Case Study: Coaching International Masters' Students in Higher Education
Background
The programme director on the International Business Management MSc at a University based in the North of England recognised the need for, and added value that a career coaching programme could bring to its students.
International students on Masters programmes often have little idea of what options they have or what career they wish to progress after their studies. Even when students have decided, they may lack the confidence to follow their desired goals or be unaware of resources which might help them to achieve their goals. The current programme therefore aimed to offer a valuable resource to students to help them to develop and achieve career intention goals towards the end of their programme of study.
Objectives
- To provide 11 students with 3 career coaching sessions over a period of 3 months
- To enable indecisive coachees to reduce any stress or anxiety experienced around decision making and improve their decision making ability
- To help coachees to clarify new goals and decision relating to future careers
- To enhance knowledge and awareness with regards choices, careers, jobs, work contexts, CV writing and selection and recruitment processes
Activity
The coaching programme followed a number of stages as outlined here:
- Pre assessment with clients - explore readiness to make career decision, identify which issues of career decision are causing the main challenge and identify how coaching
- could help.
- 1 hour coaching workshop with coaching clients to explore expectations, explain process and book in first appointments, homework
- Coaching session 1 - groundrules, confidentiality, process, possible focus on "who am I", homework, mini review
- Coaching sesson 2 - possible focus on "options", mini review, homework
- Coaching session 3 - focus on and "blocks to decision making and action planning",
- mini review, homework
- Post assessment with clients - explore readiness, identify how coaching has changed attitudes, behaviours
Results
- The evidence provided as an outcome of the evaluation process demonstrates that the objectives of the programme were met. Coachees made decisions about their career futures and developed goals to enable to them to move forward with these decisions. Coachees stated that they felt more confident and motivated to work towards their objectives.
- The coaching process was evaluated by means of questionnaires which focused on coach effectiveness, coach skills and how the coaching had helped coachees to develop career goals and move forward. The scale responses ranged from 1(low/poor) to 5 (high/excellent). The average score was 4.4, indicating that coachees found their coaching experience to be a positive one.
- The coaching helped me to plan my future development and helped me to believe in myself. My coach helped me to specify my goals and create a plan of achieving it.' Coachee.
