The Good Careers Guide Launch

Report by Mae Batrouney (Vice President of the Careers Education Association of Victoria)

Key Note Speakers: Mr Chris Lester – CEO, Good Education Group; Doctor Paul Willis – Director, RiAus – Australia’s Science Channel; David Carney – Executive Director. Careers Industry Council of Australia (CICA)

A wide representation of careers and industry organisations were invited to the launch of the new Good Careers Guide by Good Education Group.

Mr Lester, Doctor Willis and Mr Carney provided the attendees with important labour market information and through their presentations inspired the attendees with their passion. They also reinforced the importance of careers practitioners to actively engage and ensure young people have the necessary tools to make ‘informed career decisions using reliable, relevant and high quality resources’.  Mr Lester, Doctor Willis and Mr Carney all believe The Good Careers Guide is an important resource that will equip young people with the necessary tools to make informed career decisions.

Chris Lester – CEO, Good Education Group

Chris Lester opened the launch of The Good Careers Guide. He stated that this was an exciting time for the Good Education Group since they had purchased the publishing assets of the Hobsons Group, which included The Good Universities Guide, The Good Schools Guide, Job Guide and a range of other resources. Unfortunately, the last Job Guide was published in 2015.

One of the goals of the Good Education Group is to become the leading independent provider of high-quality resources that empower students to make informed decisions about their education, careers and pathways.

Young people today have a number of options available are also faced with new and emerging careers. With such a huge array of choices it is not surprising that young people can feel really overwhelmed. It is for this reason the Good Education Group wants to launch The Good Careers Guide as a much needed resource.

The goal of The Good Careers Guide is to be a one stop shop to inform students of education and career pathways available to them and has been developed with a combination of career advisors. This edition features over 400 occupations as well as useful tips to help students navigate the job search process. There is a focus on science and innovation and provides advice on the importance of STEM related education and the job opportunities that follow given governments in the last twelve months have been encouraging students to choose STEM subjects. ‘Students would do well to consider STEM studies for positive employment and salary outcomes’ says Lester.

Doctor Paul Willis – Director, RiAus – Australia’s Science Channel

Dr Paul Willis was very excited to be at the launch of The Good Careers Guide. Willis said ‘we are handing over a road map of the future to the next generation. What could be more exciting than that?’

As an undergraduate at University of Sydney he saw the first document written on a computer around thirty years ago. The rest of the students were incredulous that you could change the text as the students were all writing by hand. A few years later Dr Willis saw his first email after previously corresponding by mail.

Thirty years later it is impossible to imagine a world without word processors, computers and the internet. He stated that more than half of his friends from his high school days are in careers that simply did not exist when they did they did the HSC together. Of those that did not end up in areas such as accounting or medicine, more than half of them are working in IT, software development and online services. Their working lives have been shaped and changed beyond all recognition.

‘When I think about the students that went into new industries or which students benefitted the most from the school subjects they chose, it was those of who were clever at Maths, who had an aptitude for science and those who were genuinely interested and engaged in learning about the physical world’, says Willis.

This was a remarkable shift from the generation before. While humanities were the generalist tool kit to unlocking interesting and exciting careers later in life, it is now a STEM education that best prepares the young for unimaginable careers in future economies dominated by ever more complex technologies, driving more miraculous applications to make money and building the societies of tomorrow.

Willis says ‘building tomorrow’s world will take more dextrous flexible minds to adapt to our changing world and building peripatetic minds that can roam into the future in search of solutions to problems that have eluded us with more limited vision.’

There are challenges outside of our very society that threaten our very existence: climate change, over-population, dwindling resource and an insatiable appetitive of energy. Unless we have the collective wisdom to provide global solutions to global problems, they will swamp our nation and the world. ‘The very existence of civilisation is at stake here and quite possibly the existence of our species – I’m a palaeontologist, I know what I am talking about’, says Willis.

Today we have shown little ability to even comprehend these problems let alone face up to providing for adequate solutions. So we must look to the next generation, we must give them the tools and encouragement and all the support we can muster so that the next generation can make a better fist of the future than we have managed to do.

The best thing we can do right now is give them a solid education in the STEM subjects. Let them discover and understand the problems of the world so that we can go on and change the world to a more sustainable future.

‘Give them access to a range of technologies so that they can improve our future. Fire their thirst for learning with an education that allows them to explore ideas throughout history and throughout the world. With this kind of education to fertilise the minds of tomorrow we just might stand a chance of building a better place with resources that are available, without buggering up the environment at our own cost and peril.’

David Carney – Executive Director, Careers Industry Council of Australia (CICA)

David Carney commenced his presentation by acknowledging the work that careers practitioners do with the young people of today.  David stated we have heard lots in the last twelve months from the Australian Government about how young people are transitioning into the world of work today.

Carney says young people need to be better prepared. ‘The reality is that young people need access to high quality careers advice to support them through and with career decision making that is relevant, up to date and in touch with what is currently happening with future education and training.’

Students need access to quality careers education. Research shows that 52% of careers practitioners work part time and only one in four careers practitioners can spend all of their time working one on one in a careers interview or session.  Research also shows that quality careers resources are actually reducing and schools are continuing to make decisions to reduce the number of people employed to provide students with career advice and support.

‘We have to arrest that. In the interim we need to ensure there needs to be good careers resources available to students to make good career decisions’, says Carney.

Job Guide was the number one career resource used in Australia and Carney says CICA is now very excited to welcome back a new and improved replacement of what they saw was a tired resource. ‘The Good Education Group are to be commended for creating a new and invigorated ‘Good Careers Guide’.

As the national peak body, David Carney and CICA encourages schools to be aware and make use of The Good Careers Guide in order to provide students and users with a high quality resource full of information.

To learn more about The Good Careers Guide, visit www.goodcareersguide.com.au.

This article originally appeared in the CEAV eJournal – The Good Careers Guide Launch