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Monday 9 January 2012

AGCAS Heads of Service conference 2012

I spent the second half of last week at AGCAS's new heads of service training and then the AGCAS Heads of Service conference in Dublin.  This is an annual event for heads of higher education careers services. Just like last year it was an enjoyable conference. It was good to meet people, some of whom I had met last year but most of whom were new to me. I found a few more heads of service on twitter this year, but most seem to use LinkedIn so I've connected with them on their instead.

The opening address from Kate Dodd was a useful starting point, in particular her challenge for careers services to develop universal provision, i.e. engaging all students not just the keen or desperate few (I'm exaggerating slightly there). Also her summary of what senior managers expect from their Careers Service, that the service will:
  1. help enhance the institution's reputation
  2. make a positive impact on DLHE (she also made the point here that whilst we might be uncomfortable with the 6 month deadline it would be a time frame that students would think reasonable)
  3. demonstrate how what they do is value for money
I attended a really useful workshop on 'Is the virtual careers service inevitable?' with Michael Clark and Marc Lintern (I'm hopping their slides will be available somewhere soon?). I also attended a less than useful workshop on 'Is the career guidance interview a necessity or a luxury we can no longer afford?', which I thought would be really interesting but unfortunately the panel was made up only of people in the necessity camp so wasn't very useful (IMHO).

It was also a good chance to catch up with Bob Athwal, who was there in his AGR capacity but starts with us on 16 January :)

1 comment:

  1. [...] to I’m looking for more careers tweeters, after attending the AGCAS Heads of Service Conference last week I’ve found a few more. Coming from a background in learning development and learning [...]

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