RESEARCHER'S DIGEST
DR JULIA YATES, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Psychology at City, University of London, shares a digest of research related to technology in careers and employability work.
01
COACHING WITH AI
Graßmann, C., & Schermuly, C. C. (2021). Coaching With Artificial Intelligence: Concepts and Capabilities. Human Resource Development Review, 20(1), 106-126.
This paper hints at a brave new world to come, in which careers advisers are entirely replaced by bots. Artificial intelligence (AI) coaching is described as a machine-assisted, systematic process
02 TECHNOLOGY-ASSISTED COUNSELLING
that aims to help clients set professional goals and identify solutions. There are some obvious pluses to the idea of AI coaching (an anonymous, accessible and cheap alternative to face-to-face
Zainudin, Z. N., Hassan, S. A., Talib, M. A., Aniza, N., Ahmad, Y. M. Y., & Asri, A. S. (2020). Technology-
coaching). But could it ever offer a high-quality service? The authors
Assisted Career Counselling: Application, Advantages and of this paper had a go at mapping AI capabilities on to the different steps of coaching to see whether AI coaching could ever cover all the stages of a coaching session. They looked at problem identification, developing goals, generating solutions, consideration of consequences, targeting the most feasible solution, implementing the solution and evaluation. They concluded that AI could make a reasonable stab at most of the required steps but would not be able to do the early stages when a coach tries to understand a client’s situation and help them to identify their own goals. Nevertheless, the authors concluded that coaches might be able to hand their clients over to the AI programme part way through the coaching process. The second thing the authors did was to see whether AI could mimic the aspects of coaching that have been shown to make the biggest impact, most specifically, developing the working alliance. Here, the authors made quite a good case, backed up with what seems to good quality empirical evidence from the world of therapy, that clients can establish a genuine bond with their AI virtual agent, which develops over time. I’ve got to admit that I remain a little sceptical, but let’s see what other research emerges.
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Challenges as Career Counselling Services and Resources. Sciences, 10(11), 67-93.
These authors conducted a systematic literature review of the advantages and challenges of using technology-assisted career counselling, in which they looked at the findings of 30 existing research papers and summarised the themes. The studies included video conferencing career counselling, the use of social media, online group interventions, e-guidance and computer-assisted guidance programmes. In terms of advantages, the authors found that practitioners and clients valued the way that web services could get to groups of students who wouldn’t usually come to a careers service, the opportunity for students to access support whenever they need it, and the instant responses. The challenges the authors identified were more to do with the quality of the support that could be given online. They questioned the quality of information offered and were concerned that urgent needs of clients might not be picked up. They also highlighted concerns that not all students would have the access, or the skills required to make full use of the services.
