Time to Reinvent the Guidance Counselor Role

Any organization - whether it’s an army, a sports or medical team - needs to develop its talent pool. The real wealth of an Apple, a Google, or a team like the Los Angeles Lakers lies in its power to recruit a future workforce that can outcompete a Microsoft, an Amazon or outplay the Miami Heat. The victories belong to the organizations who can use their ability to scout, recruit and promote top performers, allowing the organization to find that necessary competitive edge.

Cultivating Talent Supply Chains

In contrast to the way top companies and teams understand that the relentless search for talent requires a system, capable of finding the potential stars early, our public education system is often slow off the mark. Our schools exhibit a rudimentary approach to talent development. Many of those students not choosing to pursue an academic track are left behind, made to feel they are failures. As such, about 15 percent of all young people, or 4.7 million, are not in school and don’t have a job. Add that number to the students who drop out of college - approximately 40 percent in the first year - and we have what can only be euphemistically termed a “broken “system.

Career Guidance Counselors: A History Lesson

The one major nod the schools make to the idea that talent needs to be nurtured is the high school Career Guidance Counselor. However, given the numbers of students who don’t have an easy transition from high school to either employment or college, we might try rethinking the position to judge whether or not the job function remains fit for purpose.

Established in the 1960s, the Career Guidance Counselor role was meant to guide students to colleges of their choice. By all reports, these well-meaning individuals cannot handle the huge workload of steering the hundreds of students they need to serve in a modern high school. A study by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce showed the majority of counselors reported spending no more than a quarter of their time on college and career counseling. A study by Paolini (2012) had even worse news,finding that Counselors’ spent under 10% of their time helping students with career and college planning. Even if this were not the case, there are simply not enough of them to do an acceptable job. The American School Counselor Association, for example, recommends no more than 250 students to one counselor. The reality is that 85 percent of schools missed that mark across the country in 2015-2016, the most recent year numbers were available. One Virginia school reported just a single counselor for more than one thousand students,another in Maryland, with one counselor for more than 1,300 students.

Counselors spent under 10% of their time helping students with career and college planning.

One person alone can’t perform this function, however energetic and well informed they are about the labor market. That is why KP is recommending one of two options:

• Re-train the current career counselors and prepare them to use online technology to expand their abilities to reach everyone.
• Allow a managed services company to perform these roles remotely, using a combination of Talent Portfolio Managers, AI and online services.

Career Guidance Counselors Reborn

Due to rapid changes in the economy career counselors need a crash course on recent changes in the labor market. For example, many are probably unaware that students can follow career trajectories that can lead to middle-class jobs that do not require attending a four-year college. We can point to the growth of many middle-skill industries for semi specialized technical assistance, whether in project management, health care, cybersecurity , solar energy or biotech. All career counselors need to understand that the demand for these skills is so intense that it affects the economy at large.

“Millions of job postings go unfilled even as millions of people remain unemployed or underemployed.” -Harvard and Accenture

The report goes on to note that “The demand for “middle-skills” jobs — those that require more education and training than a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree — remains high, yet the lack of a properly skilled workforce is hindering the ability of American businesses to compete globally. Career Counselors would have a pivotal role to play in a revised approach, first to educate students and their families about these new jobs and second, to build the academic and soft skills necessary for students to compete successfully for these jobs.

We believe this new approach will bring multiple win-win-win benefits for students, employers, and schools alike (alignment of supply with demand -- it’s about efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and ROI). In a prior blog, we noted the role of STAR Talent Advisors, who will take students beyond high school, guiding them along their chosen career pathways.

At KP we believe that for talent development to be successful we need to facilitate the dialogue between schools and industry -- making sure we are serving our customers while at the same time fully developing our students’ full potential.