Career Guidance Reunion: “Achieving Career Happiness”

At the recent reunion of career professionals, alumni of the university’s careers education and guidance post-graduate program, enjoyed an informative and entertaining presentation by Anthony Barnes, as well as the opportunity to meet former colleagues.

Delegates listen to Anthony Barnes' key note speech

Drawing on the work of Mark Savickas, Sonja Lyubomirsky and Martin Seligman, Anthony investigated the notion that true job satisfaction is "caught, not taught". He highlighted the significance of ‘career happiness’ as a dimension of career education and guidance, and reflected on how students can learn optimism through ways of talking to themselves (self-affirmation), cultivating supportive relationships and being able to respond positively to setbacks (developing resilience and adaptability).

Dr Michelle Stewart, Course Director of Careers Education and Guidance at LSBU, believes the concept of ‘career happiness’ is certainly more inspiring than the more routinely experienced approaches of ‘deficit’ and ‘disaster’: "At a time when we are increasingly responsible for constructing our own career journeys, it is important that we learn how to experience happiness along the way and not just on reaching our destination."

Amanda Spurrier, an LSBU alumna who graduated in 2010 and currently works as Careers and Higher Education Adviser at Westminster Kingsway College, attended the Career Guidance reunion and spoke to us about the experience: "Thank you so much for this evening's excellent careers happiness lecture; very stimulating and well worth attending. Having studied with you many years ago for my original careers guidance qualification and then 3 years ago for the advisers certificate, I appreciated the offer to attend such an event and do look forward to future evenings."

As a graduate of LSBU you can join the Alumni Association’s LinkedIn page. We are running a discussion on defining career happiness, have your say and let us know what you think!