Introducing Career Theories to Students Sooner Rather Than Later
Covid-19 has stormed into our lives, threatening to upend everything from our health to our relationships and careers. For many, the pandemic and its mountain of consequences have invoked a great deal of introspection.
Our many musings would be incomplete without the unpacking of our professional lives. Whether we’ve been furloughed, made redundant or remain employed, in typical human fashion, our minds have a tendency to drift towards the philosophical questions that force us to confront whether or not our careers provide us with genuine fulfilment. For many, the response to questions such as “am I happy at work?” is far from a resounding yes.
Whilst the bold amongst us are busy making career transitions, the reality is that we really could have discovered more suitable career paths much sooner, and avoided the need for a career change altogether.
As for another contender to be added to the endless stream of “the things they never taught us in school”?
Career theories.
Our career choices can be traced all the way back to our school years. Specifically, to the insufficient education around the matter.
For most students and their guardians, the prime purpose of attending school is to establish a solid future foundation. Whilst this is generally synonymous with the school’s agenda of generating outstanding exam rates and achieving the best possible rating issued by regulatory bodies, the two sets of priorities can be found to conflict at times. Namely, when the school’s tunnel-vision focus on its priorities results in its failure to meaningfully innovate. Consequently, tried and tested day-to-day operations continually take precedence and new initiatives are easily deprioritised, never gaining much traction.
Whilst many schools simply don’t have the budget to enlist external career guidance or facilitate impressive career evenings, there are lesser effort and less expensive solutions that have the potential to evoke just as valuable consequences.
For instance, non-specialist classes such as ‘General Studies’ or ‘form periods’ bear masses of potential to be better utilised. Educating students on one or two renowned career theories during these classes could provide them with much-needed clarity and steer them towards paths that are most compatible with their strengths and traits.
Whilst incepted decades ago, career theories such as Holland’s Theory of Vocational Types and Frank Parsons’ Trait and Factor Theory still pervade the careers counselling field today and are frequently used by counsellors as tools to aid their paying clients. Understanding these concepts in a preventative rather than interventive manner could cull the need for a financially painful career pivot further down the line.
There’s no guarantee that earlier exposure to these models will imminently help a student to realise their ideal vocation. But at the very least, gaining familiarity with the concepts could prove to be significant in enhancing one’s self-awareness and understanding of the link between personality, strengths and the plethora of professions out there.
It’s often not until we’ve entered the workplace that we realise the sheer amount of opportunities that exist. Garnering this exposure whilst we’re students would help us to broaden our prospects at a time when so many of us are prone to pigeonholing ourselves into niches rationalised by our academic accolades alone.
The idea is not to place undue pressure on students to figure out the rest of their lives, but to provide valuable insight in good time. Thus, when it’s time to make decisions around which classes to sign up to, what to study at university and which internships and jobs to pursue, students can do so in an informed manner based on worthwhile information.
The world is not short of pragmatic career guidance. It’s just a matter of access and timing.
