Peter J. Robertson

The well-being outcomes of career guidance

ABSTRACT The potential for career guidance to impact on well-being has received insufficient attention in the UK. There are both conceptual and empirical reasons to expect that the impacts may be positive, but a lack of evidence directly testing this proposition. Career guidance has commonalities with therapeutic counselling suggesting analogous effects, and it promotes positive engagement in work and learning, which may be associated with health benefits. There are implications for services in reconciling health and employment objectives. However, the promotion of well-being need not imply quasi-clinical ways of working. A call is made for more research and debate in the career guidance community as to the extent and implications of the potentially important relationship between career guidance and well-being.

Health Inequality and Careers.

Structural explanations of career choice and development are well established. Socioeconomic inequality represents a powerful factor shaping career trajectories and economic outcomes achieved by individuals. However, a robust and growing body of evidence demonstrates a strong link between socioeconomic inequality and health outcomes. Work is a key factor explaining differences in income and lifestyle. It seems unavoidable that inequality in careers has profound consequences for health and well-being, but this relationship is largely ignored by career scholars. Some implications of health inequality for career guidance interventions are suggested.

Job search information behaviours: An ego-net study of networking amongst young job-seekers

Networking is considered an integral feature of job search, yet its behavioural manifestation has received little attention in the extant literature. Here this is addressed in a study of young job-seekers that adopted an egocentric network approach underpinned by Information Behaviour theory, with specific reference to Wilson’s model of information needs and seeking. The analysis of data from semi-structured interviews reveals that job-seekers acquire a broad range of job search information from contacts in their networks, and that the contributions of such contacts extend beyond the sharing of job vacancy alerts. In addition, in cases where social media platforms are accessed by job-seekers, these facilitate crucial ties to industry contacts, and provide valuable informational opportunities to those who adopt them. These findings contribute to a widened understanding of the information behaviours that support the effective mobilisation of contacts within social networks during job search, and are of particular interest to policy-makers whose remit includes the employability of the youth labour force.

The casualties of transition: the health impact of NEET status and some approaches to managing it

ABSTRACT Youth unemployment can be understood as a public health risk. This paper explores the multi-disciplinary literature in this field, and its relevance to support for NEET (not in education, employment or training) young people. Unemployment may have a scarring effect on health, with lifelong consequences for individuals and for society. To the extent that illness has social causation, it may potentially have social remedies. Evidence for the effectiveness of mental health prevention with young people is limited, but recent research suggests that moving people on from unemployment leads to health improvements. Schools, colleges, training providers, and the welfare benefits system all have a role to play in reducing the impact of unemployment. Career guidance services are particularly well placed to reach potentially vulnerable young people.

Developing career capabilities in “NEET” young people: experiences of participants in the Prince’s Trust team programme

ABSTRACT This qualitative study focuses on the impact of a supportive 12-week programme intended to empower young people who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) to pursue life-career goals of their own choosing. The programme is viewed through the conceptual lens of the Capability Approach of Amartya Sen, an approach to social justice that stresses the power to make and implement lifestyle choices. Fourteen young people who attended the Prince’s Trust team programme were interviewed. Their accounts of their experience of the programme were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Participants found the programme to be a positive confidence-building experience, and it enabled them to deploy their existing resources in pursuit of a personally meaningful goal.

Positive psychology and career development

ABSTRACT Positive psychology has been an influential movement within psychology in the early years of the twenty-first century. It is now timely to assess the value of its contribution to career education and guidance. This paper provides a critique of this perspective. Positive psychology can enrich approaches to career development. It can provide a fertile source of concepts and an empirical basis for some elements of practice. However, the application of approaches derived from positive psychology is problematic if it neglects the socioeconomic context in which careers are lived and experienced, or if claims made for its efficacy cannot be supported by the evidence base.

A capability approach to career development: An introduction and implications for practice

In the UK, the concept of employability is influential in current conceptualizations of career development. It is an example of a discourse underpinned by faith in individual transformation as a response to unstable labour markets, a position that is not unproblematic when structural factors are taken into account. This article introduces an alternative perspective, the capability approach, to encourage debate about its value, and to begin to outline what it means for career counselling and development practice. An overview of the capability approach is provided, and the resonance between the concerns of the capability approach and those of career development practitioners will be highlighted. Key difficulties in applying the approach are identified before implications of the capability approach for practice are considered.