Monash U is partnering with consultants Mercer Australia, to help students find work. There is flash software that identities students’ skills and matches them with employers (CMM October 19). Good for students who want jobs, less so for careers staff who now help them.

The campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union reports the university, “favours using agency-employed careers success coaches” and that since a 2016 restructure, “careers consultants have been given reduced time for student consultations (20 minutes) while coaches (who have no career guidance training) have one hour appointments.”

And recently, the union says eight “highly experienced careers consultants were told their jobs are likely to be axed as part of a move to an ’employability model’.”

To which Monash management replies that six people are offered voluntary “separation packages.”

“We’re committed to ensuring every student has the opportunity to develop their own unique employability narrative, to learn to be enterprising, to develop the skills employers tell us they value and to harness their capacity to be the ‘CEO of themselves‘, the university adds. Now, there’s a line imminently out-of-work Monash career consultants can use on CVs.