Different approaches to using LMI in career practice

The ways career practitioners integrate LMI in their career practice vary. Currently, there is no clear evidence that suggests that one approach is more successful than another. Different frameworks (or models) are available to help guide the way practitioners integrate LMI into their practice (adapted from Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996). Summaries of three follow.

1. One popular approach (which has been around the longest and is probably the best known) is the ‘talent-matching’ approach. Three key assumptions lie at the heart of this approach:

• Practitioners should give LMI as a central part of careers interventions, because it enhances the matching process (at the core of this approach) of clients/learners to the best employment opportunities
• Clients/learners behave rationally and their career decision-making and transition behaviours are both planned and logical
• High quality LMI provided by practitioners as part of career support will stimulate the desired behaviour change in clients/learners (e.g., giving LMI about selection procedures and deadlines for a particular job or training course will result in the client conforming to these requirements).

Although still popular, this approach was developed over a hundred years ago, and is increasingly attracting criticism, because:

• Client/learners do not always behave rationally; plan in a meaningful way; or even approach career decision-making logically
• Today’s labour markets are more fluid, volatile and less predictable than at the time this model was developed.

2. The humanistic, client-centred approach advocates empowerment  – suggesting that career guidance should concentrate on helping clients/learners develop their own skills, knowledge and understanding needed to undertake their own LMI research into career options throughout their lifetimes, rather than relying on information given as part of a one-off career intervention. Here, it is argued that using LMI in this way:

• Empowers clients/learners to become autonomous, so is more viable in the longer term because they are less reliant on a trained professional
• Supports the client/learner to take ownership of the LMI they find, making it more likely that they will act upon it, rather than being tempted to ignore or sideline it
• Increases the likelihood that clients/learners will be able to cope on their own with career transitions throughout their life course, if need be.

So this approach ideally results in information self-sufficiency essential for surviving volatile labour markets.

3. The third example, social learning argues that, since careers guidance comprises an ongoing learning process (rather than a one-off matching process), information should be provided in a structure and form that enables the client/learner to interact with, and learn from, it. Here, the core task of the career practitioner is to evaluate the accuracy of the client’s/learner’s understanding of their career development so that they can integrate suitable LMI into their career learning process as relevant. This model/framework advocates the importance of career practitioners:

• Challenging misconceptions, stimulating exploration and developing decision-making skills
• Understanding clients’/learners’ goals and resolving goal conflicts, using LMI to solve any problems arising
• Using teaching and learning techniques, like reinforcement and modelling.

In addition to these three examples, there are many other career frameworks/models developed to support practice (see Arthur, & McMahon, 2019), each implying slightly different roles for the use of LMI.

It should also be remembered that some practitioners may choose to adopt eclectic or integrationist approaches to their practice, both of which involve elements from different models/frameworks being combined in slightly different ways, which help them to get to grips with trusted sources and interpret complex LMI for their clients/learners.

In this unit, it is argued that providing LMI effectively requires career practitioners to adopt evidence-based framework(s) or model(s), like those summarised above, which should be complemented with skills for information giving and guiding principles to help increase effectiveness of LMI in career guidance.

Skills and principles are both discussed next.