Blueprint for an alternative careers ecosystem

Blueprint for an alternative careers ecosystem It will take a combination of services that will really provide an alternative to college and university careers services. Currently in the UK, 1000 different people offer 1000 different services, when 10 could come together and offer an alternative careers ecosystem. In this article I won’t go into whether careers services are good or bad (for that, see this article or this  or even this one for some views), whether careers services are fit for purpose or not or anything that debates what we have now. I want to show how there could be an alternative careers ecosystem that could be able to better help students and graduates. Here are the problems I see with traditional careers at the moment: Good people working in the service, but stuck in bureaucracy of university policies Currently careers services have little or no IP on the technology they use Careers advice is good, but the medium of delivery is still outdated â€" Walk-ins, morning only, etc And to overcome these and offer some more additional benefits, there is a need to build an alternative careers ecosystem that makes use of technology and human intelligence to help students and graduates. Here’s one model that may work. I mentioned before, in the UK, we have 1000 people doing 1000 different things. And I want to see if a few of these worked together, could we build an alternative careers ecosystem that will provide end-to-end support to students and graduates. Before I start, here are some points to note: Any website or service listed below has not taken part in this article and it is purely my view Assumption Only counting students and graduates who are looking to go into employment Before I try to show the blueprint of how there could be an alternative careers ecosystem, I will try and list out what a job seeker needs to go from unemployed to employed or atleast have the best chance of being employed in the least amount of time. The job seeker doesnt know what to do to get a job â€" he / she needs some information Inform job seekers about the recruitment process â€" remove black hole of information Once this information is fed in, the job seeker wants to know: Where to look for jobs Plugging gaps that employers see courses / work-experience Continuous improvement in job search The job seeker then wants to speak to someone about: Experience in job search , hints and tips / mentors Network with people / alumni Get more personalised advice if required / advisers employers The same has been crudely represented in a hand drawn image below â€" Classic isn’t it? Talk about technology and hand draw an image ?? This is what I assume will be required for a job seeker to get a job only that. So now, here’s a solution to this from what I call an alternative careers ecosystem. 1. Educate the job seeker of the recruitment process in the UK OK, so I know there is no good guide / site at the moment which lays out the student and graduate recruitment in the UK. There definitely is some work to be done here. There is information available on hundreds of websites, but we need one consistent guide to show that majority of graduate employers or direct entry employers use. But once this is done, WikiJob is a great resource to get information for student and graduates job seekers. Every student and graduate looking for a job needs to know about WikiJob and it should act as a service entry point for information. Because most of the information is updated by those looking for a job and most advice is given by those who’ve been through the experience. Peer to peer model is the best / most comfortable way to start job search. WikiJob peer to peer model has to increase in the new careers ecosystem At this stage, websites and services like that offered by Aimee Bateman on CareerCake and what Nick Newman offers  with CareersBox  could help students and graduates get an insight into exactly what employers look for etc. 2. The job seeker knows what to do, next up is where A job seeker needs a job. For most of them that really is the case. So let’s focus on that. Firstly, there will be a need to create a site that can aggregate jobs from various approved jobsites. Yes, there are already sites doing this, but what I am proposing is a more open source site. It would be a site that has the ability to aggregate jobs from various other sites and also offer the ability for the job seeker to add his or her favourite jobsite to it. Someone wants to add Unitemps to it? Add it. LinkedIn? Add it. It shouldn’t simply take jobs from the granddads of jobsites. The job seeker knows he or she has to do an online application, brush up the cv, prepare for interviews, etc. But how does that happen? You’ve got to make it easy enough for someone to do that from the comfort of their seat at their pace, in their time. For this, we could use Graduate Rescue. Graduate Rescue offers various services from within its site for a small fee. Graduate Rescue employs a yearly membership model that gives job seekers access to interview preparation, assessment etc. These resources on their own would cost a lot more than £20  a year  that Graduate Rescue charges, it’s a social enterprise. And finally, plugging the gaps via courses and work-experience. So, with regards to work-experience the jobsites at the start of the section will satisfy the requirement or we could drive a close integration of aggregated jobs from some specific placement sites like RateMyPlacement and Enternships. However, for other gaps â€" I think online courses give enough information to plug the gaps. I’ve heard from a few people who have done career related courses and I am surprised by the information they received. You can also do business courses etc and gain some experience that way. For the Jobs and Courses, what I do recognise is, there has to be a community driven spirit to keep the quality of the content top notch. If it’s useless it shouldn’t be there or atleast shouldn’t be suggested. 3. Now about the human touch / networking / mentoring I know there is a lot of debate at the moment of job seekers losing the ability to meet someone and speak to an adviser. And I appreciate that. It is important that job seekers have the choice of meeting someone and getting a more face to face advice. However, why does it have to be careers advisers all the time? Why can we not get more alumni and mentoring conversations going? Here’s what currently happens â€" Careers Advisers speak to employers / alumni. And arrange a presentation or two. Then Students and Graduates learn from Careers Advisers what the employers / alumni have to offer. As shown in the image below this is how I think most careers service currently work. And with the alternative careers ecosystem, we can enable alumni / mentors and employers to directly speak to the job seekers. We can still have expert careers advisers to offer their services to job seekers. One way of offering service using technology can be Google Helpouts. I am no careers expert; I love technology and blogging about employment and enterprise. I was one of the first 1000 people globally to launch the Google Helpout service. Here’s my Careers Helpout. Anyways, the point is, we could have certified people who offer advice now, be aggregated onto a platform where job seekers can easily search and book from the providers on a tried and tested method like Google Helpout. This isn’t an endorsement of the product; it’s me saying we can offer alternative personal approach via that platform. As for mentoring and alumni, there is some work to be done here. In the UK I haven’t come across a viable solution yet which offers online space for alumni’s to connect and offer their mentoring services to students and graduates. LinkedIn is a good way, but we need something where students can easily tap into the network of their alumni and this can be facilitated by the institutions that they belong to. Now, Careers Advisers can provide oversight onto the process and interaction level of a lot more students and graduates. So, that is my very simple blueprint of creating an alternative careers ecosystem without too much investment and yet getting the people who really want to help, on board. To run all this we need someone who can gel it al-together and make no mistake, I don’t underestimate the task at hand. But think, if the services and people mentioned within this article, came together and with a little more investment in product development, we could well and truly deliver something that will help students and graduates. As for running this, if only the likes of global helper Ketan Makwana, careers enthusiast Nick Newman, someone who understands going professionally solo Leo Woodhead, Careers week ambassador and the one who  defends  careers for young people Janet Colledge, the cool and powerful Aimee Bateman, Content and Social Media Marketing professional  Asya Bodeva, the innovative Rachael Smith from Graduate Rescue and Rajeeb  Dey from Enternships in one room and said can we make this work? I think we could. Do I have the power to action this blueprint… No. Do I think these people will be able to  offer this alternative careers ecosystem to help the young job seekers in  the UK…. Yes. Over to you guys. Please note all services and people named in this article were done so without asking them. They may or may not agree with the article. And it clearly isnt their view, it is my view. However, I believe in the work these people do and think 10  people  coming together is more powerful than offering 1000 different sources of getting the same answer.                                                                                     19