Career Stories Everywhere

Is it me or does everyone want to tell their career story?  I never tell them I'm a careers adviser, honest, that would be just daft.  But the stories still keep coming and it seems as though they all need just a little bit of carefully placed IAG.   Here's a short extract from my weekend - you'll see what I mean...


Taxi driver Friday - just completed Sports Science degree after years of being a taxi driver and lots of 'dead end' (his words) jobs.  Now setting up his own business as a personal trainer, really wanted to be a physio but didn't have the A levels, is hoping working with clients one to one will give him that satisfaction.

Personal Trainer Gym, Saturday  (starting work on the holiday body - long way to go) Danny, no he doesn't know why the air conditioning isn't working but he's been getting complaints all day. Not fair I said its not as though you're an engineer!  No, he said , but funny you should say that,  I always wanted to, I studied maths and physics at A level but messed about and didn't get the grades, I could have been sorting this out now... (instead of showing middle aged women how to work rowing machines - he didn't add)

Tesco - Pharmacy assistant -  Student who works part time in my University library and part time at Tesco and studies.  Recognises me from the university careers service, can he come and talk about what else he can do to get ahead of the game? Note to self - use different pharmacy next time...

Waiter, Sunday Farewell meal for daughter going to work in Europe and son (possibly) going on Erasmus year to Turkey.  Waiter -  I always wanted to work abroad, how do you go about getting a job like that?  Wine waiter - What's Erasmus all about?  I'm studying Law can I do something like that?  I don't really want to be a lawyer any more what else can I do? Cue warning stare from offspring and husband...

Conferences, posters and presentations

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As a full time worker and part time doctoral researcher I don't often get the time to join in the academic research community.  I decided to right this wrong by attending my first research conference as a researcher (I've attended lots in my professional role representing my University employer, but never just representing me).  I opted for the ProPEL Conference at the University of Stirling.  ProPEL is... ' a collaborative, multi-professional international network to promote research and knowledge exchange in leading issues of professional education, practice and learning. ProPEL was launched in 2010 when Professor Tara Fenwick joined the University of Stirling' http://www.propel.stir.ac.uk/about.

Top 5 reason for choosing ProPEL
1.The research themes of the network a seemed to fit pretty well with my research into the career narratives of higher education careers professionals.
2. It wasn't too expensive and involved only a train journey as opposed to a flight
3. The Higher Education Academy generously agreed to fund my attendance in exchange for a short report  and agreement to disseminate.
4. I like Stirling - its got a great castle and the Wallace monument (that's the view from my window!)
5. I could submit a poster instead of presenting a paper

Anyway, I went, the keynotes were interesting, some of the papers were great but the most useful bit was getting to meet and chat with fellow researchers from all over the world.  And sometimes I even knew what they were talking about!  Seriously,  it was great to be able to discuss grounded theory and Nvivo without getting strange looks. I met researchers from Norway, Finland, Canada, USA, France and more.  I collected email addresses and offers of help.  People were genuinely interested and wanting to make connections.

My poster, to be honest, wasn't great.  My first effort and done in Power Point - apparently there is specific poster software you can use - who knew? But I stood proudly and trepidaciously next to it in a room full of poster people and talked about my research to whoever stopped by for a look. They asked some questions that I couldn't answer and some I could but mostly made me realise that I need to do a lot more reading before I go to another conference!  Next time I'll do a paper, it can't be that hard....

Finding out the real value of social media

I promote Twitter and Linked in to students and graduates as a great way of widening their networks and revealing job opportunities but hadn't really given much thought to how useful it can be to me as a researcher. Linked in groups can immediately identify professionals in a particular area- practice or geographical - that can from part of my research sample.  

Through my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts I have now identified the first 5 participants for my research and as a bonus will be able to talk in my thesis about the use of social media tools as a way of identifying a sample. This LSE guide to using social media in research covers areas such as building your following and managing your profile; using Twitter to maximise the impact of your research project and making the most of Twitter alongside your own blog.

Research interviews, the fun begins
My research proposal tells me that the first tranche of interviews with higher education careers advisers starts in January - that's now! Need to do some more work on a sort of a structure, but my interviews are planned as guided narrative accounts rather than the usual semi-structured interview so there needs to be a good balance between narrative flow and keeping on the career story track.  Hope to get at least half a dozen done between now and March and then hopefully the data will reveal themes - am I being a little naive here? I have managed to get funding for a conference in May where I plan to present a paper and a poster so that is really motivating me to get cracking!  The trick is to fit this in with the full time job and all the rest of life...

The research begins....

Hello and welcome to my blog.  This month I begin my doctoral research in earnest and have decided to use this blog to record my thoughts and experiences.  My research will examine the career stories of higher education careers advisers, exploring whether their background and experiences have influenced their choice of career and their professional practice. I hope to meet lots of interesting people and look forward to hearing their stories.  The data will be collected using narrative interviews and a grounded theory approach.