This guest post from Lewis Clarke updates on his research into careers professionals perspectives on the future of the labour market, and asks whether any of the readers of this blog would be interested in getting involved. Contact Lewis on Lewis.clark@shu.ac.uk if you are interested in getting involved.

Are you a careers professional working in a secondary school in England? If so, I would like to invite you to participate in my research which is focussed on the topic of the future of work.

In Spring 2022, over 200 careers professionals (CP) completed a short survey which loosely explored the following 3 topics:

• Careers professionals awareness of possible future labour market developments and their potential impact on young people
• Where careers professionals locate information about the possible future labour market developments
• How/if careers professionals integrate their knowledge of the future into their schools careers provision

The survey responses provided some really interesting findings. I would now like to explore these findings in more detail through one-to-one discussions with CPs. The discussion would ideally last around 1-hour, but I can be flexible if you don’t have this much time to spare. It would be conducted online via Teams or Zoom, and I can be flexible with the time and date of the discussion to best suit your busy schedule.

As many of you will be aware, the possible future labour market is often understood to be uncertain and subject to significant change. With this research, I therefore hope to support the careers guidance sector to better understand how the future is being interpreted by careers professionals and how the future is being integrated into practice to prepare young people for possible change. Your involvement in this research would help me to do this!

If you would like to support this research, then please do drop me an email and we can arrange a time/date for our discussion.

My email address Lewis.clark@shu.ac.uk

I look forward to hearing from you.