Four Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Firm up Your Future too Early
Four Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Firm up Your Future too Early
Our drive for success which is what we are programmed [and we programme into our children] with from a very early age; SAT’s at 6 and again at 11, and the need for great GCSE’s because they determine the school, college or ultimately, the university we will go to or the organisation who will take us on; can in my opinion set us up to take a fall later on in life, which is why I firmly believe that we should not be ‘forcing’ young people to finalise their futures too early.
Having spent some time in the Education Sector, I’ve seen on too many occasions where children are ‘focused’ down certain routes when they clearly have no appetite nor interest in the area at all. You might even be forgiven for thinking that this comes from the school or the college, and I’m not saying that doesn’t happen but actually in my experience, it’s often us parents who do this; often unconsciously. I’m not suggesting that parents or other influential people in children’s lives can’t help them with their career choices, but what I am saying is; remember it’s their life, their choice and they will ultimately have to live with the consequences of the decisions they make.
However, expecting children to know definitely what job they could end up spending the next forty-five years of their life [let’s face it, as the age of retirement moves closer to 70], is also unrealistic. The reality is that ‘jobs’ for life are now a rarity with the average Brit having six jobs in their lifetime, according to research by Investec Click & Invest in 2017 and most millennials; those “aged between 18 and 34; now planning only to stay in their current job for an average of three years and four months, equating to an average of 12.5 jobs during their working lives”. Meaning some young people could not only become disillusioned but could also be disadvantaged if they are not encouraged to think more broadly about their careers.
Alternatively, you might be thinking that I’m an advocate for young people to have a lot of variety in experiencing different activities; but having seen many young people literally ‘bounce’ from course to course [from hairdressing to plumbing to a catering course] within the period of 6 weeks at the start of their college career, in my opinion is not a great experience either, for them to have, nor does it instil confidence in them about themselves, their skills or their potential career. For me it’s all about balance; and what’s best for the individual but it should also be based on their natural ability.
Notwithstanding all of this, here’s four reasons why setting a child’s stall out too early can be a source of stress and disappointment later in their lives.
1. Following a single path can be too prescriptive and reduce resilience in the longer term.
Setting your heart on a single career too early won’t necessarily set you up for success no matter who tries to reassure you. There are many examples I can list where young people with pathways set out from a very young age, on a trajectory for success, lose their way and end up doing something less than what they were capable off because during their journey they encountered difficulty which they could not deal with them. Success as many of us know is not linear, it’s the result of trying something, seeing if it works and then deciding what to do after that. Very rarely do people identify a single path and then follow it and achieve success. Very often, you might start off in one area and then as you become more experienced, move into other areas.
My own experience saw me start in engineering at 16 years old, but then move into manufacturing, logistics and ultimately consultancy. If you’d asked me at 16 if I wanted to be a consultant, I wouldn’t have had a clue what a consultant was, never mind, want to be one. Programming people at school into thinking that if they follow a specific path, it will lead them to success, creates disappointment and leads to demotivation in the longer term because they expect to follow a path and for it to give them what they wanted and when it doesn’t , they can often feel as if they have failed. This concept can then even affect their resilience levels and prevent them from being able to bounce back after something goes wrong.
We should be encouraging our children to look at the skills they have and enjoy doing and to look for careers where they can refine and most importantly master them, not limit their looking to only one specific job or role which they might not even enjoy doing.
2. One weeks work experience only offers you an insight in Organisations and is not a one stop shop for selecting your career.
People believe that by engaging young people in practical work experience in a specific area is also enough to ‘confirm’ it’s the right career path for them. The reality is that spending one week as part of a work experience programme at school is simply not enough to say with any certainty that it’s the career they want to do. The main benefits in my opinion that work experience brings to young people is two-fold; it’s offers them an insight into what working life will offer them but also can clarify what they will not enjoy doing, thereby at least removing some options.
In addition, organising work experience nowadays for young people is very difficult and often, they are placed in areas simply so they can say they have experienced a work environment which you could argue, devalues the whole point of the work experience.
In 1989, I was lucky enough to be able to spend one week in a maintenance department at an engineering company in the North East of England, instigated by myself. It offered me an insight into what it was like to work in a factory and with my hands. I learned two things from that experience; the first was that I definitely didn’t want to continue my development in a classroom environment because I wanted to work and secondly; I didn’t want to work in an office environment; I wanted something more flexible than that. The main thing it offered me was the offer of a job later when I left school. Twenty-five years on, I still have an affinity for engineering and the skills I learned; they are embedded in the project management protocols and approaches that I practice every day but I’m not in a dedicated engineering role any longer, having changed my job a number of times, albeit still applying the 'skills' I learned.
Work experience and careers advice at 16 only serve to help you to define the broad area/sector you might want to work in and what you can expect from working, it won’t provide the magic answer that you’re looking for in terms of the job, career or the role that you will end up doing.
3. Confirming career choices too early can create conflict with our natural gifts as we get older.
The reality is that young people’s personality traits are not fully formed until they are in their early to mid 20’s and therefore expecting them to know between the ages of 14-18 years old what career they want to start is like taking them to a sweet shop and asking them to pick out the sweet that they prefer. They will likely pick out the one they’ve had before, or a one that they been told is really nice which isn’t necessarily the one that they will enjoy eating in ten years’ time, because up until our personality forms, our natural preferences & traits that determine how we behave, may change.
What can typically happen when our children are unsure about what they want to do for their future is that we as parents, step into that vacuum that they have created. Depending on our background, beliefs and basic career experiences that we ourselves have undertaken, means that we can try to steer our children towards certain choices, and I’ve seen this first-hand. Invariably these ‘steers’ are based on not only our experiences in the work environment but also, our perception of our children and what we ‘believe’ they will be good at but the difficulty with this is that we use our current knowledge of them and what they appear to be able to do. However, if they haven’t fully developed their true ‘gifts’, then we could be delaying them from experiencing other more valuable experiences that will lead them closer to their preferred careers.
In addition to this there is a natural tendency for us to try to 'live' their lives for them and perhaps even in some cases, live our lives through them. The best thing we can do is to be there to support them when they make their decisions and ensure that they make these with access to as much information and evidence as they can get so they make the most informed decisions.
4. Defining your speciality too soon discourages discovery & diversity.
Many of us might describe our career experiences as almost ’falling’ into the particular job or career that we end up doing. Although I do realise that some people who want to be doctors, train to be doctors and end up being doctors; but not everyone leaves school with their career paths mapped out or experiences a structured path into a career. In my opinion there’s a real benefit to being open about what you want to do with your life. Even in the medical profession; there is a still a level of discovery, with doctors seeking to specialise in different facets of medicine once they have completed their initial training. Pinning yourself down to a specific route, or area or specialism too early can mean that you miss out on jobs or careers that might actually align themselves better to the skills that you have and to your own individual preferences.
They say variety is the ‘spice’ of life and I believe that the more experience that we have, the more informed we can be about what it is that we want to do in the longer term.
I, myself throughout my career have experienced the benefits of not closing down career and job opportunities, just because they didn’t ‘fit’ into what I thought my career was meant to be. In 2007, I was working on a logistics system with Cummins Engine Company, when a chance opportunity, opened the door for me to work on their manufacturing system, which opened up a whole host of other skills and knowledge, saw me offered a role in America and culminated in me working on another project for three years, working between Darlington and Rockymount, Raleigh Durham in North Carolina which was a real turning point in my career and my life.
After my own experience, my advice here is to stay open to opportunities and not to ‘pin' yourself down to a specific area until you’ve at least experienced enough variety to make sure that the decision you have made is the right one.
There is so much pressure on young people nowadays to succeed, and its drummed into them through our schooling system that it’s not acceptable to fail; are we not by asking them to form their idea of their career at such an early age, in essence setting them up to fail.
In my humble opinion, we should instead be encouraging our children to explore what they enjoy doing, what comes naturally and therefore easily and most importantly what they want to do; not what anyone else thinks they should be doing. By giving them time to ‘consider’ and allowing them to be ‘curious’, I believe they will be more likely to curate their own course of action for themselves which will perhaps encourage them to spend a little longer in these areas instead of simple hopping between jobs trying to find a one that 'fits' them.
If you want hear more about 'Choosing your Career Carefully' or learn about the 'gifts' that you have then please contact me to discuss how you can do that by emailing me at jocorbishley@northernleadinglightsacademy.com.
Senior Leader, TEDx Speaker and Identity Coach, Jo Corbishley works with Senior Leaders and organisations to create cohesive teams and maximise performance by aligning their people's passion with their professions. Her work over the years has provided her a unique opportunity to work with a variety of people, to observe and to gain a valuable insight into what contributes to high performing individuals and teams and how 'being' themselves is the key to their success.
