Guiding the Future: A Professional­isation Project for the Career Development Sector

Inaugural lecture: Professor Siobhan Neary

Throughout her 30 years in the career development sector, Professor Neary has worked as a practitioner, trainer, lecturer, consultant, manager, and researcher. Each of these roles has contributed to the formation of her identity as a careers professional and her passion for career guidance and the difference it can make to people’s lives.  

Over the last three decades, she has observed the professionalisation, de-professionalisation and re-professionalisation of the workforce. This turbulence has contributed to and informed her research interests focusing on the career development workforce. This research has helped to highlight the factors that have contributed to both deconstructing and shaping professional identity within the sector.

In her lecture, Professor Siobhan Neary drew on her various roles to examine the challenges that have impacted the careers profession and how her research has helped to develop a greater understanding of the workforce, their motivations and challenges experienced. She explored the interrelationship between practice, research, policy and identity and what needs to be in place to maximise the opportunities for the next professionalisation project.

Professor Siobhan Neary

Professor Siobhan Neary has a background in the career guidance sector encompassing more than thirty years of working as a practitioner, trainer, manager, lecturer and researcher. Her portfolio includes work on career management and employability, career development practice (CPD) and international development work in Sri Lanka, Mauritius, China, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. She is a registered Career Development Practitioner, a Fellow of both the Career Development Institute (CDI) and the National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling (NICEC) and the book review editor for the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling.

Her research interests focus on professional identity, CPD and quality improvement within the career development sector.