ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the current challenges that leaders and managers face in organising their careers services and positioning their experts in response to institutional employability agendas. It focuses on the evolution of higher education careers services and literature on professions and professionalism. The chapter explores the professional identity of careers advisers and proposed recommendations for action by managers and careers advisers themselves that would position careers advisers, and their services, as experts in this field. It suggests approaches to careers service leadership and management that demonstrably support institutional employability priorities, and can establish careers advisers as careers and employability experts, who make an essential contribution to the student experience. In the 2000s, diversified service delivery brought in a requirement for functional specialists in, employer engagement, entrepreneurial education and the delivery of skills awards. The chapter considers the management of professionals and individual and collective professional identity.
