Career Tips

Career advice crucial for jobs

Wed, 12 May 2010

Youth unemployment and poverty are among the most serious problems facing the country and the irony is that, together with this unemployment, we are facing a growing shortage of appropriate skills.

Avron Herr, founder of Pace Career Centre, an organisation that has been working in the field of career guidance for 20 years, believes the lack of proper advice at crucial stages leads young people into making wrong career and study choices and this is exacerbating the problem.

"A shortage of scarce skills, an over-supply of low demand skills, high tertiary drop-out rates, and too many idle youth, are all symptomatic of poor career planning," Herr says.

"Pupils in our schools are not being properly evaluated in terms of their career interests and aptitude and they are not being guided in the right direction.

"As a result, parents are spending their limited resources on inappropriate and often worthless qualifications; students who are not suited to the courses they are enrolled in are dropping out; and many of those who graduate are unemployable."

This is not only a South African scenario, Herr points out. Many countries throughout the world are faced with similar challenges.

"The delivery of sound career guidance and advice has never been more in demand than it is right now," he stresses.

The delivery of career guidance is especially required by young people entering the world of work for the first time.

"At the forefront of career guidance delivery are school guidance counsellors, life orientation educators, student support staff at universities and FET colleges, student recruitment officers at tertiary institutions, employment services practitioners at labour centres and career guidance practitioners at the various youth advisory centres."

The problem, Herr believes, is that despite this large infrastructure of career guidance delivery points, there is no commonly accepted level of delivery quality. Advice is contradictory, often outdated and sometimes incorrect.

Pace Careers Centre is convening the first national Career Guidance Conference at the St George's Hotel in Irene, Gauteng on May 13 and 14.

The conference will see the launch of the Southern Africa Career Development Association, a body which aims to grow the profession and improve the quality and availability of career guidance delivery in the country.

As this is the inaugural career guidance conference, Herr believes it is appropriate to have a broad generic theme that will allow future conferences to build on. The theme for Career Guidance Conference 2010 is therefore simply Career Guidance in South Africa.

Delegates already registered represent a wide range of career guidance practitioners.

The official opening address will be by Angie Motshekga, the Minister of Basic Education, with the keynote address on day one by Lester Oakes, president of the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance.

The keynote speakers on day two are Lara Kay, World Bank head researcher on career guidance in South Africa, and SAQA chief executive Samuel Isaacs, who will talk of the introduction of a national career advisory helpline.

 

For more information contact Pace Career Centre at 021 555 3928 or info@pace.za.com

Source: Cape Argus
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