situation of being on an open reception desk also sets the terms for the transaction.  When it’s quiet, or when you have particular knowledge/interest in the enquiry (or just want to help), or when the student shows no sign of wanting to leave, it can be tempting to go into more depth. However, for the most part, the aim is to get to the heart of what the student wants as quickly as possible. There is no time to ask the types of questions suggested above, even if we wanted to.

This brings me to my next point, which is that we shouldn’t want to ask them. It’s about realising our knowledge/role limits. We are there to provide information (or access to information) for the most part. We can advise on information sources, or how to best access those sources, but we need to know our limits. If the conversation starts heading towards careers advice/guidance, it’s time to refer them to a careers adviser. 

Also, it’s good to know the knowledge/role limits of careers advisers. Sometimes students arrive with very specific/niche/in-depth requests, which an adviser is never going to know (or perhaps know less than us about). In this situation, it would be doing the student (and adviser) a disservice to book them a careers advice appointment. Not everything has to, or can be, answered while the student is present. Complicated information enquiries can be dealt with by taking the student’s details and researching their question later.

We shouldn’t view our roles as being at the lowest end of the careers spectrum, with careers advisers on the next level. It’s about recognising our role/value in the process and that we fulfil different functions. Sometimes when a student presents an enquiry, it is information that they require rather than advice. 

Another issue I have with the diagnostic questioning model is the word diagnostic. It’s probably just me, but it seems to suggest a process. That there may be a series of set questions to be asked in order to diagnose the student’s issues and look to provide an answer. This hasn’t been suggested directly in any of the sessions I have attended, it’s just the impression that the term gives me. Also, diagnostic seems to presuppose a problem or that something is wrong. There may well be, of course, but not necessarily. I guess it feels to me that the term diagnostic, allied to the DOTS model, automatically gives a guidance framework that doesn’t adequately reflect the situation for information staff.

I wonder if libraries could provide a better solution for us. Disclaimer: I trained as a librarian, and worked in a library briefly before starting in careers information. I know a number of information staff who have done the same. I didn’t particularly like working there, which is why I moved. However, in terms of our roles, I would suggest that the work of librarians and careers information staff is more closely linked than that of careers information staff and careers advisers in many ways. In particular, there is a client interaction scenario, referred to as a reference interview by librarians, which could provide a better approach for careers information professionals. One that more accurately reflects our situation. It still relies on understanding the real needs of the student, but seeks to do so from an information rather than a guidance perspective. Also, it replicates our position in the sense that library interactions are out in the open and generally only last a few minutes.

Here are the stages that are recognised to make up a reference interview, and how I think they might translate to a careers information setting:

Being welcoming/approachable. This can be non-verbal as well as verbal. Some students are hesitant to ask for help. Looking approachable (smiling, initiating eye contact, being aware of students in the Centre) can be key to establishing rapport quickly and enabling a positive start to the interaction.

General information gathering to understand the bigger picture. Understanding that the initial question presented might not be actually what they want (or need). That there will be a context to the question. Asking open questions is a good way to get to this. They enable the student to get over what they want to say, and allow you to get a picture of what they actually want or need. In our situation, using some quick clarifying questions to find out what year they are in and what degree they are doing can also help to establish the context.  Avoiding premature diagnosis is key.

Specific information-gathering. Focussing in on what the enquirer wants. Asking sense-making questions can be useful here. These are particular types of open question which ask about the student’s situation, what gaps they have in their knowledge/understanding and what they hope to gain from bridging those gaps. This should allow us to better understand where they are at with their career thinking, but not in as prescribed a way as with the diagnostic questions model.

Giving information, advice or instructions. Pointing to useful resources (online or in the Centre), showing how best to use them, giving information/advice on particular career areas (as applicable), showing how to use in-house booking/vacancy/events systems (CareerHub in our case). Knowing what resources you have, what events are coming up. what jobs are being advertised is very useful. However, knowing what resources/events/jobs are relevant to the student’s situation is key. Also, knowing when to refer them to a careers adviser; when it looks like the student’s situation needs advice/guidance.

Finishing, including feedback and summary. Checking that they have got what they wanted, making sure they know they can come back again when they need to. It might be useful to check throughout the interview, rather than just at the end. Pay attention to body language or changes in expression for clues to how they are listening to what you are saying or asking. Restate or ask new questions as necessary.

I’m sure that I forget or ignore this in practice sometimes, or get things wrong. However, it does represent a more realistic approach to me, rather than one based on a guidance/counselling model. It also feels like we should be learning from libraries, which are closer to the work that we do. The workshop that I attended at last year’s AGCAS conference in Kent talked about traditional and new approaches to information work. In particular, it talked about seeing ourselves as librarians rather than information advisers as a traditional approach. But what are librarians if not information advisers? Also, it talked of the risk of a silo mentality for information staff. Perhaps this blog post is an example of a silo mentality... 

I didn’t think I’d have much to say about this week’s #rhizo15 task. I’m still not sure. However, I happened to notice a post from Data Physicalization (@dataphys) pop up on my Twitter feed and it made me think about physical representations of knowledge and whether this could be a useful tool for self-analysis and reflection.

There are a few examples of self-logging on the Data Physicalization website. Also, some network visualisations, which might be useful for mapping the learning environment. However, I think I will look at LEGO for the moment. David Gauntlett has developed ways to use LEGO as a social science research tool. He has also been running LEGO workshops for PhD students as a “way for people to share their ideas, collaborate, and reflect on their experiences or working practices.“ Could something similar be used to help people measure themselves in a learning environment? To measure their experience, their connections, their feelings?

Whether on an individual or a collaborative basis, making stuff can help people connect with their ideas/thoughts/feelings in a different way to other forms of reflection. I work in a HE Careers department and I feel there is a place for using LEGO (and other forms of physicalisation) to help students with their career thinking. Collage can also be used as a way for people to construct non-linear narratives to help them think about where they are now and where they might go. There is also a close connection between making and the idea of flow, written about by Laura Gibbs for this week’s #rhizo15 challenge.

The #rhizo15 talk of what it means to be lost has prompted me to dig out my copy of Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost. It's almost too quotable, but here are a few samples:

- To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away.... to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.

- The question then is how to get lost. Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction, and somewhere in the terra incognita in between lies a life of discovery.

- Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing... Either way, there is a loss of control.

- Looking forward [on a train] you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery... Of course, to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and a set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go.

Letting go is a key learning subjective for me. Not knowing what I want to know, where I want to go, or even where I am. But using the knowledge/experience/world-view I do have to explore my surroundings. Picking up clues left by others (either deliberately or serendipitously), or engaging with other fellow travellers directly for a while. Doing this for as long as my curiosity is piqued, for as long as I am engaged by my surroundings. Perhaps, removing myself at times and re-entering at another point of the course. My own asignifying rupture!

I am not likely to be in the position to teach a rhizomatic course (if teach is the right word, anyway). However, at the moment my feeling is this. Maybe it’s about creating the landscape, throwing everything you know about the subject into that landscape and inviting people to lose themselves in it. You can create signposts in that landscape, but also diversions, u-turns and (crucially) barriers. Obstacles make people think creatively, whether it’s just to think of a way round or to take the time to scale them. Navigating the course becomes an act of wayfinding. However, course participants can also add to the landscape, leave their own clues, create their own desire lines, forge their own knowledge. This then becomes the course’s knowledge, so that even if you return to a place that you have been before, it will not be the same. No beginning. No end. The constant middle.

I've been thinking about rhizomes for a few years now. On and off, mostly off. However, so far it has mostly been a metaphor to explore or vaguely think about. Then I came across Andrea de Pascual's Rhizomatic Museum and an article she wrote about invisible pedagogies, and it hit home. What would a rhizomatic careers centre look like? How would it operate? You've got to take inspiration when it strikes. Here are a few initial thoughts.

Andrea de Pascual talks about the power-knowledge barrier as an invisible pedagogy, and I think this is prevalent in careers centres. Our workshops are mostly of the instructional kind. One adviser at the front giving a Powerpoint presentation on CVs, applications, interviews (or whatever), with the students as largely passive recipients. I like de Pascual's idea of having more than one educator at a workshop in order to decentralise people's attention and (interestingly) to allow multiple viewpoints (even disagreements). We spend a lot of time trying to create a careers centre standpoint (e.g. single Powerpoint presentations to be used by many advisers). Why not allow ideas to be questioned and debated? Also, why do we assume that our students will know nothing about these subjects? We could open things up, get student experience on what worked (or didn't) for CVs, interviews etc and create a dialogue that everyone can learn from.

In a rhizomatic museum, visitors can add meaning to exhibitions and produce their own knowledge. "We find strategies through which participants and visitors can leave a footprint in the gallery or the museum... We think of the museum as a learning laboratory in which new layers of knowledge are added to pre-existing ones". Can this be implemented in careers centres? My experience with careers centres (using, visiting and working in) is that they are generally quite stolid and uninspiring. Information rooms have mostly followed a library model where the main aim is to classify and display an array of stuff. However, now that the stuff (files, books, prospectuses) is disappearing it might be time to think of the information room as an exhibition space. More like a gallery or museum.

We can create displays around different careers themes. In a rhizomatic careers centre, however, there should be a way for students to add their own knowledge to these. Interactive workshops/discussions in the centre (rather than in a separate space) based around the displays? Giving space for students to add their own observations and comments within the display or to create their own? In this sense, the displays need to ask questions rather than present facts. They should stimulate discussion.

I'm not naive. I don't expect a huge rush of students to interact with our centres. Or any at all. However, I think we need to think of new ways to engage with students and make them active participants in their career thinking. For lots of reasons (historical and cultural), many students approach careers centres in a passive way. They might want/expect to be told what to do with their lives, to be placed in a job or to be given a list of resources for [insert obscure career area here]. It can be a shock when they get here and find out they have to do a lot of this for themselves (with advice/information from us for back-up). Some of them won't come back. What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that we need to break through this cultural baggage earlier. Changing our own culture in order to allow student voices to have an equal value to our own could be part of this.

Another could be moving out of our own space to meet students in theirs. The rhizome cannot be contained. In a recent post about learning spaces, Peter Bryant makes the point that learning occurs where people happen to be. Learning spaces can be physical (libraries, cafes, outdoor spaces) or virtual (platforms, devices, in the cloud) or a combination of the two. Wherever "people congregate and share". He asks how we can understand, engage and support those spaces and how we change our own teaching/learning practices to make the most of them? Stanford University's Career Development Center has developed a programme of campus meetups around campus and career treks to employers as part of a shift from a transactional to connections model of service delivery. A rhizomatic careers centre knows no boundaries. Part of its remit must be to seek and engage. To listen and learn from students rather than simply talking at them in a different place.

When I was in Glasgow, doing a Master’s in the late 90s, a flatmate of mine was quite brazen about lying on his CV. He made up qualifications and experience. Even wrote his own references. For him it was about getting where he wanted to be as quickly as possible. He was a clever guy, and a consummate bullshitter, who backed his ability to get away with it. He also spent the first 6 months trying to run a nightclub promotion business from our flat and barely did any academic work. By the time we left, he had got onto another course at a prestigious architecture school in London. He also helped me a great deal with my CV…

Forward 3 years. My year in Glasgow appears on my CV as:

1997-1998  MSc Information and Library Studies University of Strathclyde - Won John Smith Prize for dissertation

I actually won the John Smith Prize for a dissertation related to publishing (I suspect I was the only entrant), but decided to drop the last  bit. It’s not an outright lie, but it gives a different impression to the reader. Hopefully a better impression.

A CV is purely a vehicle. It is a construct whose single aim is to gain you advantage over somebody else in order to achieve a goal. Curriculum Vitae translates as ‘course of life’, but no employer expects, or wants, to see the course of your life transcribed. They expect (want!) to see how well you can sell the skills/experience you have (or tell them you have). They expect (want?) to see a degree of over-egging your skills/experience. Like my example above, it doesn’t have to involve wholesale invention. Who doesn’t say they have excellent IT skills? The application process does not have rules, but it does have conventions. In other words, there is collusion all round between employers and jobseekers.

A CV is also a fictional construct. Memory is unreliable. As soon as you write it down, you have written only your interpretation of what happened. What you remember is not the actual event but how that event fits into your own view of the world and your experience of it. Facts are slippery, and hard to prove either way. Memory is also selective. You leave stuff out. Stuff that doesn’t fit your picture of how you fit in the world, or that makes you look bad. This is psychological self-defence, but when you are writing your CV it is simply good practice.

In the careers world you are never far away from a blog post or news article warning you about the consequences of lying on your CV. There are high profile cases of people who have been sacked from positions of responsibility because they have lied about their education or experience. In one case it helped convict somebody of murder.

But don't let that put you off! Accept that your CV is a fiction, that employers expect a level of exaggeration when they look at your CV. It's a liberating feeling. Maybe, accepting that your CV is a fiction, the use of narrative, storytelling techniques is the next logical step? Find out who will be your boss. Research them online. Create a character that will appeal to them directly. Make them believe in that character. If you succeed, there is a good possibility you might get the job even if you fall short in real life.

My wife was looking to get a job in university administration, in which she had no tangible experience. She lied about her IT skills (while getting emergency Excel training from a friend). In the interview, she had to make a database. She tried to do this using Excel and failed miserably. She got the job. Turned out her new boss was more impressed that she had a First Class degree, when none of the existing admin staff had H.E. qualifications.

Getting a job is not a straightforward, linear process despite how it appears. The best qualified person on paper doesn't always get the job, whether they have lied or not. Sometimes the lie can be discovered and you still get the job. But cheating does pay. Everybody does it. From small exaggerations to brazen lies. It's part of the process. There are consequences for some, but for most people it will just result in a new job.

I wonder if careers information could do with more "heads-up mapping"? Do we require people to orientate themselves too much to the information, rather than point them to stuff that is appropriate to the way they are facing?

Getting lost is the only way to find your own path...

Embracing Uncertainty - Rhizomatic learning (by davecormier)

Like the idea of rhizomatic learning as moving away from the quest for right and wrong answers towards looking at making decisions where there is no definitive answer.

I was idly googling for map metaphors last summer when I came across Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome concept. Specifically, regarding the principle of cartography relating to it.

The map is open and connectable in all its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation.

I knew nothing about Deleuze and Guattari or what a rhizome was, but their notion of maps struck a chord somehow. The idea of connectivity at every point and constant movement. It also resonated with other books on maps that I had been reading (You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination  by Katharine Harmon, Maps of the Imagination: the Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi and A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit). Reading more about the rhizome concept, it also ties in with the chaos theory of careers in a number of ways. The emphasis on non-linearity, open systems and complexity makes me think it is a metaphor worth exploring further.

Educationalists such as Dave Cormier and Keith Hamon have been exploring the practical application of the rhizome idea in teaching and learning contexts and have been blogging about this for a number of years. Their blogs have been invaluable in my attempt to get my head around Deleuze and Guattari's ideas. My first attempt to read the introduction to A Thousand Plateaus, where the rhizome concept is explored, lead to bafflement more than anything. I haven't read any academic writing for a long time, but it felt like a new language. I knew the words (well most of them), but could make no sense of them. That's French philosophy for you, too, I guess. However, as I persevered, I started to tune in to the language more. I can't say still that I get everything, but think I'm starting to get the gist. And I think there may be some useful connections between the rhizome and the world of careers/information.

First some basics. Here are the principles of the rhizome as set out by Deleuze and Guattari:

Connection and Heterogeneity

Multiplicity

Asignifying rupture

Cartography and Decalcomania

And some initial thoughts. I'm all for connections: creating links from different aspects of your life or creating links between different resources. Part of the mapping process is to look for, and create meaning from, those connections. The rhizome idea also seems to encourage creative exploration. This can/should occur in any aspect of life simultaneously.

One of the most interesting ideas is that of the asignifying rupture. Breaks can happen in a rhizome at any point. This may be due to external blockages or obstructions (rather like I was looking at in previous posts). There will always be a line of flight or escape route. Constant movement. It also emphasises the relationship with the outside world. The rhizome exists in a context. In careers terms this will be social, economic and cultural amongst other things. In information it could be technology, alternative resources, the information literacy of users. The relationship is dynamic and changing.

Deleuze and Guattari also talk about nomads, I guess as the human equivalent to a rhizome. This notion ties in very nicely with Katharine Brooks' wise wandering system from You Majored in What?, too. It also makes me want to be an Information Nomad, but that's another matter.

I'm fascinated by the way people move through the landscape. Most of the time our paths are delineated for us. We have roads, pavements and signage to help us find our way. And yet. And yet... as the research on the psychology of wayfinding showed, people don't even follow their own directions. Even when the paths are clear, we find different ways to navigate them. Things may change, depending on circumstances, mood, weather or a whole host of other factors.

Things get even more interesting when blocks are put in our way (or removed). We move through space like water. Routes have been cut for us and generally we follow them. When something blocks our way, we try to go round it. If there is a traffic jam on a main road, some cars will spill off down any available side roads to form rat runs. Trying to continue their journeys.

Sometimes barriers are removed. This opens up new options. New directions of travel. For a period over the summer, on the campus where I work, part of a small, foot-high fence next to a walkway was removed. Almost instantaneously, people were moving through that gap onto the grass, as it provided a slightly shorter route to the main part of campus. As soon as the fencing was replaced, we returned to following the paved path once again. The fence is only a foot high. You could hop over it without much trouble. The mere fact of it being there (or not being there) changed how we navigated the landscape in front of us.

My feeling is that most people live their lives based on what's in front of them. We make hundreds of micro decisions every day (not even recognising them as decisions for the most part) that govern how we get around. Every journey we take is different, no matter how familiar we are with that journey.

I wonder if this relates to how we navigate careers ideas and our information seeking. We may drift through life a lot of the time, but there is always the possibility that a micro-decision, made at any point, could send us in a new direction. Or make us think about our current direction in a new light. It might be an obstacle in our path, or an obstacle being removed. Something that makes us approach things from a new angle. We may end up back on the same road, or we could vere off somewhere else.

This is interesting. I find that I think much more creatively at work than in other situations. I'm looking for solutions or trying ideas out, and there is a context for it. Obstacles become a challenge and help the creative thinking process. With my information hat on I'm never happier than when I'm on the hunt for an elusive piece of information for an obscure request. The key line here is "the benefits of obstacles were particularly important for those people willing to stay engaged in a difficult task". Engagement is key. As the article goes on to say, "The danger of constraints, after all, is that they cause people to quit".

So, when it comes to thinking about careers, and engaging with careers information, I think you probably have to be quite driven to get past the obstacles that will get in your way. Either with specific goals in mind, or driven to explore your options.

My feeling is that most people aren't one-track-mind driven, but still want something to make them want to get up in the morning (apart from just to pay the bills). These are the people that often drift or get lost or don't engage with careers thinking much at all.

Peter Broderick - Maps (by bestofsoccer)

This came up on shuffle the other day. It seems appropriate and is rather lovely:

This open map is all you've got Close your eyes and point to another spot This time just keep 'em Just keep those eyes closed Don't even look at the spot you just chose

Interesting article on the psychology of wayfinding. Could apply to career planning too:

Graph-based = conventional planning. Looking at the most efficient route to get where you want to be

Direction-based = the way real life intervenes. You respond to your circumstances, take different routes and short-cuts 

Directions to a stranger = how you describe your career plans when asked. Simplified, broader strokes

Could also work for information seeking...

This is a bit of a false start. I wrote a post for the Allaboutcareers blog last year on chaos theory. I was going to link to it, but it has disappeared now, so I'm going to re-post it here. It had a particular audience in mind, but it still summarises my feelings pretty well. The Chaos Theory of Careers has interested me since I first came across it a few years ago. I like the emphasis it puts on creativity, connections and non-linearity. I will revisit it again (particularly since a book has now been published by its originators, Jim Bright and Robert Pryor), but here is my attempt at an introduction...

Career is the ultimate C-word. It is fraught with social and psychological meaning. From the first ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ to the repeated ‘What can you do with a [insert namby pamby arts degree here] degree?’ it hangs over your head like a stone. Economic recession makes the stone heavier. At some point you’re supposed to know what you want to do, right? And if you’re a graduate there is supposed to be some link with your degree subject or your personality (whatever that means).

We all collude with this idea. Graduate Prospects has its Options with your subject and we have Careers with your degree (with added carefully selected Sussex graduate destinations info). There was even a 2010 from the CIPD saying that we risked a ‘disillusioned generation’ because ‘nearly six in ten (59%) of employees who graduated in the last two years are not currently working in a field or profession related to the degree they studied’. Add careers profiling into the mix, where you plot your skills, interests & motivations and out pops a list of careers you are suited to, and you have an extremely linear view of your options. And what if none of this is what you want to do? The psychological C-word blockage just gets ratcheted up a notch.

Enter Chaos Theory. Yes, that chaos theory with the pretty fractals and everything. What this basically means is that life is complex and difficult to predict. You have to start with what you know right now and work from there:

Embrace ambiguity, stay open-minded and try to look for connections between your interests, skills and experience

Know that there is no single, perfect career but lots of potential choices throughout your working life

Change is constant and likely to be unexpected. But it might take you off in whole new directions, if you let it

Seek the Butterfly Effect. The seemingly small occurrence now that could feel life-changing when you look back on it as your future self

Recognise the different attractors that somehow draw you in or arouse your curiosity. Chaos theory breaks them down into Point Attractors (things that keep your interest focussed); Pendulum Attractors (things that you oscillate between and can stop you from progressing); Strange Attractors (off-the-wall things that don’t seem to fit but are important to you); Torus Attractors (repeated cycles of behaviour that need to be broken)

Sounds complicated, but that’s sort of the point. There are ways to navigate around the fractals of your life and find the hidden patterns lurking there. You just have to be creative. If you want to know more, and try some practical exercises to get you started, see You Majored in What? By Katharine Brooks, or check out her Career Transitions blog.