GCCA | Graduate Careers Council of Australia

Graduate Careers Australia

ergo - Number 90 March 2003

Pushing the Boundaries in NZ

In late November 2002, I was fortunate enough to attend the Pushing the Boundaries conference hosted by Career Services Rapuara in association with the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance (IAEVG) in Wellington, New Zealand. 430 delegates from 12 countries attended over the three day event which provided a wealth of learning and networking opportunities. Under the theme of “the heightened role of career planning in knowledge societies”, a broad range of topics was covered from career guidance theory to online developments to graduate labour market data.

The conference program was packed with worthwhile plenary and workshop sessions and highlights included the keynote presentations. The first Keynote Speaker was Professor Mason Durie from the School of Maori Studies at Massey University who provided a powerful insight into fostering career opportunities for indigenous peoples and associated career planning and development issues.

On the second day, Lynne Bezanson from the Canadian Career Development Foundation treated the audience to an enlightening presentation titled Vital Myth: Finding the Signposts on Your Career Journey. Ms Bezanson is now a regular visitor to the triennial GCCA/NAGCAS/AAGE conferences and a well-respected leader in career development theory. During this session she urged careers professionals to make use of the concepts of “Myth” and “Story” to both increase self-awareness and encourage the pursuit of meaning and purpose in life and work.

The third keynote speaker, Professor Tony Watts from the National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling in the United Kingdom, stressed the importance of promoting career guidance as a ‘public good’ and how this must be realised in relation to public policy. He went on to explain the work he has been doing with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris which has involved visiting 14 countries to gather information about their career development and guidance systems for reference in developing future policy.

Although this research is not yet complete, some key issues are becoming apparent. In summary:

• All countries involved are seeking to review their career guidance systems in the context of lifelong learning and sustained employability.
• Existing services focus on young people and the unemployed.
• There is a need for career guidance services over and above the provision of career information.
• No country has yet developed an adequate lifelong guidance strategy, but across the countries, the key elements of such a system can be discerned.

Of particular interest to me throughout the conference was the focus on New Zealand labour market issues. For example, NZ has a very low unemployment rate and the focus for the NZ government is now on efficient management of their labour market which includes identifying and addressing skills shortages. NZ is also now dealing with the change of focus from farming and primary industry to a knowledge society and the changes in skills this requires. A new publication, WorkInsight, produced by the Department of Labour and launched at the conference, provides a wealth of valuable information and statistics regarding skills shortages, the Government’s Skills Action Plan and regional labour market patterns in New Zealand.

Pushing the Boundaries was an excellent professional development event and I would like to congratulate the Career Services Rapuara team for their excellent organization across the three days. Many thanks also to the numerous NZ university careers service friends and colleagues in attendance for making me feel very welcome!

Conference papers can be downloaded from the Careers Services Rapuara website at www.careers.govt.nz – see “Careers Industry Information and Research”.

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