THE CAREERS CONVENTION, MARCH 1966 REPORTS ON THE EIGHT SESSIONS FIRST SESSION SOURCES OF CAREER'S INFORMATION AND ADVICE In the opening session, there were three talks, two of immediate relevance to any boy in need of advice about possible careers. The third speaker, Mr. R. Coxon, who is York Youth Employment Service Officer, outlined the national character of his concern, and its affiliations with the Ministry of Labour, and gave some idea of the main problems of fitting the right person to the right job; and he has two thousand a year to deal with. Many are already aware of some of the facilities offered by the Public Schools Appointments Bureau; Miss Joan Hills, B.A., the Administrative Secretary, gave full details of all that it can offer: 1. boys can be put in the way of practical experience from industrial courses, holiday jobs and visits; 2. they provide a steady stream of information from their bulletins, and technological and commercial publications; 3. their six interviewers can give about five thousand advisory interviews a year, and offer their wide experience as a supplement to schools' own careers departments to suggest occupations that will be congenial to a particular boy. Mr. A. A. Bridgewater, M.A., is the Director of the Careers Research and Advisory Centre, which he helped found only a few years ago. CRAG, as it is known, is already noted for a number of its publications, which give details on a wide variety of careers matters, such as courses offered by businesses and professions, qualifications required by different bodies, or perhaps information to business about what happens in schools. There are also longer-term projects on, for example, quantitative prediction of the shortage of the mathematically-or scientifically-qualified.
SECOND SESSION OPPORTUNITIES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT Few people realised, said Mr. T. C. Benfield, Town Clerk of York, how vast was the range of services the local authority had to provide. It was responsible for such things as public health, housing, roads and bridges, social services and public amenities; and those involved the recruitment of a wide variety of personnel: doctors, dentists, nurses, architects, surveyors, engineers, solicitors, social workers. Training, especially for the higher specialised positions, was the normal training appropriate to the particular profession. However, there was an increasing tendency to provide opportunities for in-service training and to attend specialised courses. This enabled the personnel recruited to acquire a sound training, closely adapted to the special requirements of local government and to earn reasonable renumeration at a relatively early age. Possibilities of movement between one authority were good, and it was clear from the Town Clerk's lucid survey that local government was a wider field than most school leavers suspect and was well worth exploring.
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