"You will discover many interesting career and employability insights from the comfort of your own laptop": Laura Brammar
Unlike many other MOOCs that are all based around a
discipline, this Careers MOOC is going to be of interest to pretty much
everyone
Where do you stand on the whole MOOC debate?
From my perspective as a Careers Consultant, I think MOOCs are fantastic. I've already been working with clients who have explored things through a MOOC that they would never have been able to do without that opportunity. For example, I'm working with someone who is interested in forensic science and has just taken a MOOC on that - and it's actually just confirmed her passion and she went on to get 98 per cent in her course test.
We often talk about dipping your toes into different sectors and it's been very much about how you can creatively do that. Whereas now, with a MOOC, you can engage with anything from physics to songwriting. It's having the freedom to explore stuff that you almost haven't admitted to yourself that you find interesting.
Could you tell us a little bit about the ‘Enhance Your Career and Employability Skills’ MOOC?
The Careers Group has produced a really unusual MOOC in the sense that, unlike many other MOOCs that are all based around a discipline, this Careers MOOC is going to be of interest to pretty much everyone. Because whether they're at the initial stage of their career or coming up to retirement, who isn't going to find topics such as self-awareness and skills development interesting?
And also, the fact that often people are doing MOOCs with an eye to their career development anyway, it's a way of super-sizing the MOOCs you're already doing by thinking how you could feature them in your future career development.
Looking at the course syllabus in more detail, what does week one (‘What do you want? Self- Awareness') cover?
People fall into certain patterns when they think about their career development and often it's about overemphasizing particular factors. Let's say, for example, that one of your core career values - and this is what we hope to help you to discover on the MOOC - is a healthy work-life balance, then it might be that you're in a current role were you're really unhappy with your work-life balance and feel you're at work all the time. But if you overemphasize the work-life balance value over any other career value - and that might be the competitive landscape or the intellectual challenge - you might find yourself moving into a role that has a fantastic work-life balance but is actually quite repetitive. So essentially self-awareness is about helping you to find what you are really looking for.
The week two syllabus refers to ‘The secret language of skills’. Could you tell us about the importance of skills awareness?"If you're able to know what is implied by something like team-working skills, for example - what are the different components of it - then it's much easier to articulate that in an interview."
I think skills has become an almost hackneyed term. People bandy about phrases like communication skills - well, what exactly is a communication skill? So what we're trying to do in the second week of the MOOC is really interrogate what is meant by these terms: what are the ingredients of skills? If you're able to know what is implied by something like team-working skills, for example - what are the different components of it - then it's much easier to articulate that in an interview. It's not just about learning a few buzz words and chucking them at recruiters, it's about understanding what those terms mean for you.
I’m intrigued by the inclusion of ‘intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship’ in week 3. I think everyone is familiar with the latter term, but what does intrapreneurship mean exactly?
The term has been around since the 1980s, but I think it's become more prolific because there's much more about the enterprise agenda. Within the university sector there's a lot more investment in trying to engender entrepreneurial start-up businesses. But I'm also fascinated by this idea of intrapreneurship - it's really getting people to think that you don't just have to set up your own business to explore and express your entrepreneurial element. If you're someone who likes to be a change agent, if you're someone who likes to look at creative solutions to problems that might have been around for some time, if you're someone that has good commercial antennae and can see an opportunity within your organisation - whether that's a public sector organisation, local government, a charity, or a business - then you could be described as an intrapreneur. You've actually got the same skill set and approach, but you might be excited about applying that skill set within an organisation rather than striking out on your own.
Week 3 is fascinating because it's very much about this idea of opportunity recognition. We really wanted the MOOC to be informed by the latest research, so we can fit in theories like 'planned happenstance', for example. Career management and career employment skills is not about having a really clear plan and working your way through it, because we know that life often doesn't play ball. Instead, what it's about is having your skills and critical thinking honed so that when opportunities do arise you can spot them and you can maximise them.
With people now managing multiple online profiles, do you think the issues explored in week 4 – including cultivating your personal brand – are of increasing importance?
Week 4 has been an exciting part of the MOOC and also a challenge. Awareness of your online landscape, and being able to cultivate your online landscape, is kind of a blessing and a curse. You've got this amazing opportunity to get your 'brand' out there and to articulate what you offer, but equally there's a legacy element which means that you might have used the online landscape for a completely different purpose. Then you need to think about about how you're going to differentiate yourself from that and what you're now offering. It's a skill and it's something that we spend quite a while thinking about - and it does link very closely to week 6 which looks at online networking.
Participants will explore the secrets to interview confidence in week five. This sounds like a particularly useful element of the MOOC."We really feel strongly that, as well as equipping participants in the MOOC with the ability to articulate themselves on paper, they also need to be able to have a natural presence to be convincing in a face to face experience as well."
We know that organisations have moved on from just traditional interviews. Many graduates are now undergoing not just interviews but also expected to give presentations and take part in group activities. We really feel strongly that, as well as equipping participants in the MOOC with the ability to articulate themselves on paper, they also need to be able to have a natural presence to be convincing in a face to face experience as well. There are also tricks and tools that you can use to give yourself confidence, and that confidence makes people listen to you.
Looking at ‘Networking Online and in Person’ in week six, do you think there’s a hierarchy in terms of networking via social media? For example, is LinkedIn more important than Facebook/Twitter?
I think that a hierarchy is emerging and I have to say that nothing trumps LinkedIn at the moment as a professional social networking device. What's also interesting with LinkedIn is that it's expanding beyond the more traditional finance, business and commercial sectors. Even within the creative sector, as well, people are using it increasingly. So it's getting this global scope in terms of sector and industry. I know that some career professionals say that the days of the CV and resume are numbered - everyone's just going to have a LinkedIn profile which you can update easily and get endorsements and recommendations. We focus in some detail on LinkedIn within the MOOC.
But Twitter also has a massive part to play. I've certainly worked with illustrators who've got more through Twitter, so I think you need to know your sector - and that's one of the things we talk about in the MOOC.
Could you say a little bit about how the practical assignments will work?
As this isn't discipline-specific, assessment doesn't work in the same way as other MOOCs. But we wanted there to be some core activities that participants needed to complete - to ground the content, so to speak. So for the Week 1 self-awareness course, rather than just get people to identify their core career values, we then ask them to translate that discovery of values into a set of questions that they can then use practically in their networking, for example.
In Week 3, it's getting participants to identify one aspect of themselves that they perhaps need to improve - perhaps resilience in terms of coping with change within your organisation. We ask people to identify it and then come up with an action plan. And they will then share that resource through the MOOC forum. This is another exciting part of the MOOC, I think, because the participants are themselves a resource. You may well produce a set of questions that you would like to use in your networking process as part of your career development, and it may well be that there's another participant on this MOOC who's in a position to answer some of those questions. So it's kind of crowd-sourcing the participants as well, to help develop other people's careers. Within six weeks you will discover many interesting career and employability insights from the comfort of your own laptop.
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