Career Edge 10 (July 2003)

Editorial: The Whole Picture

As this issue of Career Edge well illustrates, the factors that contribute to well-reasoned and informed career decision-making are many and varied.

A major challenge for our profession, therefore, is to tailor its services to recognise the complexity and range of influences that underpin career and work choices.

A parallel and perhaps greater challenge is to ensure that policy-makers and decision-makers appreciate that informed career decision-making involves considerably more than a skills matching exercise. While there is the need to match skills with employment opportunities, this is only one component of the career development process.

The Moving On Up programme, for example, is a pilot programme in Northland developed specifically to help at-risk teenagers make the move from the margins of society back into the community.

This programme is having remarkable success because it takes a holistic approach to the career guidance process. The practitioners involved have the sensitivity and the skills to win the trust of their young clients and to support them in a practical way. As a result, they are able to deal with the fundamental factors – lack of self-esteem, absence of family support, significant learning difficulties – which stand in the way of meaningful or sustainable employment for these people.

Career guidance is about understanding people and helping them to understand themselves in their totality and applying that understanding to the external world of learning and work. When an holistic approach is taken, and people are helped to make the appropriate connections with the world of work, it is surprising the choices and options that are available.

A second story in this issue of Career Edge, Manaakitanga in Action, looks at the development of a career counselling model which is based on Māori values and culture. The experience of those involved is that the reconnection of young Māori with their wh�?nau and culture is the game-breaker in improving their career and employment prospects. The concept of ‘manaakitanga' – welcoming people with the same sense of warmth and connection they would encounter on a marae – is an essential part of the model.
Once again, the need is to acknowledge the totality of the person and to tailor career advice to meet those needs.
The need to recognise the multiple, interconnected factors that underpin career choice was also the theme of the address given by Dr Robert Pryor and Dr Jim Bright at our Pushing the Boundaries Conference last November. Some of their insights are captured in this issue of Career Edge.
Career decision-making, they argue, is seldom as rational or linear as many of us assume. The influence of culture and families on career decision-making is huge, and all part of the individual's story that needs to be captured in a career counselling context. Parents, in particular, need to be enlisted as constructive influences on their children's capacity to make career choices.

This may not be easy or straightforward of course but it goes to the heart of what makes our profession so rewarding. The real challenge is to move beyond the seductive simplicity of a skills-matching process to recognise all the patterns of influence which impact on career and work choice for the person before us.

There is a lot at stake in taking up this challenge. Failure to deal with the complex stuff of human decision-making too often leads to disillusioned clients, abandoned careers and unfulfilled potential.

Furthermore, in the face of pressure to provide simplified services at low cost, especially to institutions buying on behalf of their clients, we face the risk of a less than satisfactory process producing less than satisfactory results and resulting in client and/or purchaser dissatisfaction with the value of our services.
If we want to achieve long-term results, there can be no substitute for a holistic engagement with people.

Lester Oakes
Chief Executive
Career Services

Disclaimer

The views in this publication are not necessarily those of Career Services or its board. They have been published in the interests of encouraging understanding and debate on career related issues.