Good career counseling is not fortune telling
As adults know well, not all practitioners in any field are either outstanding or even competent. My field, career counseling and development, is no exception. Parents, who simply want the best career advice for their teen, are too likely to meet up with career practitioners who are mediocre, incompetent or out right charlatans.
Helping Teens Choose a Career Path, a recent MSNBC article, is a case in point. The career advice touted in the article, for which one parent paid $800, is barely worth the paper it’s printed on.
The point of this blog is not to deride any particular career service provider, but to educate teens and parents about what to expect from excellent career practitioners. What sounds good to the ear can too often not be relevant in reality.
Before the dissection begins, kudos to this mom for being proactive. With one child already in college, she knows her 16 year old needs a clear career path in order to be one of the 32% that actually graduates in four years. I wish there were more parents like Mrs. Cameron. She understands the need for her son to have a career plan. I didn't let my daughter go off to college without a plan and no other teen should either. Research has shown that teens with detailed career plans go to and finish their higher education in greater numbers than those whose career plan is simply, “I’m going to college.”
My most squeamish readers might want to skip to the end. The dissection of this career advice is going to get graphic.
Point #1 – Timing: No 16 year old should be given one or two job goals. Fifteen and sixteen year olds should be identifying their interests and exploring what jobs might match those interests. Freshman, sophomore and first part of the junior year should be spent doing research on careers of interest, talking with people who do those jobs, learning about these jobs online, from other printed resources and job-shadowing. Spring of the junior year or the summer before becoming a high school senior is the time to turn these explorations into a comprehensive blueprint for post high school plans.
Point #2 – Irrelevant conclusions: That John Cameron, at 16, does not have finger dexterity is a non-issue. Sixteen year-old boys--unless they play piano, a brass or wind instrument, have hobbies requiring finger dexterity or are athletic prodigies--are notoriously clumsy. And, this is not said in any sort of belittling way. For young males the mid-teens are a time of furious physical growth. Neurons that were only several inches long a few months ago may now stretch to over a foot. One can’t blame them that their neurons and synapses may not always be in communication.
As a young male’s growth rate slows, or at least takes a break, he can begin to assimilate all the changes and get in charge of the machine that is his body. This can take months or several years. Coordination can be accomplished faster with specific exercises, but for most, time and nature will take care of seeing young men through clumsy to coordinated.
Point #3 – Misinformed and missing the point: This is the second biggest ding against the person who did the interpretation of this young man’s ability battery. In the best of all possible scenarios, John Cameron won’t need to be choosing what kind of doctor he wants to be until ten years from now.
That’s right. Assuming John still has an interest in becoming a doctor, is able to pass college level classes in inorganic chemistry (many who want to become physicians cannot), higher mathematics hoops such as calculus or trig, gets admitted to medical school and doesn’t drop or flunk out before his senior year, only then will he need to decide what kind of doctor he wants to be. Only as an MS4, when medical students must pick what kind of residency to apply for, will John need to make a choice about what kind of doctor he wants to be. In addition, any medical student who wants to be a surgeon will spend their first year of residency doing general medicine.
This is why it can be a decade or more before John will need to make a choice about his preferred medical specialty. Between gaining a BS and enrolling in medical school, taking time off to work in a medical related field is highly recommended. Ten or twelve years from now, unless his hands grow to be the size of hams, John’s finger dexterity should be just fine.
#4 Most important point: Substituting short-term career goals for real career development. Just looking at that big notebook of page after page of information may warm a parent’s heart and make them feel like they’ve spent their money well. Sorry to inform that unless that big folder introduces a teen to the fundamentals of career development, their money hasn’t bought nearly what it should.
What that folder should contain are the basics of career development: the steps and strategies that allow one to develop and be in charge of their a career. Since this is National Career Development Month, it’s an appropriate time to cover this vital information.
To be continued…
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Comments
Your reply to Tim is glum but is truly useful to debunk the myth that a college/university education in itself provides career direction. Career maturity must have been forming before college/university; without it, pitfalls await. The pendulum has swung so that, if decision to matriculate is uncertain, one should steer away.
I also want to underscore, that while I respect your opinion, which is most likely based on your personal experience and bolstered by the counseling you do, the research of the last decade does not support it.
Studies have already shown that if students do not begin to develop career maturity--some sort of job interests or focus--at 15, they are not likely to either finish college or achieve their career goals.
For the last decade, only 33% of Liberal Arts graduates are working in a job that needed their education. Students who graduated without debt could afford to wander through the job market until they found a fit. Not so for those who owe more than 2/3rds of their starting salary. While their studies were probably both interesting and potentially valuable, for those who are not in the top 25% of their class at graduation from high school, those who do not have a plan for how to use their education post college and those who have student loan and credit card debt that exceeds their annual salary, the hard statistics are that their higher education has not helped their employability.
In this economy, employability is extremely important for those who want to maintain a decent lifestyle. I have no quarrel with a Liberal Arts education. I have one myself. My quarrel is with the timing. 75% of high school graduates need to learn something that someone will pay them to do. That way, they can afford to eat and higher education. Our young, those not in the top 25% of their hs class or studying STEM skills, are standing on the abyss of life-long poverty. Let's not give push them over the edge by giving advice that stopped being true by the end of the last century.
I ask that all career counselors set aside their own opinions and experience long enough to read Kenneth C. Gray's "Getting Real," 2nd ed. Without both academic maturity, defined in our culture as good to decent grades and career maturity, our young adults are not successfully transitioning from school to work.
The underclass in this country grows daily. Too many of them are recent university grads who bought the no-longer-true but well meant advice, "Get a college degree at any cost." This route works for only 2 out of every 10 high school grads. You wouldn't send your child or grandchild on a plane that landed safely only 1 out of 5 trips. Continuing to give advice that is no longer true is cruel. And puts every person who does so at risk. Several years ago, graduates began suing colleges for promising more than they delivered. I hope everyone has professional liability insurance because the next round of law suits is likely to become quite personal.
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