The Careers Centre

Since its opening in 1997 the Careers Centre has helped a great many young people wanting to pursue a career in aerospace and aviation. Indeed, it has become a focal point for young people, aerospace professionals and educators. The key objectives of the Career Centre are to provide information on career opportunities within the industry, promote aerospace and aviation as the sector of choice and support individuals seeking employment in the industry. These objectives are carried out through a number of activities including one-to-one careers advice (free to all) which includes CV help, interview preparations and applications, providing a dedicated aerospace and aviation careers website, careers literature (including study information, job hunting and apprenticeships), and running events and exhibiting at various external events.

These activities entail interaction with staff in other departments of the Society, with representatives of a wide range of organisations from all over the country, with the Specialist Groups and individual members of the Society and with students.  The network of links between the Careers Centre and these various elements is shown below.

It is a very ‘busy’ network and for it to function effectively the Centre staff need to have easy communications with all its components. The Society headquarters is the obvious place for it, enabling much of its interaction with Society members to be done on an opportunity basis when the contacts are in the building for other reasons. Relocation to Farnborough has required much more communication to be done by e-mail and telephone and will have undoubtedly introduced delays, degraded the quality of communication and added to the overhead of what has been until now a remarkably successful and productive activity.

In particular, the Centre has been, a key point of contact between the Society and young people entering the aerospace profession, a valuable source of advice to them and a means of attracting new members into the Society. Its location in central London has been an important asset, being at the centre of a large body of students at universities in London and the Home Counties and giving comparatively easy access for students from further afield. Many of the students who have gained valuable advice from the Careers Centre have done so through being able to ‘drop in’ whilst visiting London for some other reason. In contrast, from the responses received in support of the requisition, it is evident that the Hub at Farnborough is a highly unsuitable place to house such a department because of the inconvenience of access from everywhere except the counties to the south-west of London. 

Why then was the Centre moved to Farnborough?  We are not aware of any recorded consideration by the Council or Advisory Committee of the pros and cons of such a move and we understand that the Centre staff, who were not consulted in advance, are totally opposed to it. In the November 2009 issue of The Aerospace Professional (AP) there is a report of the conclusions of the Special Meeting of Council on 2 October, held to consider governance. 
The resolutions passed by Council did not specifically address the propriety or otherwise of the Library and Careers Centre being moved without reference to the Council. The process by which the decision to move these functions was actually made is not discussed. It might be thought that the second resolution, declaring that the actions of the Chief Executive with respect to the signing of licences was “within his proper executive powers”, also embraces the decision to move the Library and Careers Centre. If so, it follows that the Council believes that the moves did not require its prior consideration. We find this proposition hard to swallow but it appears to be what, in effect, the Council affirmed on 2 October.

In the October issue of AP the Chief Executive, in his Q&A on the NAL, offered the following explanation,

“For some time now we have looked at the best way to take our Careers Centre forward. One way of doing this was to give the Centre more space so that it could provide more information to those wanting to join our community. In addition both David Marshall, when he was President, and I felt that the NAL at Farnborough should have a clear focus on youth alongside its other aims. By bringing both library and careers staff together at the NAL with dedicated space for a significant amount of career related material provided, the library will have wider usage and staffing of both functions will be improved. However, this does not mean that career interviews cannot continue to take place at Hamilton Place when they are needed. In addition, information on careers in aerospace will also be available at Hamilton Place.”

In our view, the gains cited here are a very poor exchange for the loss of access to members as a result of the move out of London. The words “.... the library will have wider usage and staffing of both functions will be improved” appear to give the game away.  Neither the NAL nor the Careers Centre at Farnborough is going to attract many visitors from outside the local area.  The Careers Centre might, however, attract additional visitors to The Hub from local schools and colleges and hence increase the visitor count to the library – a politically desirable objective.  Also, Careers Centre and library staff will be able to answer each other’s telephones when the need arises.

We have reason to believe that, contrary to what is said on the letters pages of the November issue of AP, the Careers Centre is not “operating very successfully” at Farnborough. The second sentence in the quote above from the Chief Executive “..to give the Centre more space so that it could provide more information...” has by no means held good in practice.  There is less space for literature at Farnborough, so that much careers literature is stored in the wind tunnel, and there is no secure place to store documents. Furthermore, the open plan arrangement, with its lack of privacy, is not suitable for career interviews. The overhead costs in time and money of being based at a distance from the Society headquarters are considerable. At the very successful Careers Fair held in Hamilton Place on 6 November there was a heavy demand from students wanting help with their CVs and, whilst career interviews have been given in London, there has been none as yet at Farnborough in the three months of the Centre’s operation there.

It seems likely to us that the real motive for moving the Careers Centre out of 4 Hamilton Place was to free up more office space that could be rented to an outside organisation.

However, the offices previously occupied by the Careers Centre have now stood empty for more than three months. We believe that, as with the working library, the Society has its priorities and its policy with respect to the use of its headquarters building, and the services it provides for its members, completely wrong.

A recent year’s activity by the Careers Centre, as set out in Appendix 4A, is impressive testimony of the contribution of the Centre to the Society’s objectives in attracting young people into our profession, helping them in the development of their careers and recruiting many of them into the Society. Having the Careers Centre staff based in Hamilton Place must surely have contributed to that success. To put at risk the successful continuation of this well-established operation by the ill-conceived move to Farnborough is in our view a disservice not only to members of the Society but to UK aerospace as a whole. Also, removing the face-to-face contact with London students will not assist the recruitment of young members to the Society. We are in little doubt that the move has undermined the ability of the Centre to function to maximum effect and needs to be reversed.  This could be done easily and quickly. 
We can see no justification for persisting with the present, damaging arrangement.

Appendix 4A   A recent year’s activity