The student counsellor needs to have good time management skills. Time management depends on careful planning of tasks, efficient organisation of resources, and effective implementation of action.

Planning and Organizing

Good time management requires planning. In order to accomplish the necessary work in the required time, the student counsellor should be able to:

Prioritise tasks: Evaluate tasks according to their urgency, importance, and feasibility. This will constantly change as old tasks are completed and new tasks arise.
Estimate time frames: Appraise the amount of work to be done, and measure the time needed based on the available resources and realistic pace of work. Whenever possible, allow extra time to provide the flexibility to deal with interruptions and unforeseen circumstances.
Organise resources and work activities: Make sure that any resources crucial for the tasks are available when needed. This includes physical, intellectual, and human resources. Ideally, resources and tasks should be organised so that (a) earlier tasks are completed in time to provide necessary input to later tasks, and (b) resources are optimised.

Implementing Action

Once work is prioritised and organised, the student counsellor should carry out and complete work as planned. Of course, things do not always go as planned, so he/she needs to be able to adapt to changing conditions. This might entail reprioritising the task, bringing extra resources to bear, and/or rescheduling.

Example

A student counsellor has three prospective students. Two of them have decided to enrol, one in a language course and the other in a bachelor’s degree at a university. The third student is undecided, and will walk away without more information about a number of courses. The student counsellor attends to the university enrolment first, as it takes the longest to process and there may be limited time after acceptance to apply for a student visa before the start date. The language school enrolment can be processed very quickly and the start date is some time away, so the next priority is getting the information to the undecided student.

Risk Management

Risk management involves recognising and rating potential risks, and implementing effective control measures to reduce any risk to an acceptable level. This requires risk control techniques and problem-solving skills.

Risk Control

Controlling risks involves risk assessment and preventive action. To assess a risk, the student counsellor should evaluate the likelihood of the risk and the consequences if it occurs. Clearly, a risk which is very likely to occur and has catastrophic consequences requires urgent action. Conversely, an unlikely risk with negligible consequences has very low priority.

Once a risk has been assessed, appropriate preventive action can be taken. As the name suggests, the purpose of preventive action is to prevent the risk from occurring. Note: Care is needed to avoid unintended consequences.

Problem Solving

Before a risk can be assessed it has to be recognised as a problem. Problem recognition involves identifying both current and potential problems. Problems might involve people, equipment, processes, or systems. Internal problems can be managed in-house, but often problems occur due to external circumstances. In such cases, direct solutions can be difficult to find.

Finding effective solutions involves isolating the causes of the problem and taking steps to prevent them from triggering it. (Note that simply fixing the consequences of a problem without addressing its causes is rarely effective.) In addition, it is imperative that solutions do not create bigger problems as unintended consequences of any changes made.

Example

A student counsellor realises that prospective students risk having their enrolment applications rejected or delayed because they have insufficient documentation to verify their language proficiency. This turns out to be due to inadequate information about language requirements in the education institution’s brochures. The student counsellor advises the education institution of the problem and emphasises the language proficiency and verification requirements during counselling. If necessary, he/she provides students with extra written information about the requirements.

Organisational Skills

Organisational skills include understanding and using the organisational structure and systems and using available resources effectively. They come from good memory, plus skills in questioning, negotiation, prioritisation, and scheduling.

A person with a good memory is an asset to any organisation. Memory is a skill. Like any skill, it can be improved with practice. Over time, an improved memory will result in less misunderstanding, fewer errors, and an ability to retrieve facts which will lead to better decision-making. However, note that even a good memory can be helped by writing everything down.

When organising tasks or projects, the student counsellor needs to be able to use questioning to establish what is needed and may need to use negotiation skills to arrange the necessary resources at the right times and places. When there are multiple tasks to be organised, he/she needs to be able to prioritise them and set up practical schedules.

Example

A student counsellor is scheduled to attend an important seminar on the same day as a number of students have to finalise their student visa applications. The student counsellor remembers that a colleague has an assistant who is capable of handling the visa applications, so negotiates with the colleague to borrow the assistant for the day.

Extension Questions: When dealing with students and education institutions:

How does the student counsellor manage time?
How does he/she manage risk and solve problems?
What organisational skills does he/she need?

Communication Skills

Good communication relies on language proficiency and is a function of language meta-skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) plus questioning skills and cultural awareness. In many cases, communication with educational institutions is in the student counsellor’s second language. The student counsellor needs to be able to interpret information in students’ first language accurately.

Language Skills

Language meta-skills are speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

Speaking Skills

Receiving and relaying verbal messages is an important form of communication. The student counsellor may need both first- and second-language speaking skills. When speaking face to face with students or officers of an education institution, he/she should:

Speak clearly and slowly, since fast or slurred speech is difficult to understand
Ask the meaning of words that are not clearly understood
Repeat the message back to make sure it is right.

When using the telephone, the student counsellor should be helpful and polite. He/she should:

Speak clearly
Greet the caller politely
Provide help.

Listening Skills

The student counsellor must listen carefully to prospective students to find out their preferences and backgrounds. Listening to educational institution staff obviously requires concentration if they are using a second language (or a dialect of the first language. When listening to another person, the student counsellor should:

Look at the speaker and watch their body language (in face-to-face conversation)
Don’t interrupt – let them finish their line of reasoning
Ignore distractions and interruptions
Listen to what the person is actually saying
Ask questions if unsure.

Reading Skills

The student counsellor should be able to read and comprehend information supplied by educational institutions, government authorities, and other organisations in the destination country. He/she must understand student documents in order to prepare them for enrolment and visa applications.

Writing Skills

The student counsellor must be able to write in the language of the destination country at least well enough to complete application forms and write emails, letters, and other correspondence. He/she will use first-language writing skills for correspondence with students and colleagues and for producing effective promotional material.

Questioning Skills

Asking questions is an important practice in acquiring information. The student counsellor should question prospective students carefully to find out their preferences and backgrounds. When dealing with educational institutions, the student counsellor may need to ask questions to clarify course information, living arrangements, etc. Questions can be used to:

Find out a prospective student’s aims and preferences
Find out necessary information from education institutions, visa authorities, etc.
Check comprehension of what another person has said
Check that the other person has understood what has been said.

Cultural Awareness

When interacting with people from other cultures, the student counsellor should be aware of cultural differences which could affect communication. In particular, he/she should be careful of the following:

Insensitive remarks could offend listeners unintentionally
Gestures seen as polite in one culture can be offensive in another culture
Conventions regarding eye contact, proximity and personal space, touch, etc. can be unwittingly broken, resulting in discomfort
Some cultures place much greater emphasis on expressing emotions than others
Discourse conventions can be a source of misjudgement (e.g., in some cultures, it is polite to wait some time after another speaker finishes before speaking, but this can be interpreted as dull in other cultures).

Communication skills are also discussed in B1.2 Communication with Education Institutions.
Cultural awareness is discussed in B3.3 Cultural Awareness.

Extension Questions: When dealing with students and education institutions:

What communication skills does the student counsellor need for students?
What communication skills does he/she need for educational institutions?
How does he/she manage cross-cultural communication?

Organising Information

The information economy requires knowledge workers to be able to work with data, statistics, and information. To manipulate information and data, it must first be organised. Information can be more effectively organised by:

Recording ideas/information in a common format
Sorting ideas and information periodically
Integrating ideas and information into actionable items.

Handling Information

Information has many forms and sources. The student counsellor may need to know techniques for gathering raw data and then collating and sorting it into useful information. These include:

Gathering: Specify parameters and methods to collect relevant data
Collating, sorting, and filtering: Devise the best configurations to extract useful information
Analysing and using: Analyse the information, then decide, plan and implement appropriate action
Filing and storing: Organise consistent filing categories and store both physical and electronic data securely
Records: Keep records of data gathered, information obtained, and actions taken
Archives: Archive records when out of date.

Similarly, the student counsellor should know how to prepare and distribute information to students, education institutions, and other relevant people.

Extension Questions: When dealing with information:

What information does the student counsellor have to handle?
How does he/she file and store information?
How does he/she create, maintain, and archive records?

Processes

There are usually four ways a job can be performed:

The way people think it is being done
The way it is actually being done most of the time
The short cut
The way it should be done.

The student counsellor should follow the processes, rules, and conventions of the agency. A good, well-documented quality control system should manage processes so that the four ways converge.

Quality Assurance

The goal of quality assurance is to create written procedures that will ensure full compliance with contract requirements. Formal, written documentation provides consistency of process and ensures that mistakes can be traced to a specific spot and then corrected.

A policy and procedure manual is a collection of policies and procedures. A procedure is a written instruction that describes what has to be done, by whom, when, how, and where. It contains all the information that a person undertaking a job needs to know.

In order to foster quality control, the student counsellor should:

Document procedures
Review work rules and quality control policies and procedures regularly
Look for possible quality trouble spots in every phase of operations
Set acceptance/rejection standards
Make sure to know and observe quality requirements, as well as any technical specifications
Ensure that any necessary equipment is up to the proper standard
Spot defects as early as possible
Decide which records and reports are required to identify existing and potential problem areas
Know who is responsible for the administration and supervision of the quality control system.
Quality control is discussed in C1.2 Customer Service.

Extension Questions: When dealing with processes:

What kind of processes does the student counsellor deal with?
Who does he/she deal with while doing them?
What quality control systems affect him/her?