CAREER COUNSELING

I have been in the career consulting business for about five years.

I mainly gave this counseling to mothers after their baby breaks and nowadays I give it to young adults who have taken a so called "wrong turn" and are not following a straightforward curriculum vitae or are in danger of jeopardizing their school careers.

Today I would like to tell you something about my thoughts, experiences and observations. Inspired by my newly discovered star philosopher Alain de Botton, who gives extremely interesting lectures on exactly those topics that are of great interest to me.

So what do I do during my consultations? I am currently confining myself to young adults and this is what happens there.

I meet my young client for the first time and after we have gone through some getting to know each other, I ask him or her about their career aspirations or their further schooling intentions. I intend to find out how determined this person is to take on an already conceived idea and to follow his own wish. If I get the impression that this wish is already very mature and there are enough valid indications that information has already been experienced as factual, I continue and ask:

"What is your motive for choosing this profession?"
Then I find out how serious they are and whether I can find weaknesses and prove that this desire looks rather flimsy. Because, for example, I was able to cast doubt on it very quickly. Sometimes I do this with the conscious and well-intentioned purpose of testing my client. It is often useful for self-reflection when I, as a client, learn that a supposed wish or intention is rather a superficial illusion of mine. Or simply mental sluggishness, because nothing better has just occurred to me. Which really isn't such a rarity with young people.

I beware of the following formulation:

"What has called you inwardly, what do you feel you have been chosen for?"

We may like to hear that when we see an emotional moving epic or read a historical novel, but it's less suitable and a bit too romantic for daily experience.

For clients who don't even know whether they are fish or meat, I open the room wide for a brainstorming session. But the most important questions I ask them are about their personal experiences at school and in their free time. What did they like to do in school, with which teachers did they have a committed relationship, which projects aroused their interest, which offices did these students hold during their school life?

Then on: What ties up their free time after school? What films do they watch on the Internet and on youtube, what excites their anger or delight? I ask questions about family memories, hobbies, excursions, experiences in nature, preferred characteristics. Everything is important first and foremost and while my clients tell me about it, I pay attention to their physical correspondence to the individual topics or aspects of their lives. Do they talk with vigour or rather distant, cautious or enthusiastic? If you talk superficially, your vocabulary is vague, dominated by filler and general words, nothing specific can be heard. I always click where I can see that body and mind form a unity and do not contradict each other.

Already a politician and a pedagogue in young years?

I have a fairly high percentage of those who held a class or school spokesperson position. Those who have participated in conciliator training.

Other activities such as being together with animals, Scout memberships and interests in artistic activities or sports are also common. Those who did not have any particular artistic or drawing skills were often good at sports or natural sciences, but sometimes both, sometimes none at all.

None of these young people I would describe as unintelligent, underprivileged or mentally inferior to others. They all have their talents and strengths and most of the difficulties these students had were because they had long absences or refused school, had problems with drugs or alcohol. Often problems with parents. Less with sexual identity. More with depression.

There is no typical "victim"

They come from very different backgrounds. Academic homes, working class families, wealthy and poor, many siblings or no siblings, long term marriage parents, brake ups, single raising moms. You name it. There is no homogenic background to be found. They are born in Germany or somewhere else, they had a financial stable life or fled their country in young age. They were raised multicultural, Hippy-style, very strict or very neglecting or uncaring, sometimes brutal.

When it comes to what the young people are interested in, it is generally observed that they turn to the arts, classical crafts and the media. A sales or office communication training course is regarded as an "emergency nail". Only really few want to do an insurance or banker apprenticeship. Social professions are however highly in the reputation and course with my clients. I once asked my client: "How come you'd like to work in the social field?" He answered: "I was accompanied for many years by my youth worker. He taught me a lot and I admire his work."

Delivering sober facts and trace some fictional imaginations

Absolute and deadly disinterest exists in sectors such as logistics and industry in general. Shipping, ports, airports or trains, chemistry, physics: little or no resonance.

Listen up from minute 19 or so where Alain de Botton refers to this phenomena and why that is the case that nobody builds up an interest for "logistics". The great places of production and ware house storage is so out of our sight and also behind fences that it's hard to have an image of how work might be look and feel. Also, sometimes we have a glimpse of a huge warehouse through the news or a documentary and we are aware of the fact that only camera teams but no mortal outsider ever places a foot into these places. Also, we like to think of those halls as mostly machine driven and bare of humans.

Photo by Elevate on Unsplash

Computer technology and everything to do with it is very popular, on the other hand. Many young men want to do an apprenticeship in this field. Also some women.

Sometimes I have controversial dialogues with my clients when I hear, for example, "No, I'm not going to be a cashier at the supermarket." Then I ask: "Why not? What's wrong with that?"

The young people then answer me that the

cashiers are people who are too stupid to have learned anything else and that one would be ashamed to be seen there.

I then say: "What do you actually know about the quality of this education? In fact, it turns out that working as a retail salesman - disguised behind the derogatory term "cashier" - is also a very good and well-founded training of three years, where you can learn a lot. At least if you are interested in economics, business administration, macro economics and finance. Just like for bookkeeping, contracts and legal forms of companies."

It surprised me, that after having received this information, they often start to be really interested in this profession. They just didn't know, how much quality this kind of education is offering and that they can learn a lot more than they thought. But I do also ask controversial questions about consumerism. When I feel that my client starts to feel uneasy and to be judged I stop and ask if he or she feels to be judged. That helps to prevent that.

I ask for example: "Do you like to buy things? Do you like to wear new fashion? Do you like to prepare delicious things for dinner? Where do you get all these things from? Who is actually responsible for filling the shelves in the supermarkets? How does all this work?"

I ask: "If you look around the city. What do you see?

I get an irritated look and repeat the question. Or I explain that our street scene is dominated by paths that serve to transport the goods in the trucks to the shops that dominate our cities. I suggest: "Is it right that what most people seem to be doing here is buying and selling?" I then go into the appearances and realities of such a social organization dryly and soberly and ask how my client personally judges and finds all this. The answers are surprisingly balanced. The clients explain these advantages and disadvantages and are not at a loss for answers.

They are just never really asked what they think of anything without an adult unconsciously trying to influence them. What no parents should be accused of is because they are worried about their children. When I notice that I myself having prejudice about a certain profession or branch, I openly admit it. I say: "Sorry, I am biased. I do not like this business field a lot and I may give you some subconscious opinion of mine. Please help me to be aware of that."

After all, my clients are or are becoming adults. Most of them are over the age of 18, only few are still 16 or 17 years old.
I treat them slightly different than those of 18+.

What surprised me in the beginning?

In many young people I found a great eloquence of communicating. They sounded already like thirty or forty years, but certainly not like twenty. Also, what life experience and insights they shared with me, led me to think: "Woah! I rarely hear adults talk in that way who are my age!" And I ask them: "How is it possible that you are so wise when you are so young?"

Then I hear: "That's what all adults who talk to me say."

Sometimes, when I have the impression that such a form of communication was chosen because the young people have four, five or even ten years of therapy behind them and I know about it, I say:

"You sound like a therapist or your social pedagogue. I don't think that suits you very well. Can you also talk like a foolish young person?"

I have to laugh because it's meant as a joke, of course, but it has a serious message, too. I want my client to know that he cannot fool me by an eloquent speech, by using professional terms of medical or psychological nature. That this is not going to impress me even though I just revealed that he sounds "too wise" and I am really impressed as my client also can make use of his eloquence and developed a certain talent which we can look at positively in the career counseling. Also, it should give the message: "You can also let go and behave appropriate to your age. Let lose of your tightness."

Some adults indeed let themselves being fooled by long and epic explanations from this youngsters who talk them dizzy. Mostly, because they want privileges or receive understanding why "I could not accept doing that as a volunteer" or "I was missing the appointment, because ... yadda yadda yadda".

My reply can be like this, smiling: "Very clever of you. But you know, I am not in the slightest interested in the "why". I just want you to be punctual the next time. Also, no one else is interested in long answers. Don't be such a nuisance to others. Actually, do you like it when a friend gives you a novel why he couldn't show up?" Guess, what they answer.

What many of my clients suffer from is that the adults from their environment do no put enough trust in them. If I manage being struck by a creative flash, I say: "Welcome into adulthood! Do you know that lack of self knowledge and self trust is not only to be found in your parents and teachers but many of us others have to deal with, too?" That should lower a clients expectations to think that all others must be wise, while he or she suffers from untrustworthiness.

But: Here it really depends on the client and where I sense that I must encourage the client or where I can already see a good sense of confidence and energy. Sometimes it also is just a daily mood or some melancholy that influences a session. Then I am more empathetic and caring.

That's all for today.

If you'd like to hear some more stories about career counseling, let me know. And maybe you want to share some thoughts here.