Career practitioners' conceptions of competency for social media in career services Kettunen, Jaana; Sampson, James P.; Vuorinen, Raimo Kettunen, J., Sampson, J., Jr., & Vuorinen, R. (2015). Career practitioners' conceptions of competency for social media in career services. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 43 (1), 43-56. doi:10.1080/03069885.2014 Career Practitioners´ Conceptions of Competency for Social Media in Career ServicesThis article reports findings from a phenomenographic investigation into career practitioners´ understanding of competency for social media in career services.Sixteen Danish and Finnish practitioners with experience using social media in career services were interviewed in focus groups. Competency for social media in career services was conceived as 1) an ability to use social media for delivering information, 2) an ability to use social media for delivering career services, 3) an ability to utilise social media for collaborative career exploration and 4) an ability to utilise social media for co-careering. The findings can be used to develop preservice and in-service training of career practitioners and support for the deepening of their competency, using the critical aspects that were identified.Keywords: career services; career practitioners; competency; information and communication technology; phenomenography; social mediaThe exponentially increasing use of social media across the career service sector has placed an increasing demand upon career practitioners' ability to be innovative, take advantage,of and fashion novel career service delivery formats with online technologies (e.g. Hooley, Hutchinson, & Watts, 2010a, 2010bWatts, 2010). In career services, social media is fast becoming as much a necessity as an opportunity and competency to work in this new mode is an area of increasing importance. To many, social media is simply a collection of online tools used to share information, communicate, and socialise with one another. In the broader sense, social media is defined as a process in which individuals and groups develop common understandings and meanings with contents, communities, and Web 2.0 technology (e.g. Ahlqvist, Bäck, Heinonen, & Halonen, 2010;Kolbitsch, & Maurer, 2006). Thus, it primarily refers not to a particular set of technologies but to types of practices (Bonderup, & Dohn, 2009). In order to consider the usefulness and potential of existing and emerging technologies, it is essential that career practitioners be appropriately trained in this area (e.g. Bimrose, Hughes, & Barnes, 2011; Osborne, Dikel, & Sampson, 2011, Watts, 2010. There is an urgent need for competency training to be firmly grounded in a framework of career practice and for an emphasis to be placed on adopting a more developmental approach to capacity building (Bimrose, Barnes, & Atwell, 2010). It is also very likely that practitioners working in this area need to be trained differently than for the traditional face-to-face service mode (Niles, & Harris-Bowlsbey, 2013).Considerable ...

Jaana Kettunen is a researcher at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research of the University of Jyväskylä. Her research focuses on social media in career services. Recently she has also studied the ethical practice in social networking and the role of ICT in relation to national lifelong guidance policies. Päivi Tynjälä Applying Phenomenography in Guidance and Counselling ResearchThis paper examines phenomenography as a viable qualitative approach in guidance and counselling research. A phenomenographic study maps the qualitatively different ways in which people experience a specific phenomenon and helps researchers to describe the aspects that make one way of experiencing a certain phenomenon qualitatively distinct from another. This paper presents an overview of phenomenographic research, encompassing theoretical, methodological and practical considerations. The application of this approach in guidance and counselling studies is illustrated with examples.

This article reports the outcomes of a study, undertaken from a phenomenographic perspective, of career practitioners’ conceptions of social media usage in career services. Fifteen Finnish career practitioners – representing comprehensive, secondary and higher education as well as public employment services – were interviewed in focus groups. The analysis of the interview data revealed five distinct descriptive categories reflecting the career practitioners’ conceptions of social media's use in career services. Social media in career services was conceived as (1) unnecessary, (2) dispensable, (3) a possibility, (4) desirable and (5) indispensable. The results indicated associations between career practitioners’ conceptions and their practice. Moreover, the critical aspects identified in this study can be used to support the career practitioners’ understanding of new technologies in career services.