E-guidance (where ‘e’ stands for eternal or exasperating?) and an instant alternative

Everyone is talking about e-guidance and lots of us are doing it, but it doesn’t get a very good press. It seems to be something we do reluctantly, a poor third cousin to face-to-face guidance and even telephone guidance interviews. And actually, it’s not hard to see why we advisers don’t like it very much.

Firstly, it can be painfully slow. A student writes “I’m a history student graduating in June and I need to get a job, but not really sure what I want to do. Can you help?” The usual ‘exploration’ phase of the interview is highly problematic by e-mail. It is always a delicate balance between giving information (risking being irrelevant) and asking lots of questions to probe and clarify (risking opening up so many cans of worms that even a flock of hungry seagulls over two generations couldn’t deal with all of them!).

Secondly, misunderstandings seem to happen much more often. Of course, we are very aware that with e-mail there are no visual cues – no body language, no facial expressions or tone of voice. There’s little in the way of substance to help you get to know a person. But I think the lack of immediacy is also an exacerbating factor here. If you write “What do I need to do to get a job at the BBC?”, are you asking for information about the BBC’s recruitment methods or do you mean “Darn it, I’m so frustrated! I’ve tried everything to get a job in that bloomin’ organisation and nothing’s working. The whole world’s against me!” [cont...]

Virtual mock interviews?

If you’re a careers adviser reading this, chances are you’ve conducted a mock interview at some point. It’s straightforward enough. You prepare your questions for the student according to the type of interview and the job they’re applying for. You brief the student, run through the questions, making notes on the student’s answers, and then spend some time discussing how it went and where they might improve their performance.

In general, it’s a fairly simple exercise, and students (assuming they aren’t scared off completely!) usually find the experience pretty useful, if only slightly less painful than a trip to the dentist! Some of you might have also ventured into the realms of video interviewing, as we have here at Manchester…

But at peak times of year the demand for mock interviews might be so great you just can’t meet it.
Or students (or more likely, graduates) might be off campus and not able to come for a face-to-face interview.
Or a client might need to arrange a mock interview at very short notice and you just can’t fit them in.
Or they might want to have more than one shot at practising their answers to those “killer questions”.

That’s really where virtual interviews come into their own. [cont...]

Off campus careers guidance via Skype, anyone?

An recent Guardian article about medical consultations via live videolink (telediagnostics?) got me thinking… For a doctor (especially a specialist) to conduct a proper consultation with a patient remotely, the latter still has to get to some kind of “patient’s booth” with all the appropriate equipment – perhaps not quite as revolutionary as it may have first sounded?

To conduct a careers guidance interview remotely, however, all that is really needed is some form of video or teleconferencing technology (such as Skype) installed on your PC, a webcam, and some speakers or headphones, and hey presto, our students (assuming they have the same technology) can interact with us from the comfort of their [cont...]