Why The Career Model You Grew Up With Was A Lie
It’s time we taught a different model; one which is fit for an era of change.
It’s hard to go a day without reading something about the impact of technology on the workforce. The pace of technological change is arguably unlike anything humanity has previously experienced.
Yet whilst the world of work has already begun it’s transformation, our approach to careers guidance remains rooted in the past.
The traditional linear view of the career path is still the dominant model. It’s the one young people to this day, are still being shoe horned into.
It is not just out of date and unfit for purpose, my view is that it is fast becoming harmful.
Six in ten UK workers are not happy in their current jobs, (Investors in People IIP).
6 in 10. Six in ten.
Of course, there are different factors at play here; there is such a thing as a bad job or a manager who’s a jerk.
But how many are unhappy because of unfulfilled expectations? How many are lost because the career they had spent most of their lives working towards did not bring what they were expecting.
People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. — Thomas Merton
The days of a job for life are gone. The prospect of having 15–20 jobs over a working life and a growing ‘gig economy’ look set to make multiple jobs the new normal.
Traditional education systems throughout the World are often outdated and failing to prepare young people for their future careers. In fairness to them, how can they, when it is estimated that 65% of young children will do jobs which don’t yet exist?
A familiar but inadequate experience
My own experience some 20 years ago, and the experience of millions of others since, is the same.
Our education system assumes you will have one path.
It is geared to those who are fixed on a particular career goal. This path is mostly and often loosely based around whatever you happen to show an aptitude or interest in during school.
Whilst this may have suited the few, the many are left to find their own path and offered little in the way of adequate career advice.
By way of example, the only career advice I ever received at school was this:
Adviser: “So what do you like doing?” Me:“What, like at school?” Adviser: “Sure” Me: “Erm, well I like drawing” Adviser: “OK, have you thought about being an artist?”. Me:(With extreme adolescent sarcasm on leaving the room): “Right. You know, you’re really good at this”
As I understand it from speaking with today's teaching professionals, few schools have made much progress on this over the last twenty years.
The sad cost of its design, and frankly it’s lack of effort, means along the way the talent and imagination of young people is lost, as they are squeezed through the educational funnel.
In the end, we’re all playing the same game
For me, the University route never felt right. It felt like a game for other people to play.
The idea that you could know what you wanted to do in later life at that young age always seemed absurd to me. And it still does.
Instead, I followed my interests and allowed my intuition to decide what is next.
I found my own path, and along the way I found my talents (in the places my education did not).
There is no way that I could have predicted how my career would actually have turned out. And that is precisely my point.
Whether you follow the encouraged path to University and a particular field of work, or whether you choose to go straight to work and find your own way, the reality of work is the same for all of us. There are many paths and many twists which lie ahead.
In the end, we all end up playing the same game.
A time OF change is a time FOR change
There is a widespread and growing agreement the education system needs change but that it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. I see it resonate with people in TED talks and Youtube videos (links below). I hear it in nearly every conversation I have with parents, teachers and employees.
The opinion is that for many people, education is failing to prepare young people for their future.
Failing to prepare young people for change.
Yet change, possibly like no time ever before, is guaranteed.
We are on the brink of the 4th Industrial Revolution and it will fundamentally alter everything about the way we work, live and interact with the world.
This relentless change is bringing boundless opportunity, but if we continue to convey the message to young people about a linear career, we are sentencing many to future pain and disillusionment.
The cost of our outdated linear career model
At some point, having followed the funnel, many of those young people will come to the desperate realisation that the funnel was a myth.
That planning their career looks nothing like what they were told.
That in having their eyes on a prize they have in hindsight, completely missed several prizes.
This moment may arrive in their 20’s if they’re lucky, in their 30s or 40s if they’re not. Whenever it comes, it will cause confusion, struggle and regret.
This painful reckoning is already happening to people who were sold the myth 20 years ago. And it will happen to the youth of today in 20 years because the same shortcomings in career advice persist in education today.
For many, the ladder they climbed is not just leaning against the wrong wall, not even the right building, it’s not even in the right street.
The uncomfortable sense of regret this creates is one that can come to define a persons life.
60% of employees would choose a different career if they could start again (School of Life 2008)
The good news is, you can start again. At any time of your life.
In fact that’s something I help people do today; help people get unstuck when they’ve realised they’ve become stuck. To help those who reached their destination only to find it wasn’t what they were expecting after all.
You can start again. But it’s hard.
A better alternative, would be to not set people up for these crushing existential crises in the first place.
Career has for some time now looked quite different.
With or without a degree in a particular field, your career is almost certainly going to be a story of uncertainty, of wrong turns, of frequent adjustments and often of fundamental changes of direction.
The rapid and ever increasing pace of change we are currently witnessing is only intensifying this experience.
If we wait for educational institutions to change we’ll be waiting for too long.
What we need to do, is be teaching people a new model of career. Not just for young people, for they desperately need one that is true and helpful, but also for those who were sold the lie and have got stuck.
A new model of career, fit for an era of change
The point of teaching anything to anyone about career is surely to help equip people to succeed throughout the course of their lives.
I would promote a model of career which empowers people and enables them to thrive in a future which is unpredictable, rather than set them up for failure.
I would (and indeed do) promote a model of career which:
- Teaches people how to be OK with uncertainty.
- Provides people with the agility and the poise to be able to navigate change.
- Provide the tools to play a longer strategic career game.
- Teaches people how to scan for opportunities and enable them to confidently transition towards new things which draw their attention.
- Encourages life long learning and adopts the mindset and the awareness needed to deliberately and consistently harvest new skills.
- Encourages creativity and courage to solve problems and innovate (and by extension, to fail and respond to failure).
- Creates the conditions for multiple career opportunities to be nurtured and to flourish simultaneously.
- Values personal development just as much as professional development.
- Promotes fulfillment and the knowledge that your best contribution comes when your mental and physical well-being is prioritised.
- Understands that in a future of increasing automation, it will be fundamentally human skills which will become the most valuable.
Over the course of a life, we all change.
Who we are and what we are capable of is ever evolving, just as the world around moves in a relentless state of flux. It’s about time what we teach about work and career changed too.
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About the Author — Kevin Rozario-Johnson
By day, I am a service manager and leader working within the mental health sector. By night I am a writer, coach and founder of nimbla which helps people who are stuck in their careers get unstuck and equip themselves for the changing future of work. nimbla represents the new model of career which features in this article.
To find out more about the work of nimbla and get help with your career, sign up and Join the community here
More stories like this can be found at the nimbla publication
Or at my website www.nimbla.co
And you can follow me on Twitter @Rojoclick
