Sunday Posts

 Photo by Vance Osterhout on Unsplash The standard approach to enhancing employability outcomes in Higher Education takes the form of additional soft skills and technical skills training, internships, career counselling and renewed efforts to ensure campus placement. All of these have their place but the changes in the employer expectations, structures of the professions and breakdown of the traditional career paths demand changes in the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach. As such, there are five key factors why the standard approach isn't enough and must change: 1. Different student motivations: Students in higher education today are different from the students in large, traditional universities. They are often older, from ethnic minority ba...

My current work involves the development of an employability programme. As I worked on it, I had a deja vú, an old idea really, which is worth posting about. Years ago, I discovered the obvious: That it's not easy to educate for employability. Not only education has a broader goal, which is often undermined when one narrowly focuses on the requirements of one industry or another, labour markets, particularly in the sectors which are technology-driven and globally connected, are notoriously fickle. Hence, I concluded then, that career planning for students is a pointless enterprise and instead, we should develop a design approach to career (see Career Design, not Career Planning and How to do Career Design ).  Indeed, since then and through different projects I participated into and many coversations I have had with people working in the field, my convictions have only deepened. In general, I think, we are accepting that all knowledge is provisional and our ability to predict the f...

When I was in college, I thought I knew what would happen to my life. I knew where I would live – that was easy: Four generations of my family lived in the same house. I knew what I would do – follow either my grandfather into the family business or my father into college teaching. I also knew who I would marry – well, at least my parents made up their mind about that. Of course, none of that happened. The world around me changed and all the assumptions I grew up with disappeared one by one. I ended up living five thousand miles away from my family home, being in a profession which didn’t exist when I was in college. By the time I married, my parents had given up on the idea that they knew what would be best for me.  But, looking back,  while  I would love to say that I took the risks and followed my heart, I didn’t do anything of that sort. Rather, at every turn, I tried to fit in, be consistent, keep my commitments. I did not try to dent the universe, as Steve Jobs ...

  Over the years, competency-based education has become a central focus of my work.  This started with a simple assumption: That the transition from education to employment would be smooth if the education that learners receive correspond directly to the competencies that the employers need.  What it translated into practice is: First, instead of writing courses driven by content, identify the job roles that the employers are finding most difficult to fill - and work with the employers to create a competency map for those roles. Then, prioritise these competencies (using classification such as must-have, should-have, could-have and would be nice to have) and work with employers to define the acceptance criteria for someone to be deemed competent in each of these. Finally, do what educators do and map assessments and content to this to generate a course. But the practical challenges Of course, this process requires unfettered access and trust of the key employers. I have ...

The big question for many college graduates is whether to work for a start-up or, wait and look for opportunities with more stable companies. In my straw poll, the opinions are split right in the middle.  About half the people think start-ups are cool and fun, and therefore, better to work for. The more practically minded make the point that they offer a range of opportunities, to grow and to learn, which an established corporation wouldn't allow.  The other half feels that working for start-ups are the worst of both the worlds. They offer no security - the point of a job - and rarely big rewards, as most of it is usually reserved for the Founders. Most start-ups also fail. There is little transparency with regard to the finances and working practices of a start-up, and therefore, very little to make a well-informed decision. And, finally, while the learning value is undeniable, the value of that learning is questionable. Even the start-ups themselves often pay a...

Of the books I read recently, Herminia Ibarra's Working Identity made a lasting impression. Despite my deep aversion to the simplistic and formulaic style of business books, and this book is no different, it resonated for two reasons. Professionally, I am exploring solutions to the difficulty of education-to-employment transition, and my experience at the fault-line tells me that this arises, in the first place, because of the divergence of realities of commercial work and that of the college; the students arrive at work without resolving who they are and what they would like to, and struggle to fit in increasingly unforgiving workplaces pursuing the illusive idea of perfect candidates. Further, personally it has been appropriate too, as I am at the very point of questioning whether it is worth living my life the way I am doing now. I may already be in my second career - moving from one country to another and transitioning into Higher Education I have already done - but I do not...

When I ran out of money in 2014, I decided to take a two year break, to revisit my ideas and see if I still feel them after a while. Sure enough, some ideas died down as their immediate context changed. But others persisted, and as life comes a full circle and I think about what I must do, one particular idea that I flirted with not just during U-Aspire days, but even before, when I was working to rejig a London college. This is to set up an Enterprise School. An Enterprise School - and I may have to find a better term for it eventually - is not a school to make entrepreneurs, much less for handing out degrees or diplomas of entrepreneurship. One of the people I consider my mentor says that entrepreneurs do not go to school, and indeed, going to school to get a degree is somewhat anti-entrepreneurial. That entrepreneurship, at its core, is about a bias for action, can not be denied: It is about knowing, assessing and managing risks through action and commitment, rather than getti...

I wrote previously about the futility of Career Planning and recommended Career Design instead. ( See here ) The modern workplaces are fast changing. McKinsey points to four Global Trends, each powerful on its own right, which are reshaping the work and the workplaces. These trends are Urbanisation, Technology (Automation, Micro-manufacturing), Demographics (Aging workforce, Young workforce) and indeed Globalisation. As all of these forces reach a tipping point, and therefore, industries are disrupted and new industries and players emerge, the hands-off rational approach of planning a career looks terribly out of date. There are no other ways of appreciating the forces at work other than experiencing them first hand. There is no rational way of coping with such change, since we do not know what the changes could be, but creating a practical, practise orientation, one of adaptability and infinite adjustments. And, in context, what one likes or dislikes, what trade-offs one would make,...

Please, give up Career Planning.  This whole idea of planning, setting goals, defining activities and timelines, moving towards it step by step, is so dated. It used to be useful when one knew where to go. All those advices about beginning with the end in mind, fine on paper, but do not work any more when things change so much, so fast. The talk of Career Planning, however well-meaning, is always misdirected, and possibly harmful. Indeed, one can plan near term - for that next job, or to get a skill - but this assumption that you can plan your next twenty years, a whole career, is itself based on the flawed assumption that one can predict the world well in advance. This is the mistake most well-intentioned parents make when they push their children down the career paths they themselves took, or in some cases, those they wished they had taken. Such reliance on planning closes down the opportunities of exploration, of chance opportunities, of continuous learning, and often ...