Who is this meant for?

 

Careers advisers and guidance counsellors who have either not used GWO before, or who want to think more seriously about how it relates to all the other interventions they use in their guidance practice and to all the other resources they use to support a guidance seeker.

 

Teachers and lecturers in schools or colleges where GWO is to be used to support careers education and guidance

 

Some parts - especially part one - may be helpful to guidance seekers themselves if they are unsure where to start or how GWO could help them.

 

 

Objectives

 

 

After completing the training module you will be able to

 

 

 

1.      say how GWO meets the learning needs of its users in terms of a model of guidance outcomes

 

 

2.      describe the criteria you would use to refer users of GWO to an appropriate section of the program, and when you would not recommend its use

 

 

3.      describe three levels of support for users and hence three potential contexts for use

 

 

4.      use GWO as the basis for a group guidance session

 

 

5.      integrate GWO as a learning resource into the current practice and resource provision of your organisation.

 

 

 

Part 1. What can GWO do for you?

 

This introduces the idea of guidance outcomes and proposes five broad headings for these. It shows how GWO might help us achieve some or all of these. This section could be used by guidance seekers who want some advice on how to use the program or by careers advisers who want a quick picture of how GWO relates to guidance outcomes.

 

Part 2. Where do I start?

 

This takes the ideas a step further and introduces the concept of diagnosis in careers guidance, showing that guidance seekers may differ in terms of their readiness for decision making, the complexity of the problems facing them, and which phase of the guidance cycle they have reached so far. It also explains why it is important to work this out before trying to offer help

 

 

Part 3. Now Test Yourself:

 

Discusses how the resources available in GWO can be mapped on to the resource matrix and offers practical exercises for you to try out. There is a short checklist at the end, which you will find useful if you are the manager or policy maker in your organisation or have a significant input into policy decisions.

 

Part 4. Using GWO with groups.

 

Discusses group guidance - the reasons for it, the experiential learning cycle, and offers 4 sample exercises to illustrate how GWO could be used to support this in a group context.

 

 

 

You could start with any of these sections, but whereas parts 1 and 4 can be used separately from the others, you will find that parts 2 and 3 go together well in that order.

 

 

 

 

 

To make a good choice of career, you first need to know yourself - what you like and dislike, what you are capable of, what you can offer an employer. You also need to know what you could do - the occupations, jobs or courses that are open to you. You need to find the ones that are a good match for your interests, skills and temperament, the ones that have more of your likes than your dislikes. Then you may have to decide which of the ones on your shortlist you are going to try for. This may mean thinking harder about what you really want out of life and work - your values. Finally, you need to work out the tactics of getting what you want - how to find a job, apply for it, and succeed at the interview. If you don’t succeed at once, you may need help in dealing with unemployment. If you do succeed, you may need help in making the change from one occupation or workplace to another.

 

Where have you got to so far? Wherever you are in this process, GWO can help you:

 

 

x    you can take the interest test and find out about your interests

 

x    you can take the skills test and find out about what you are good at doing

 

x    you will be able to think about how you feel about different aspects of work - the workplace, what you wear while working, and so on

 

x    you will be able to think about the sorts of things you want to avoid or would dislike

 

 

 

x    what occupations there are, what they are like

x    how they are similar to other occupations in the same job family or different from them

x    the sort of people who do them,

x    what the entry qualifications are, the training, the prospects

x    what the workplace looks like where the job is done

x    what skills are needed to do it

x    how you would feel about working for yourself

 

 

 

x    the interest test gives you a list of occupations that match your interests

 

in addition:

 

x    you can see how people in different occupational groups dress, select the groups you prefer to be like, and see the occupations that dress like that

 

x    you can select from a list of 100 keywords the ones that are important for you and see what occupations have what you want

 

x    if you have a disability you can see the occupations that you could enter without difficulty

 

x    you can get a list of occupations that your favourite school or college subjects would be useful in

 

x    you can see what occupations are left when you eliminate the ones that mean doing what you dislike or want to avoid

 

x    you can also see what occupations are like those you first thought of, so you have more ideas to choose from.

 

 

x    by showing you which occupations have more of your likes than your dislikes

 

x    by showing you which occupations  are most likely to use your skills

 

x    by giving you a lot more information to decide on about each occupation

 

x    by letting you see what each occupation is going to demand of you

 

 

x    by advising you how to look for and apply for a job, and how to handle the job interview if you get one.

 

x    if you are unemployed for any length of time, by giving you some positive support and advice about how to deal with this

 

x    by giving you some information about the local labour market in your area, and where to get help in looking for a job if you’re having difficulties

 

This set of instructions is based on the DOTS model of learning outcomes of guidance. For more details see Law, W.G., and Watts, A.G. (1977) "Schools, Careers and Community," London, CIO.

 

 

When you meet a guidance seeker for the first time, you need to identify their needs. (Otherwise how do you know the help you give them is appropriate? You could both be wasting your time, talking past each other, or missing the real point.) If you’re an experienced guidance counsellor or careers adviser you probably do this automatically almost without thinking. But it helps to make it explicit.

 

 There are three or four things you take into account when you do this:

 

1. READINESS. How ready are they to make a career choice? Some people are very undecided and may need a lot of help. They may lack confidence completely, or be very worried about getting some aspect of the choice wrong, or be feeling very negative. They may be frightened of making decisions as such. A few may have problems that are nothing to do with career choice and which need to be sorted out first. You may well end up referring them to someone else for help you can’t give yourself..

 

2. COMPLEXITY. How complex is the choice for them? Some people are very poor, living in an economically depressed area with high unemployment, with no means of getting to the areas of the country where the jobs are. Others may have dependent children or parents they need to stay at home to look after. Or they may be people with special needs of one kind or another, or ex-offenders. Or perhaps they are from an ethnic minority with particular cultural values, which they need to take account of. All of these will have special barriers to get over that you need to be aware of. With adult guidance seekers, money to support them while training or studying for a new qualification may be crucial. You may find yourself needing to discuss transport issues with people who live in a rural area.

 

3. DECIDEDNESS

 

Decided, Undecided, Indecisive

 

x    For both these reasons [lack of readiness, and complex barriers to overcome] the people who seek your help may be indecisive, unable to make decisions. The problem just seems too hard, or too big, and they are going to need a lot of help from you and others to solve the problem.

 

x    Others are undecided, too, but they could decide without difficulty if they had a little help. Many guidance seekers will be like this. They just haven’t got around to thinking about the issues yet. They may not need a counselling interview or a complicated psychometric test. A sympathetic listener with the right information resources can help them a lot.

 

x    Others have done a lot of thinking already, or know intuitively what is right for them and what fits their interests and skills. They are already fairly decided. All they want is the answer to a specific question or a bit of information they need. For example, they might say something like “Where can I take a degree in Law?” or “What jobs are there locally for bricklayers?” or “What is the labour market like in Austria - is there a demand for computer programmers?”

 

 

Note: The ideas developed here are based on research done at the Center for the Study of Technology in Counselling and Career Development, Florida State University, USA. See their web site for further ideas on this:

 

http://www.career.fsu.edu

 

(see paper “Designing Career Services to Cost-Effectively Meet Individual Needs“, by James P. Sampson, Jr., Gary W. Peterson, Robert C. Reardon, and Janet G. Lenz, June 4, 2003)

 

 

4. PHASE OF THE CHOICE/GUIDANCE PROCESS

 

How far has this person got with making a choice (of career or course etc.)? Here we generally make our judgements based on something like the DOTS learning outcomes: what is the issue for this person - is it self awareness, opportunity awareness, do they need to make a decision, or is it help with implementing a decision they want? Listen to what they are saying - does it sound like any of the statements below?

 

A. SELF AWARENESS - knowing about yourself

 

I just need a few ideas about myself and careers, to get me started

I haven’t much idea what I like and dislike or can do, but I think I could work it out with a little help

I just haven’t a clue - I don’t know at all what I can do, what interests me or what I want

 

B. MAKING THE LINKS - matching myself to learning or work

 

I just need a short list of jobs or courses that might suit me

I know what I like and what I can do - what does that mean in terms of learning or work?

I think I know who I am but I can’t work out at all what to do about it. There are so many opportunities but I can’t see where to begin

 

C. OPPORTUNITY AWARENESS - careers, courses and qualifications

 

I have a career in mind - I just need to get the details about it.

I need a little help in finding out about occupations, courses and/or qualifications - I’m not too sure what’s available.

What are the demands of the sort of career I’m thinking of? What does it really offer? I want to ask some searching questions before I commit myself.

 

D. MAKING A DECISION - between two or three things that look good

 

I need to think a bit before I make up my mind about this.

I can’t decide what to do - how do I go about it?

Which option is best for me? Will I be able to cope?

 

E. TACTICS - getting what you want and implementing a decision

 

I think I can write applications and deal with interviews but I’m sure I could do better with a few tips.

I need to think about getting funding and other practical issues

I need some help in writing a good CV and how to succeed with applications and interviews. Where do I start with looking for the job or course I want?

How do I handle interview questions? How do you go about it all?

 

 Each of these statements suggests .....

 

..... a different level of readiness to make a choice, more or less need for help and support, and a distinct learning outcome from the DOTS model. (The later statements in each of the sections A-E are the ones we would regard as showing lower readiness for decision making and a need for more support). We have added “making the links” because you need to bring self awareness and opportunity awareness together in order to see what is appropriate to you and available to you, before you make a decision between them.

 

[Look back at part 1 of this training module to see how GWO fits each of the headings here]

 

 

 

 

Let’s turn back to GWO. It is quite a complex resource and offers help at several points to different kinds of people. Our job is to work out how much help they are going to need to use it, and which parts of the program are going to be most useful to them, in what order.

 

 

 

 

See how you get on with this exercise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fill in the blanks if you can, using modules or sections from GWO   

 

 

Here is what we thought

 

 

What we thought................

 

There are no right or wrong answers - the point is that you need to make a professional judgement as a careers adviser, and using the computer does not let you off the hook! You should still be thinking about a client’s needs, about how ready they are to make decisions, about any special problems or barriers they may have, and about what level of support you should, or can, offer them.

 

We made our decisions for the following reasons - check them against yours - do you agree/ disagree? Why? Why not? Make a few notes for yourself on any issues you want to think about more - you may want to go back a revisit a particular part of the GWO program to become more familiar with it, and make sure you understand its value properly.

 

We have some blanks in our grid - did you? What would fill those with? An interview? Some work experience? A different test? Another computer program? A reference book? A video? A web site? Make notes for yourself - you can print out a blank version of the grid if you want to keep your notes on it.

 

Self Awareness

Matching

Opportunity Awareness

Decision Making

Tactics - implementing a decision

 

Self Awareness:

 

We felt that GWO mainly encourages self-awareness through the interest and skills tests

 

We did not think, however, that the interest test is most effective if offered as a self-help exercise: like many tests, there is a possibility of a negative or puzzling outcome for the user and someone should be on hand to talk to them about this if necessary. This would be level 2 support - it doesn’t need a guidance specialist so long as whatever staff member is there knows when to refer significant problems to the specialist adviser.

 

The tests can also be effectively used as a preparation for a guidance interview with a careers adviser and the results can be discussed usefully there, especially where they are at odds with the client’s own view of themselves. This would be the highest level of support.

 

Matching

 

The Interest and Skills Tests of course offer suggestions as to the occupations that match your interests  and skills. These could be used at all three levels, for such a purpose, but we felt that it was likely to be most effective with level 2 and 3 support for the same reasons as we gave under self awareness. “Birds of a Feather” was also a useful exercise for matching since it encourages people to compare themselves to a group of workers: it links personal interests and values to those of particular groups of occupations. This is its value rather than retrieving detailed information. For those who were fairly confident about themselves, the exercise could easily be done without help from careers centre staff members, but there might be some value in offering support - perhaps as part of a group guidance session, since it stimulates ideas, some of which may be stereotypes. Interaction with others helps to break down stereotypes and to test ideas prompted by the exercise - both ideas about oneself and about the occupations. This would make it useful with level 2 support as well.

 

 

Opportunity Awareness

 

A lot of what GWO offers is, in our view, about retrieving personally relevant information leading to increased opportunity awareness. We thought that keyword searching, alphabetical searching and local labour market information could easily be used on a self-help basis. Some people who are less decided may want to ask additional questions or not be quite sure how to construct a search, and so for them, level 2 support would make the program much more effective –  this might be part of a careers lesson in school perhaps.. The related jobs option, which generates new ideas people may not have thought of before would also benefit from support because people may want to ask questions about the new job and want to look up other information in the careers centre as a result. School subjects, we felt, was also most effectively used with some support because the choice of educational or course level is often more accurate when teachers or subject specialists can offer advice. It isn’t always easy to assess your own level of academic attainment without some advice - but it need not be guidance specialists who offer this, if the program is being used in a school or college.

 

Health problems we put in the top two categories because we believe that people with disabilities already face complex barriers to their freedom of choice, and are entitled to expect support from specialist guidance workers and others to build their confidence and approach career planning in the spirit of “can do”. They may also need some advocacy from a guidance professional. So we would not like to see the section offered on a purely self-help basis to such clients or students: they might simply come away depressed, feeling that “I can’t do anything I want to do - there's nothing for people like me in the labour market.” This would be a misunderstanding of the program module, but support should be on hand to guard against such a misunderstanding.

 

Decision making:

 

We put health problems at level 3 for the same reasons as with Opportunity Awareness. But the module does help to clarify some things a disabled person might need to think about when making a career decision, provided it is supported. It raises key questions about values - which are often central when we actually make a decision.

 

Keyword searching, including the negative “what would I dislike” also stimulate thinking about core values and so can be useful when a decision between one or two options is the issue. The confident self-aware person can handle this on a self help basis but some people are going to find they need to talk it out with someone rather than just sit at a computer screen - hence we put keyword searching at both levels 1 and 2.

 

Tactics - implementing a decision

 

The CV writing and interview preparation sections could also be used with or without support - depending on how confident the person using them is. Occasionally interview preparation, for someone who has had a string of failures with interviews might need more specialised help.

 

The unemployment module, because it is specially intended for longer term unemployed and those in areas where there is high unemployment, does really need to be supported to be fully effective. Those who have lost hope and become economically inactive may need help from specialist guidance workers or personal advisers to get them going again. So we put it at levels 2 and 3.

 

What we left blank

 

Apart from the interest and skills tests there isn’t so much else in GWO that helps with self awareness. There are many other tests and computer programs or web sites that can offer help here – e.g. with assessing your own values about work or thinking about your personality in general and how it relates to work.

 

Decision making, too, could benefit from other resources to support it: work experience, “taster courses”, simulations, and systematic exercises to model decision making, have all been used here.

 

At level 3 there is always going to be a need for in-depth individual guidance conversation with a counsellor as a resource additional to any computer program or other resource.

 

 

 

 

A checklist

 

What other resources do you currently use in your centre to fill these blank spaces in the grid?  Fill in the details on the same grid. Where do GWO and your resources overlap? If you use GWO will you continue to use your other resources? Why?

 

Make a note below of any gaps that you don’t cover with anything - is there a good reason for this? (Perhaps the people you help don’t need that kind of support at that level, or perhaps you are only offering one level of service - information rather than advice or guidance, for example?). Are you overusing one kind of resource (a guidance interview, for example) when you could be directing clients or students to the right part of GWO instead? Are you overserving some clients and underserving others?

 

Complete the following sentences:

 

“The cells in the matrix which are blank for our organisation are so because

 

........................................................................................................................................”

 

“Where GWO overlaps with our current resources, we should use/not use GWO instead

 

because...............................................................................................................................

 

........................................................................................................................................”

 

and, if appropriate, this one, too:

 

“The reason why we use one resource to fill more than a third of the boxes is that................

 

................................................................................................................................................”

 

The important thing is not what decisions you make here, but that you have a good reason for having made those decisions!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guidance is often most effective when given as part of a group exercise: people in the group can learn from each other as well as from the careers adviser or guidance counsellor. The theory of experiential learning is very useful when deciding how to do guidance in groups. David Kolb (Kolb, D., 1984 Experiential Learning - Experience as the Source of Learning and Development) suggested that all learning goes through four phases

 

x    concrete experience - we actively experience something;

 

x    reflective observation - we then need to think about what happened and how we felt about it;

 

x    abstract conceptualisation - we develop a “theory” that explains why it happened and how it relates to other similar experiences;

 

x    active experimentation, when we test out our theory in a practical context.

 

People tend, according to Kolb, to be more comfortable with one or two of these phases than with the others - this gives rise to “learning styles”.

[see    http://www.campaign-for-learning.org.uk/aboutyourlearning/whatlearning.htm for more on this]

 

This theory is very useful in designing group guidance, which should include

 

x    an opportunity to actively experience something - a practical exercise, e.g. a case study or role play, that may mean breaking a large group up into smaller ones;

 

x    some reflection on what happened in that exercise and feedback to the whole group of any findings or other results that have emerged;

 

x    drawing out the general learning points from what has been experienced,

 

x    and finally, developing with the group an action plan for testing out these points in future, if the group is not going on to do so then and there. What are the next steps?

 

GWO can offer some useful inputs to this process, especially in the concrete experience stage. The use of the program by individuals, pairs or small groups within the larger one, can form the concrete experience on which the rest of the session feeds.

 

Use of GWO could also become the active experimentation phase of the session - for example, when the learning points the group has developed lead them naturally on to using the GWO individually to follow up for themselves points made in the group.  Used thus GWO can be a kind of “homework” task set for the group by the teacher or group facilitator or agreed by the group as a whole. It is possible to build a series of group guidance sessions around the use of different parts of the program.

 

We offer four sample exercises below to show how GWO might be used as part of such an experiential learning group These are just examples, intended to suggest how you might use the program.

 

 

 

 

Exercise 1.

 

Use a small number of keywords or other search factors from GWO to build a picture of someone with interests, skills, personal qualities or values appropriate to a particular occupation or group of occupations. For the sake of realism you could develop this into a sample CV along the lines of the ones offered in the GWO module on CV writing. Create two or three of these “CVs” with different keywords.

 

Members of the group are then invited to role play a group of employers in that particular industry. Draw up a short list of job titles from GWO and invite the “employers” to use GWO to work out what key qualities [interests, skills, personal values and preferences, educational level] they should be looking for in a candidate for those jobs.

 

Then offer them the prepared “CVs” and ask them to select one of them as an employee to fill a vacancy in the occupation(s) they have been discussing.

 

Get them to reflect on this experience - (a) in terms of what they think employers will be looking for (b) how easy it was to find the information they needed from GWO and which sections they used (c) the reasoning behind their choice of candidate (d) what other occupations they think the interests, skills and qualities might have been suitable to. [tip - use the related jobs option]

 

If you can involve an actual employer from the relevant industry or a former student who now works there, this would be an added bonus.

 

Learning points:

 

x    how interests, skills and personal qualities may be required in one occupation and not in another and which are common to more than one occupation

 

x    how to analyse an occupation they are interested in to see what it requires of the person who does it - interests, skills and personal qualities

 

x    what employers may be looking for from an applicant for that occupation

 

x    how to use GWO to identify information that can help them when applying for jobs or building a CV.

Exercise 2

 

[suitable for students who are just beginning to think about careers and occupations and who have not used GWO much before]

 

 

Print out an occupational description from GWO and blank out any words or phrases that make it easily identifiable as that particular occupation (e.g. the title!). Offer this to the group, and invite them to discuss among themselves and try to work out what occupation it is on the basis of the information left over.

 

Get them first to make an informed and reasonable guess and draw up a shortlist of ideas as to what it can be. Then allow them to access GWO to search for the right solution. Encourage them to use any keywords that they can think of that relate to the partial description they have as the basis for this research..

 

Get the group to draw up as a result of this a list of the key things that they want/need to know about an occupation when starting to find out about it - e.g. when talking to someone who does it. What are the key questions to ask? What makes one occupation distinguishable from another? How could a system like GWO help with these questions?

 

Learning points

 

x    How to research occupational information - a set of key questions to ask

 

x    How to use GWO to find the answers to these questions

 

Exercise 3

 

 Useful with a group of jobseekers.

 

Prepare two or three imaginary CVs of different quality, along the lines suggested in the CV writing module. Make at least one rather worse than the others - to illustrate what NOT to do - and at least one rather better - to illustrate what a good CV might look like. You could use GWO for this purpose if necessary.

 

Prepare also an advertisement for the job that these CVs are intended for. The students are to act in small groups to discuss which of the available CVs they would consider giving an interview to. They should note the reasons which swayed their thinking.

 

Encourage the group to reflect on the exercise - what it looked like from the point of view of an “employer”, and how different features of a CV conveyed different impressions to them.

 

Get the group to review the GWO module on CV writing and to compare the points they made with those made there. Note, and deal with any discrepancies.

 

Ensure that the group has a printout of key points from the GWO module to take away.

 

Learning points:

 

x    what to avoid in writing a CV

 

x    what is important when writing a CV

 

x    why it is important to consider the employer’s viewpoint when writing a CV

 

Exercise 4

 

“Beat the computer”

 Useful with a group who have not yet done much thinking about a career or who are considering changing careers.

 

Prepare one or two selections of interest and skills items from GWO, which seem to you to belong together and to point to a particular occupation or occupations. (To understand how the computer uses these to match people against jobs you may need first to ask your local computer programmer or technician about the algorithm the computer uses to do its matching of people to occupations). These should be actual items from the interests and skills tests. Check out yourself first that selecting these does in fact produce the kinds of job titles you expected, by completing each of the interests and skills tests and marking these items with agreement.

 

Give the group the short selected lists of interests and skill items you have prepared and tell them to see if they can “beat the computer” and produce a greater number of appropriate occupational suggestions that match these interests and skills than it can.  Give them a set time to do this in, and then hand out the list of suggestions the computer itself makes for those sets of items selected in the two tests.

 

If the group’s selection differs or is longer or shorter than the computer’s, discuss with them why this might be? Have they overlooked something the computer has considered, or is it in fact the case that a human mind is better at making a choice for a human being than the computer is? Are there some things the computer does better? How should we treat the results the computer produces for us and what advantages and disadvantages does the use of the computer have as a solution to finding all the occupations one might possibly be interested in and able to do?  How should we treat the “results” a computer gives us – as a starting point for discussion or as the truth about ourselves?

 

Learning points:

 

§         the relationship between interests, skills and occupations

 

§         how much more is available to someone with certain interests and skills than you might think at first

 

§         what a computer can and cannot do to help you make a career choice and how the way it “thinks” about the problem is different from yours, and therefore how to use it sensibly and sceptically!