Keynote 2
Career Readiness: Meeting students where they are
Bob Gilwworth
Keynote speaker
Senior Lecturer in Careers Guidance, University of Huddersfield
This session is about the importance of understanding where students are on their career development journeys, helping them to understand that their starting points are OK and meeting them where they are, with appropriate careers and employability education and support.
Knowing the answer to the question "Where are you now?" is key to successfully offering directions to anyone to get from where they are to their desired destination. The last thing that anyone seeking directions want to hear is "I wouldn't start from here."
Career and Employability-Maps and Luggage
In the context of a student’s higher education journey “Employability” could be seen as the relatively linear acquisition of assets/capitals (Luggage for the journey), whilst “Career” is the personal, iterative process of defining purpose and direction (map or satnav determining desired destinations and routes to them). The personal Career context translates the acquisition of assets into meaningful outcomes for students, institutions, employers, and society.
Over the last decade or so, many universities have developed the capability to gather Career Readiness data from all their students every year. In other words, they now have the answer to the question “where are you now?” at scale. Typically, the data relates to both “the Map” (self-declared position on career thinking) and “the luggage” (the acquisition of employability assets, notably work experience to date).
Drawing on examples from the UK and Australia, the session will offer some practical ideas about working with students on their career development journeys once we know the answer to the question “where are you now?”
Bob has held leadership roles in Higher Education Careers and Employability for around 25 years. Most recently, he was the Director of the Careers Group, University of London. Prior to that, he was Director of the Careers Centre at the University of Leeds for around 13 years and before that, Head of Careers Service at the University of Huddersfield. In 2020, he returned to Huddersfield to teach on the MA in Career Development and Employability and engage in research and consultancy in the field.
Bob is a past President and Research Director of the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services and a Fellow of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling.
At the University of Leeds, Bob and his team instigated the Careers Registration (CR) approach to gathering and using career readiness data from all current students. With his University of London team, he led the national CR Learning Gain project 2015-2018. The CR approach has now been adopted by c90 HEIs in the UK and by institutions in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Portugal. Bob has strong connections with Australian Universities, including speaking at NAGCAS conferences and delivering national workshops. He leads an international network called CR+ and launched the book “Career Readiness: Meeting Students where they are.” in a keynote at the recent NAGCAS conference in Brisbane
In 2022 Bob was awarded the AGCAS President’s Medal for outstanding and sustained contribution. He is a Principal Fellow of the HEA, a member of the Careers Service Committee at the University of Cambridge and an External Examiner for the University of York.
Bob’s doctorate is from the International Centre for Higher Education Management, University of Bath, with a thesis on “Organisational Responses to the Employability Agenda in English Universities.”