Hi Sandra

First of all let me apologise if anyone found the tone of my initial e-mail
offensive. The intention I guess was to be ironic but in a playful,
post-modern kind of way. Perhaps I miscalculated. Certainly no offense to
any individual was intended.

I will have a think on what Len is saying, this e-mail is a response to your
comments.

The first thing I would want to say is that I agree with much of what you
say. The graduate market place is not a level playing field and it is the
case that those with a lot of cultural capital have a huge advantage but (to
continue a sporting analogy) its both the only playing field we've got and
the only game in town Most of the non-traditional students I see aspire to
what they would see as a "proper" graduate job. Failure may mean a return to
the kinds oc "MacJobs" they entered higher education precisely to avoid. for
these students the stakes are very high. Some, to their great credit and
against large odds, actually succeed. For reasons I discussed in my last
e-mail I doubt  that eliminating "skills talk" from the graduate recruitment
process, even if it were possible (and its employers you would have to
convince not me)would help. One of the good things about "skills talk",
whatever its ultimate epistemological status, is that it can, with greater
or lesser success, be taught To deny access to this discourse in the
curriculum on grounds of some kind of no doubt well meant but, I would want
to argue, ultimately misguided ideological purity seems to me to doubly
disadvantage non-traditional students because they are precisely the
students who are unlikely to to know the often hidden and tacit rules by
which such the graduate recruitment game is played. Of course knowing the
rules doesn't guarantee that you are going to win or that the rules are even
fair. But it is, it seems to me, at least a start.

-----Original Message-----
From: learning development in higher education network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Sandra Sinfield
Sent: 10 December 2003 12:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Graduate identity and the skills agenda in higher education
(and beyond)


Dear John Dean et al,
Personally you have convinced me and I am off to the market to purchase my
chickens immediately!

Failing my ability to convince senior management of the appropriateness of
this response a few quick replies to your thought provoking missive:

   * One reason that many of us reject skills as a discourse is that it
panders to a negative stereotype of the Widening Participation student. As
Lillis (2001) argues this
     debate sprang into  existence as a defensive response to the increasing
numbers of non-traditional students entering HE. this ws a demonstration of
the ivory towers
     protecting themselves from the great unwashed - and all debates about
WP - up to and including the most recent one about variable fees - reflects
this.
   * Employers - as with David Starkey - argue that they do not want 'Mickey
Mouse students with Mickey Mouse degrees'... ironically they are not
disputing the relevance of
     a degree in Anglo-Saxon mythology - but one in Business Studies or
Leisure and Tourism. Obviously these latter can have no relevance to the
real world of business.
   * Many of our lecturers note that job descriptions and job application
forms require demonstration of skills or attributes that are in fact just a
code for the cultural
     capital associated with being white, male and middle class - if we join
the skills game we deny this and pretend that we can give our
non-traditional students the
     'skills' that the employers want, whereas short of a magic wand we will
never transform them into that person even if we wished to do so - and they
wished to change
     thus.

Best,
SAndra Sinfield
London Met

John Dean wrote:

>  Tell me Mr Dunstone what possible use did you think your degree would be
in
> the real world?
> (excerpt from the AGCAS training video on interview techniques,  Tell Me
Mr
> Dunstone.
>
> I write this with a two-fold interest in the debate on graduate identity.
I
> am currently a careers adviser at London South Bank University but in the
> past I was also a Ph D student engaged in research in the sociology of
> scientific knowledge so I feel I have at least a limited grasp of some of
> the intellectual roots of the graduate identity approach (Wittgenstein,
> Foucault, Goffman et al).
>
> Perhaps I am still trying to square those two aspects of my own past but
> what I find hard to understand is whether the graduate identity model
> actually has any practical implications for how the employers I work with
> could (or should) go about recruiting graduates. At the moment it seems to
> me graduate recruiters use four main methods of recruitment all four of
> which are steeped in what might be called the  skills model.
>
> Graduate recruitment will normally have a first stage where applicants are
> asked to submit an application form Typically this form has questions of
two
> kinds, the first being about biographical data of various kinds (how old
are
> you? which university did you attend? what degree subject did you study?
> etc). The second are longer questions that examine competences or
> motivations. To use an actual example the Standard Application Form has a
> series such questions each with its own box for a reply. In the first box
> students are asked to describe a when they have had to use skills in
> planning and implementation. A second box covers teamwork, communication
and
> influencing while a third box seeks evidence of analysis, problem solving
> and creative thinking. Over page there is then two more boxes asking for
> specific skills (languages, IT etc) and the reasons the candidate wants to
> work in the career area they have chosen.
>
> Statistics suggest that for a typical graduate post about 80% of
candidates
> will be eliminated on the basis of the application form. One of the
dangers
> of telling employers that transferable skills don t exist is that
employers
> then may be tempted to rely even more than they currently do on the
> biographical data. In practice this can mean recruit the candidate if
their
> face fits in terms of school or university attended, age, A-level grades
> etc. Is this really what the proponents of the  graduate identity
approach
> want to advocate? I am tempted to say that if transferable skills do not
> exist perhaps we should have to invent them. Perhaps they exist  for all
> practical purposes  as it were. After all, even if they don t exist in the
> sense that, say, the table I am writing this on exists, they exist as
text
> , don t they? From a philosophical perspective, I guess, a lot hinges on
> what you mean by the term  exist.
>
> Overcome the paper sift and selection at the second stage usually involves
> an interview. Again I m told by employers these now revolve mostly around
> what might be called a  competency  agenda i.e. candidates will be asked
to
> evidence the various skills and competencies (teamwork, leadership,
problem
> solving etc.) that the employer has identified as part of the  person
> specification  for the job being offered.
>
> Some companies use a third selection stage called an assessment centre.
> Typically this assessment centre involves students engaging in management
> games and exercises that involve teamwork. Additionally there might be
> things such as giving a presentation (communication skills) and in-tray
> exercises (organisation, prioritising information).
>
> The fourth main method of recruitment used is psychometric testing of one
> kind or another. Psychometric tests are currently the  wild cards  of the
> graduate selection process in the sense that they may turn up at any stage
> from replacing the application form as the first sift to part of an
> assessment centre. Most of these tests claim to measure an aptitude of
some
> kind   verbal, numerical and diagrammatic reasoning are the three most
> commonly used. A few employers also test for other more-or-less  innate
> characteristics of the human psyche,  extroversion  and  introversion ,
for
> example. Of course, employers don t make these tests up themselves. They
buy
> them (or to be more exact they buy the right to use them) from firms of
> occupational psychologists.
>
> An important aspect of these four methodologies is that no one involved in
> graduate recruitment would claim that any of these methods were perfect or
> fallible. As an ethnomethodologist might put it no doubt a lot of  hidden
> work  goes into, say, assessing an application form or judging an
interview.
> Employers are trying to predict future behaviour here and mistakes can and
> do get made. Some graduates recruited in this way will fail to  make out
> when they start working for the company. It is also common for a graduate
> applying to company X to get a rejection at the initial application but to
> get a job offer from company Y, even though the two companies needs of
> graduates and ways of recruiting them appear almost identical on paper.
>
> Why on earth do employers use these methods, which are expensive and time
> consuming, if they are so prone to error? I think employers would probably
> respond to this question in two ways. The first would be to say that
because
> something is not perfect does not mean it doesn t work at all. Some
> graduates recruited by these techniques do not  make out  but equally many
> do. It is also not uncommon for the most sought after graduates with the
> best aptitudes and skills to end up with multiple job offers. The second
> point employers would want to know is what, if anything, are the
> alternatives to these methods?
>
> In an ideal world employers might try out graduates first to see how they
> operate in the real work place. Actually something like this does happen
> through  sandwich placements ,  summer internships ,  mentoring schemes
and
> so on. However, this doesn t remove the need for selection because these
> schemes themselves quickly become oversubscribed.
>
> Other techniques might be considered. Graphology, for example, is used in
> parts of continental Europe but it is not currently judged very reliable
by
> UK employers.
>
> One way of limiting numbers applying would be to restrict the kinds of
> graduate allowed to even make an application. The vacancies might only be
> advertised say to applicants of one gender or race. Thankfully the law now
> proscribes some of these methods although it is still not uncommon for
some
> employers to restrict their recruitment activities to a few carefully
> selected campuses. In the trade this is known as  institutional targeting.
> It probably does keep numbers of applications down to manageable levels
but
> its controversial because you may miss very good applicants who are not in
> one of your chosen institutions. It s not a practice I would like to see
> become any more widespread than it already is, nor I suspect would those
who
> advocate,  graduate identity  as a model.
>
> At the opposite pole from the above might be a recruitment scheme where
all
> undergraduates are encouraged to apply and then the lucky winners chosen
by
> some kind of random selection. In some ways this is, of course, the
fairest
> system. It eliminates at a stroke, for example, any hint of cultural bias,
> because the computer generating the random numbers will not be influenced
by
> whether the candidates name is, say, Smith or Shah. There is though one
> large problem. Convincing employers that they should hire such important
> staff by random is going to be, well, tricky.
>
> We could use Astrology or Tarot Cards. We could use Azande chicken
oracles.
> There is probably even some sense in which these things would  work.
> However, before anyone starts buying shares in the poultry industry my
> advice would be don t count your chickens before they are hatched (sorry).
> We could use nepotism (the Murdoch solution). We could institute a caste
> system of some kind but I can t see that idea making the next Labour Party
> manifesto. No, it would seem to me for all their acknowledged
imperfections
> for now and the foreseeable future employers are likely to continue using
> application forms, interviews, psychometric tests and assessment centres
to
> recruit graduates. We are, like Tracy Emin s critics, stuck, stuck, stuck.
> And that prompts some interesting questions.
>
> Five questions for the new paradigm
>
> 1.      Do the proponents of the graduate identity model believe employers
should
> go on using applications forms in their graduate recruitment? Do forms
need
> to contain different questions from those described above?
> 2.      Are interviews a good thing and has the new approach anything to
tell us
> about the kinds of questions it is good to ask?
> 3.      Will there still be assessment centres in this brave new world and
will
> employers at them still measure things like  leadership potential  and
team
> working skills , because that is what happens at the moment?
> 4.      Are psychometric tests ok as a recruitment tool? Some of them
appear to
> me to measure something rather like Len s Homonunculus, albeit without its
> tool kit in this instance.
> 5.      It is possible that all the current recruitment methods described
above
> will have to be abandoned tainted as they are with the  loose talk  of
> transferable skills, aptitudes competencies and so on. That s cool. But,
> what is going to replace them?
>
> By way of a conclusion of what has become a very lng e-mail, let me say I
> have no quarrel with graduate identity as a model for understanding
aspects
> of the graduate transition from study to work. Moreover, such sociological
> analyses seem to me to be a wholly legitimate academic pursuit. At its
best
> such approaches may serve as a salutary reminder of the problematic and
> contingent nature of all human endeavour. However, something larger is
being
> claimed here. We are told that the new approach represents a  paradigm
> shift.  We are told that this new paradigm is both superior to, and a
> replacement of the old paradigm with its long confusing lists and loose
talk
> of skills and so on. Presumably the analogy here is with Thomas Kuhn s now
> classic account of paradigm change as a mechanism for scientific
revolutions
> in the natural sciences.
>
> Well revolutions are ok by me   I grew up in the sixties myself. However,
if
> there really has been a revolution in our understanding of this subject
> somebody had better come down from the barricades and explain its
> implications (if any) to employers because they are still using the old
> paradigm. If that doesn t change, then those who, like myself, are
involved
> in careers education and guidance are going to go on using the language of
> skills as well, no matter how  problematic  such discourse might seem to
> some academic purists. The philosophical debate between realists and
> conventionalists (or instrumentalists and contextualists if you prefer)
has
> been going on a long time and seems set to continue for the indefinite
> future. The question is can that debate really inform either employers or
> people like myself how we can actually do our jobs better out here in the
>  real  world and if it can, what, in concrete terms, are people actually
> trying to tell us?
>
> Dr. John Dean
> Careers Adviser
> London South Bank University
> December 2003
>
> John Dean (Dr)
> Careers Adviser
> London South Bank University
>
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