Dr Paul Redmond, Director of Student Life, University of Manchester
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Dr Paul Redmond @drpaulredmond
or for that matter careers advisers, by way of an ice-breaker I like kick off by asking how many of them are in the job or career they planned to be in when they were a student. The results will astound you.
Because no matter where I have tried this side-splitter of an exercise, rarely has more than a smattering of hands gone up.
It is at this point, while the atmosphere is at fever pitch, that I go in for the kill.
I ask them to share with the person next to them how they found themselves in their current job.
Let me tell you, should the organiser of this year’s Glastonbury festival, Michael Eavis, find himself in urgent need of a guaranteed 10-minute crowd- pleaser, look no further. Give Elbow the elbow and give me a ring.
From what I have discovered, the reality is that many people who are at work today are working in jobs and careers that they had absolutely no intention of being in when they were students. In fact, according to the ice-breaker challenge, the majority of us are ensconced in in jobs and organisations which their student- age selves would not have even
30 Graduate Recruiter |
www.agr.org.uk
Denis the dentist W
henever I am invited to speak to groups of employers, teachers
heard of, let alone have aspired to. That is because our lives are shaped by complex forces – forces that we barely understand.
Our careers are dependent on factors such as where we live, the influence of our friends, the kind of school and university we attend, the social and cultural capital of our parents, and of course, sheer, unadulterated, happenstance.
Evidence even exists to suggest that we choose careers that have a passing resemblance to our own names. For example, is it a coincidence that more dentists are called Denis or Denise than other well-known forenames? Or that that leading well-known expert on Polar Regions is called Daniel Snowman? Even more pressingly, is it mere chance that two of the leading experts on urological incontinence are named J. W. Splatt and D. Weedon?
Suddenly, it becomes apparent why one of our greatest poets was called Wordsworth, and why the world’s fastest sprinter is named, what else, Bolt.
The reason for all this, scientists speculate, is that we are programmed to prefer things that are connected to or remind us of ourselves. It’s a phenomenon known as ‘implicit egotism’ and it affects everything from where we
…is it
a coincidence that more dentists are called Denis or Denise?
live and what kind of jobs we do. So why don’t we come clean and admit that the amount of agency we exhibit when choosing careers is, to say the least, limited? What no one hardly ever owns up to is that their current occupation came about not as a result of super- human self- analysis, Zen-like meditation or forensic levels of data analysis, but because they met someone in a pub who told them about a new job opening.
All too often, when I hear people like us talking about the importance of career planning and career development, we make it sound rational and organised – as if careers are simply a matter
of choosing from a range of options about which we’re neutral observers. It’s as if career choices take place in laboratory conditions rather than the hustle and bustle of daily life. Our own careers prove this is rarely the case.
It’s about time we talk about how careers really work and the importance of happenstance. Only then will we help students and other young people get ready for taking advantage of the full range of opportunities available to them, whenever and wherever they occur.
As the old saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.
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