All that is wrong with the, 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' question.
By Bianca Praino
June 2020
Do you remember being asked as a child, What do you want to be when you grow up? I for one loved answering this question because it filled me with hope, joy, ambition, aspiration, and utter excitement. Visualising and talking about my future career as the next Donatella Versace was at one point, all I wanted to do as my child self.
Think about when you were a child and asked, What do you want to be when you grow up?
What was your answer, and more importantly, how did you feel when you answered it?
Now think about when you are asked, What do you want to do when you graduate?
What’s your answer, and how does this question make you feel?
Spot any differences?
My experience of working with a range of students at varying stages of their professional development has given me insight into the different approaches and attitudes towards careers and occupational choice. Whereas children are delighted to be asked about their future career- you can literally feel the excitement oozing out of their bones and the overenthusiasm in their speech. On the other hand, more often than not, final year university students dread being asked about their future career plans. Of course, not all of you, but for those of you who do, you know who you are.
I urge you to ask yourself, is this how my child self would react?
There appears to be a number of commonalities amongst final year university students who feel like this, and these foster a situation of stuckness, indecisiveness and frustration, consequently preventing them from experiencing a positive transition from graduate to professional.
Three common themes I have identified are:
1. Self awareness (or lack of)
A two step activity I often do in career workshops, where in pairs, students have one minute each to talk about things they were good at and enjoyed as a child, followed by one minute to talk about their strengths, passions and motivations in the here and now. Repeatedly, students comment that they find the second part of the activity really challenging and difficult.
Why is it that the more life experiences we gain, knowledge we accumulate, and skills we acquire that we seem to know ourselves less? Surely, this doesn’t make any sense.
Knowing your strengths, skills, motivations and what you value in the here and now is a pertinent for your career planning. As your child self, you most likely subonsciously indulged in the things you enjoyed and were good at and it felt natural to use these as a basis to inform your career ideas. Why are you not doing this now?
In her Ted talk, Sharon Belden points out how self -awareness is key to making authentic career decisions. She outlines the problem with the slogan, Do what you’re passionate about and you will never work a day in your life, is that so many people do not know what their passions are. If you are one of these people, then it is time to go back to the drawing board/ipad.
Start with asking yourself,
-When do I feel inspired and motivated?
-What do I want to use my voice for?
-What do I value?
-What do I want to be part of?
2. Self doubt
Another common trend amongst university students is the overwhelming oozing of self doubt, and questioning abilities and what they have to offer to a future employer. This results in down playing strengths, inability to articulate skills and a habit of not fully valuing the meaningful and varied learning experiences they have had. The amount of students I witness who have (wrongly) chosen to omit something / or many things from their CV because they deem it as ‘irrelevant’ for the job they want to get continues to shock and frustrate me. I am not saying you must include every single job you have had (hell, I for sure don’t have my part time retail job on my CV from the 90’s) but be careful with what you do decide to omit because it can be more detrimental to leave something out than include it. The majority of employers are looking for graduates who are all rounders, can communicate with people at various levels, work in teams, use their initiative, adapt to situations, display confidence in their abilities, have a willingness to learn, and show a commitment to organisational values. If you doubt yourself, and downplay your worth, this will come through in your CV and others will doubt you too.
3. Social conditioning
Occupational stereotypes are formed by the time we are of primary school age and reinforced through external messages we receive from the outside world. Our environment , social and cultural norms have a profound effect on shaping our identity and when making occupational choices, individuals career aspirations are often compromised because they favour options viewed as more ‘realistic’ and ‘accessible’ to them based on, external variables, such as gender, socio-economic background and ethnicity.
Statements I often hear like,
‘someone told me that it’s really competitive and almost impossible to get into’,
‘I heard from a friend who knows someone who works there that it isn’t really a good company to work for’.
‘My mum is a recruiter and she said that….’
blah blah blah
Let’s just sit with these statements for a minute and observe what is very dangerous about them. Firstly, none of them are based on you knowing for sure whether that is true. They are based on things you think to be true, but do not know for sure that they are. Internalising statements like these collected from the outside world can foster limiting beliefs, which determine your actions and behaviour, and it is a vicious cycle and often a downward spiral where you could end up a being an observer of your career and not the author you can be. Awareness of how career decision making can be heavily influenced by your external world will encourage you to undertake your own research and ensure your decisions are coming from intrinsic rather than extrinsic values.
I know the above is a lot to digest and a lot of you may be thinking this is all completely irrelevant in the current covid situation, because there are no jobs and the graduate landscape is screwed but this is all even more relevant than ever! It was only very recently that I realised I graduated in 2008- during the peak of the financial crisis. Some people may find it shocking that I had to be reminded about this. I found it shocking! However, the only crisis I remember from this time was that I had no idea what I wanted to do after my degree.
Even if I knew all the options available and labour market trends, I still would have struggled to make a decision because I hadn’t taken the time to reflect on my own desires, values, skills, strengths and professional ethics to help me enter the graduate labour market, knowing what I wanted and with the confidence to carve out my own authentic career path.
You may realise that when you start reflecting, you feel as though you have completed a full circle and are back to feeling more like your child self- your true self. The only difference is that now you are your child self with an abundance of life experience, knowledge, skills, resilience and so much more to offer and contribute. Now that is a fact and something we know to be true.
Writing your career narrative is likely to be messy - embrace that messiness, own your story and don’t let others write it for you. Sharon Belden
Thanks for reading.
Ciao for now!
Bianca