Autism Spectrum Teenagers - Why is it so hard to get work experience?

Despite all the research that has been done over recent years describing the benefits of employing young people on the autism spectrum, it seems that we have a long way to go before we, as a society, fully embraces the power of the kid with autism (and the adult, as well, mind you).

Evidence abounds that people who display autistic behaviours are actually the ideal employees. Those employers who have been brave enough to employ a person 'on the spectrum' attest to their:

• ability to get the job done without distraction (no social chitchat, slagging off for an hour or two, long lunches etc,)
• learning abilities which mean they usually only need to be shown how to do something once
• attendance record (they hardly take any time off, because, well, work days are work days)
• timekeeping prowess (if you want them to start at a particular time and finish at a particular time, they will be there)
• determination to do the job to the best of their abilities, and
• not providing minute-by-minute updates on just how great they are at their job (they just do it!)

So, I was mightily upset when a local dad posted on the local community facebook page just yesterday that, despite there being so many jobs coming up for young people where 'experience is not necessary' (we are in a beachside area where the crowds swell for summer), his 16 year old son had been rejected for upwards of a dozen jobs. No doubt he would have he had trouble completing the bizarre online form, and answering questions about 'where he would like to be in five years time' and 'how would he deal with an angry customer'.

Clearly, these kinds of stock-standard interview questions are anathema to people on the autism spectrum. They think from day to day, and long range plans are just not something within their scope. Likewise, dealing with a difficult situation can be learned, but without a context, a question like 'What would you do if...' is irrelevant to them. 

The other problem faced by young people with autism is the form-filling stage, which often eliminates them even before they get to the interview. People on the spectrum can be brutally honest, for example if asked about working preferences they might put down that they are not willing to work evenings because they don't understand the concept of evening, or they find it too vague - providing the actual time periods involved would lead to a better level of understanding on both sides.

Interview questions and forms aside, when you consider that a significant number of customers of  nurseries, fast food chains, supermarkets, cafes and hardware stores will demonstrate autistic traits, the owners and managers of these establishments would find added benefits in employing a broader range of workers with 'different gifts and talents'.

Thankfully, the power of social media worked well for this dad and his son - they received several invitations to attend workplaces, and, with a little bit of luck, this young man will be on his way to his first paycheck by now.

With a little support and education, I am sure that most employers would be happy to adapt their practices to enable them to find the right employees. I have developed a check list that I have used in my interactions with employers, which many have found very useful. If any potential employers, or parents of young people with autism would like a copy of this, just let me know by sending your email address in the comments section.

On jobs and careers, passions, needs and happiness: The story continues

Do a job you love and you will never work a day in your life.

This oft-quoted saying has been attributed to many great people, including Confucius. It is a fine saying, but it might make it sound like having a career is easy. From my own experience, and from that of people I know to have careers, this is far from the truth.

Jobs can be hard: you might have to work hard, for long hours, or your job might involve heavy labour. Some jobs are physically demanding, others mentally and intellectually so. Sometimes, jobs are hard because of difficult bosses or competitive, destructive work colleagues. Sometimes they are hard because they are repetitive or boring, or worse, because you feel undervalued or bullied.

Careers are hard for different reasons. When we practice a career, we are effectively backing ourselves. If we succeed or fail, we are responsible. When jobs go wrong, we can easily find a scapegoat (this doesn’t actually result in making us feel better about ourselves, though). We can move from job to job, always finding a person, a system, or something else to blame. When we have a career (which is self-driven), we can’t really blame anyone but ourselves - the buck stops with us.

However, the good news is we can’t really go wrong with a career, because a career is for life, it may permutate and change as we evolve, but it can’t go wrong, as long as it is allied with our true purpose. There might be failures. The actual performance of a career involves challenges and risks that you can avoid by simply having a job.

It is rare, but some people are fortunate enough to have a job that is perfectly aligned with where their career is at that point. This has happened to me twice in my life. (You can tell if this happens as both the rewards and the challenges are intensified). I lost both of these jobs during restructures. Fortunately, while this impacted significantly on my position and temporary earning ability, my career was intact and I was already looking forward to the next phase in my life.

A career is a choice we make. It might start with a vocation, a calling, a passion or it might be something more mundane – a need to do something small, that becomes bigger as we do it. Often, people fall into a job and then realise it gets into their soul, their psyche – they want to have an impact, not simply ‘do’ it. (This is what happened to me, but it took a long time for me to realise it).

A career in action involves bringing something into existence, making it better, or overcoming something you perceive as negative or wrong. It is always values-driven. This can be in any area of life, even if you clean toilets for a living. I had a client a while back who did just that; she reported a hygiene problem to the centre management. She didn’t leave it there; she also had a well-thought out and inexpensive solution. She was told a week later that her services were no longer required. We worked together for a long time; this woman went on to become a consultant, working with local government to make public toilets safer. It was a hard road, with lots of submission writing (she required assistance with this as she was not educated in Australia and had difficulties with the language), TAFE studies, and creative ways of getting to talk to the right people. Does she regret any of this? Not for a minute. She is now highly sought-after for input into a range of safety concerns.

So, if you feel that a career is something only other people can have, that you don’t have the space or time for it, think again – carefully.

Don’t just take my word for it. There are loads of passionate careerists out there, in a wide range of situations.

Last week I hijacked some words written by Daniel Reeves, a musician. I didn't ask him to write them, – I didn’t even know Daniel until very recently –  they fell onto my facebook page like a gift; a truly honest and heartfelt message about having a career, though he doesn't even use that term. I'm hijacking some more words from that post this week:

My dream is like many songwriters’ dreams would be, to spark inside someone the experience that music gave me this morning. To have someone stop for just a moment, to have a look at the big picture, to who they really are, where they really are and to be thankful for who they are. 

So I think it’s important to always do what you love, love what you do and most importantly, believe in yourself. We are a product of our experiences so just remember that when you’re at an age where you can’t do much and the majority of your life is spent inside, you will have lots of time for thinking. So you may as well pack as many good memories in there as you can.

If you are unsure about your own career, don’t worry, you are already having it. You might not be actioning it fully yet, it might need some work, but it is there, waiting to be tapped. Stop, sit still and listen to your inner voice – it won’t steer you wrong.

On jobs and careers, passions, needs and happiness

How can you tell if you have a job or a career? Can you have both?

Well, yes you can. A job is something you do. A job is a transaction – you provide something (your labour) and in exchange you receive payment (money and perhaps other benefits).

Many people who have jobs say they have careers – perhaps they climb the corporate ladder, or become highly skilled at what they do. But unless they would do this without any external reward, they don’t really have a career.

A job is what you do. It is always negotiable. A career is who you are. It is not negotiable.

You are welcome to dispute this. I am sure many of you will. You might say, but I need money to survive, to pay the mortgage, to pay for the kids’ school, etc. But, how much money do you need to do these things? How much do you really, really need? Chances are, you are sacrificing a career for nothing - careers provide an income as well, even if it is not in conventional ways.

Many people who say they have careers are not really happy. This is a real shame. Now I am not saying that if you have a career, every day will be like heaven on a stick. It won’t, and that is life. But if you really have a career, the days that aren’t so good – the days that challenge your determination, that question your ability, that push you on to greater success (on your terms) – these are the days that are most important of all.

A career is not something you drop after you leave the office (I don’t mean taking work home that you haven’t finished, because you are really doing two people’s work). A career is something that you carry with you – it is aligned with your purpose, your soul, and you find yourself doing things that continually reinforce who you are, even when you are ‘off the job’.

Everybody has a career, because everyone has a purpose, a raison-d’etre. When this is aligned with your job, it is an amazing thing. You might not be consciously aware of it, but if you are developing and exhibiting your career on a daily basis, you are most likely content with life most of the time. You are probably less competitive too, and more willing to share your knowledge with others, because careers are not selfish.

Another thing about career is that it is driven internally. People give you a job. You develop your career. Can you see the difference?

Can everyone have a career? Yes they can. In a developed country, we all have a choice. 

I have had jobs I have loved, and jobs I have hated, and some that were just OK. In my younger years I looked for jobs that matched my interests and suited my needs at the time. I enjoyed working in the inner city area before I had my kids, and commuting an hour each way was no problem. When we got into family mode, I looked for a job closer to home. I moved up the ladder and was happy enough.

I didn’t have a notion of career until I was in my forties. It was a culmination of a lot of things. Losing a job I loved and enjoyed going to, the collapse of my industry, finding a new talent, and a lot of soul searching and trying out of jobs that just didn't cut it.

I’m glad I found out what my career was. It changed my outlook on life completely. I no longer worried about whether I was ‘good enough’ in other people’s eyes, I set my own benchmarks. I have allowed myself to take risks, to succeed and to fail, and to label all of these as ‘experience’.

I’m glad I have a career, because at this stage of human evolution, jobs come and go quickly, and provide the least stability experienced since the Great Depression since the 1930s (except this time the instability is not going away). In this climate, losing a job is extra hard – there are financial consequences, of course, but the greatest barrier is related to the loss of identity that having a job brings.

We live in a time of constant and dramatic change. Life, and work, is unpredictable. Other than saving for a rainy day (something that is becoming more and more imperative), we have to face the fact that the future holds no guarantees. It is best if we all take the view that no job is safe; there is no course, no profession, no organisation that will provide us with a livelihood for the rest of our working lives.

 So, to the main point of this post: 

Having a career is excellent insulation against the vagaries of the labour market. It is the new 'essential' quality. It also helps you look at things more objectively, to be less beaten back when things go wrong. It is a reason to keep going, to find new ways of doing what you love, to be joyful about your life.

Let me explain.  Or rather, let someone else.

I’ve been given permission to quote a young man who has, in my humble opinion, a fine career – Daniel Reeves, a musician. Maybe you have heard of him? Maybe not. It doesn’t matter, his happiness does not hinge on acceptance by others (but do go and see him if he happens to be playing in your town, you won't regret it). Daniel expresses the true sense of career in these words:

I’ve spent half my adult life working on roads and the other half has been spent driving them. Although I have nights where I’d just love to crawl into my own bed and have the pleasure of a peaceful and uninterrupted 8 hours sleep, to reach in the fridge to grab my food instead of an esky in the back of the car, or when I stop at a road side shop and hope that the food hasn’t been in the warmer for hours and that I remain healthy for my show later that night. It really doesn’t matter if my change room is a bunch of trees on the side of the road before I get into town after spending all day driving, or when I visit my life’s possessions at a storage shed to grab what I accidently packed into the wrong box instead of getting it from my room. The journey and the experience of entertaining people by playing music is always so rewarding, whether I play a song that makes people dance or whether I play a deep and meaningful song that at some point or another has kept someone strong enough to move forward and keep going. The journey is always rewarding and full of rich life experiences. 

As a musician you soon realise there’s nights where there’s big crowds and nights where there’s not so big crowds. Nights with much applause, and nights with only the dishwasher humming along behind the pub bar after you strike the last chord of your song. But the journey and the experience are always calling. No matter how uplifted and on top of the world you are, no matter how tired and exhausted you are, there’s this life force of its own, this world of noise and beauty which just keeps driving you along.

Sometimes my wallet is over flowing with cash and other times it’s praying for rain. Like any role in life, there’s the good and then there’s the other side that goes along with it. But I could never swap how rich and rewarding this life experience is. 

My wish for everyone reading this post is that hasn't already done so - find your career – it really is a blast!

The latest job search strategy - environment scanning

We've heard about networking, information interviewing, tapping into the hidden job market. Chances are you have used all these strategies, or at least heard of them.

Last week I talked about the trend towards insecurity in employment, so this week I want to tell you about a less well-known, but important career development technique called environment scanning, which can assist with the career decision making and subsequent planning processes. This actually started as an organisational development tool, offering businesses and other employing entities new ways to look forward and plan for a future that is characterised by many unknowns. In career development today, this term makes sense, as these days we are all trying to 'best fit' ourselves for futures that cannot be guaranteed. We have all heard the news that most of the jobs we will be doing ten years from now have not been invented yet, and those that will continue to exist will be carried out quite differently, thanks largely to technology and the increasingly global nature of work.

The kind of environment scanning I want to talk about bears some similarities to what career practitioners have traditionally called 'opportunity awareness', 'understanding the world of work', or just 'labour market awareness', but these are not quite the same. Let me explain.

'Opportunity awareness' is part of Career Development 101, it is the other side of the coin to 'self-awareness'. Broken down, this means that in order to have a meaningful, self-directed career, you need to understand yourself in a work-sense (your skills, talents, interests, motivations, core values and drivers, your social context, also your perceived and real limitations), as well as what opportunities exist for you. Sounds fair enough, doesn't it? Unfortunately, though, what this implies is that there is a job out there with your name on it; that there will be something just right for you and all you have to do is prepare yourself and it will come.

The thousands of law, medicine, education, engineering and accounting graduates working in non-related and often low-skilled jobs should be evidence enough that simply doing a course and graduating does not guarantee a job in that field. More than ever before, the labour market is far from being an =SUM equation.

The fact is, there may be a large number of jobs you can apply for, or, there may be just a few, or in fact zero opportunities. There may be a hundred jobs you would be more than happy to undertake, and which you feel at least somewhat qualified for, but for one reason or another, you are never going to get thanks to the increasing knowledge of creeping credentialism and the multiskilling hangover (to be the subject of another blog post). Understanding the world of work generally may be useful in developing your theoretical knowledge, but it is not going to get you a job and could, quite possibly, be a source of disillusionment. In any case, even if you find the contemporary labour market a fascinating field of inquiry (as I do), this is a field of constant change, and I doubt that many people, even career practitioners, have the time or energy to keep up to date.

This is the basis for the mistakes parents and other adults with good intentions make when they advise young people to become a this or a that.  Their knowledge is, quite simply, limited and flawed. This is why people believe, truly, that because there are well-paid jobs as a doctor, accountant, lawyer, therefore studying to become one of these will mean you will in fact become a well-paid doctor, accountant or lawyer. In most cases, this is really bad advice, on a number of levels, but most of all, because unless you are truly gifted and passionate, you will only ever be an average doctor, accountant or lawyer and the really good jobs will always elude you.

So, what is environment scanning and where does it fit in? It is a number of things.

1. Firstly, it is an active process, or should I say a pro-active process. You are not passively reading the Job Guide or listening to an industry group paint their field with a coat of gloss. You are actively engaged in finding out the information you need to make the right decision for you.

2. Secondly, environment scanning is unique, because you are unique and your career needs and goals are unique. So, every single person will develop a unique and different view of their environment.

3. Thirdly, environment scanning puts you in the driver's seat. You are actually making decisions about the environment, whether it is friendly or hostile, open or closed. This helps you adopt an analytical approach.You determine the parameters for your scan: how far will you search geographically, how in-depth, and over what period of time. In fact, if you are properly engaged, environment scanning is something you are doing, to a greater or lesser extent, all the time.

4. Placing this in fourth position does not mean it is less important. Environment scanning is a holistic process: it engages the spirit, the imagination, your creative core. You need to, firstly, imagine one or more possible futures for yourself - you want new information, not old data. You are adopting a stance of curiosity, which enables to you discover new possibilities inside organisations, or perhaps in a business idea for yourself. Does that sound exciting? This process is akin to 'job crafting', in which you work towards creating your own 'best fit' job, perhaps by showing the leaders of an organisation how you can assist them to achieve their goals, or maybe in starting a business yourself to fill a gap in the market.

5.Lastly, if the last four elements are taken seriously and implemented, environment scanning is profound, creating a lifelong interest and the motivation to achieve. You have, in essence, found your life's work.

Does this all sound a bit new-agey and creepy? That's OK, you don't have to engage in any of these activities. In fact, I predict that less than 5% of people will ever be brave enough to really embrace this technique, which makes it all the more likely that the 5% minority will succeed.

If you are part of the 5 % and want to know more about how to undertake a successful environmental scan, along with other contemporary job search techniques, you'll be able to do so very soon, by reading my books, 'Who's Who in the Zoo? and 'What's New in the Zoo?'; both will be out later this year.

Thoughts on passion and whether a job is just a job after all

 In my professional circle, there has been a lot of discussion lately around the topic of career satisfaction; this mainly comes down to an argument between the people who think we should each find our passion and let that drive our careers, and the people who say 'work is work' and it is not meant to be enjoyed.

The careers people on the 'passion' side argue that we spend more of our lives at work than in any other area, so we might as well love what we do. These are the people who usually believe we are put on the earth for a purpose, and it is our duty to work out what this is. If we don't do this duty to ourselves, we are more likely to become stressed and ill - physically and mentally. There have been many books devoted to this subject, some from career practitioners but many from the life coaching, motivational speakers/writers, and the self-help industry as well. 

Some people (myself included) have found this argument persuasive; although I didn't actually read it in a book, it was more a matter of listening to that small voice inside me that gradually grew bigger and more all-pervasive. There is an element of liberation in following one's passion, of 'treading one's own path' (thanks Barefoot Investor!), but it can also be hard work (mainly in trying to keep a roof over your head and food on the table while carving new territory), so it is no surprise that many people have preferred to view work as something that must be endured..

The most pervasive argument for work as something to be endured is a transactional one. There are only so many jobs in the world - what would happen to society if everyone just did what they wanted? Who would collect the garbage, hold the 'Stop' and 'Slow' road signs up in all weathers while work is being done? Who would clean the public toilets? (oh, wait - we have technology for all those things now).

Whether or not the transactional argument is true, most of the reasons relate back to our society, how we want to live and what we are prioritising. As a society, we value wealth, material possessions and competition over family, community and equality. This is a harsh truth that cannot be disputed. We like money and the type of freedom it brings. Thanks to the scaremongering going on in political circles and the superannuation industry, we now believe that we are going to live a long time and we are going to need lots of money to do it - we'd better store it away now or we will be living on the streets, old and incontinent, with no one to look after us. Short of winning the lottery or becoming a game show champion, we can only do this one way - by working hard and getting lots of money so we can store it away till later. Yes it is true - the Protestant Work Ethic is alive and well!

I propose a rethink on both these extremes. It is about balance. It involves following our hearts/intuition/gut feel to an extent while paying attention to opportunities. Getting locked into one, unsupported but possibly romantic, fixed idea is fraught with dangers. 

To avoid the tragedy that comes from a life devoid of any sense of purpose, the first thing to do is to get in touch with who you are and what you want RIGHT NOW! It's really not hard - you just need some space and time so you can think clearly. Write down some key points; draw a picture, talk to a non-judgemental friend over coffee.

The job market is constantly shifting, so it is really hard to make long-term plans. Also, over  the course of our lives, as we grow and change (along with our priorities) we need to adopt a 'fluid' approach to our careers rather than the fixed one that many of us still buy into. I am amazed when I hear well-meaning adults still saying things to young people like 'Do this or that course and you will be set up for life', or  'Go to uni and get a law/medicine degree first, then when you are earning good money you can do a bit of art on the side.' You can pretty well guarantee that the young person in question will have killed off any artistic talent well before the end of his/her course, and do you know how many hours young lawyers and doctors work? These are definitely not just jobs 'to do', they involve a great deal of attention and many sacrifices - they are important jobs for those who have the heart to do them well.

If you are a young person reading this, remember, you have all the time in the world to make your career something fantastic! Don't jump into the first thing you think of, and especially do not do a course just because you got  the marks to do it! That is the first bad mistake that is easily avoided. Give passion a little bit of a chance to have its say as well as all those other, boring messages you keep hearing from those who want to lock you up in a job title for the rest of your life. As financial advisor Scott Pape so wisely says, 'Tread your own path' (But I did say it first, many years ago now).

If you are an older person who is in a new career stage, remember - your career has been building all your life, whether you have been in work or not. It is a continuum, and your past has relevance - even though it might feel like it. You have a wealth of experience, skills, successes and failures who have made you who you are. Use this as an opportunity rather than a threat and you will be energised rather than encumbered by change.

My next blog will be about how to be over 50 and attractive to employers. Yes it is possible!

Julie Farthing Enters the Career Planning Debate

Having spent over a year treading a new, more elevated career path, as I revitalise this blog, I think it is timely that I enter the great debate that has raged over the past twelve months or so about career planning.

Planning now appears to be the dirty word in career development. I am not sure whether Jim Bright started the debate, however he has certainly been creating a strong argument in support of the idea career planning is a worthless activity. The cynic in me says this has more than a little to do with putting a bigger stamp on his own work and his recently co-authored book on chaos career theory. I do have a lot of respect for Jim, mind you, and he raises some good points, but I think maybe the time has come for a more balanced view on the topic.

Planning is not everything; making inflexible plans is downright stupid. So much of what happens in the world is unpredictable, and we need to be able to change our minds as often as is sensible to do so, as new information comes in.

However, strategic planning has its place, especially in significant and long-term career management, as do a whole raft of other strategies. In this post I would like to raise some pertinent points about career planning that seem to have got lost in the great debate. My own career story is a case in point. For many years I worked at the pointy end of careers, assisting people who were long-term unemployed, or who had significant barriers that prevented them from pursuing the career of their choice, or, often, any career at all. I was highly successful at this: doctors from the Middle East became well-paid factory workers, young people with missing limbs found work in retail and office environments, older workers were provided basic business training - I could go on forever, the outcomes were as varied as the people themselves. Usually, my clients were grateful and happy to be working and thanked me for my help; if they didn't particularly like the first job they got, they came back and I helped them to plan steps that would move them closer to their dream job.I was a natural, I had no formal training but found I was very good at what I did and was rewarded by it on a daily basis.

Around the turn of the century all this changed - the government no longer cared whether people were happy in their work, or how we helped them; it was all about the numbers. At the same time I started to wonder if there wasn't more to this career business. What could we could do to assist our clients to have more meaningful lives? After all, there are so many opportunities, why shouldn't people have the opportunity to pursue their ideal career? External change creates exciting opportunities, but internal change - that gets us ready to respond to new opportunities - requires planning! After all, we can't become a doctor without doing the required training, we can't work overseas without the right permits, and we can't become rich without saving. Some things just don't happen on their own, and often we drown in all the necessary steps, not to mention other's negativity ('You can't do that!' 'There are no jobs in x!'), so we give up before we have really begun.Career planning is an important step in confirming a career direction, or indeed, in determining that a career direction is not realistic or likely to be achieved.

Around a decade ago I set about finding out how I could do more meaningful work with clients in a range of ways (all planned), by doing some post graduate courses (5 to date), by joining professional associations and having conversations with other career people who were thinking similarly, and by learning about a range of career tools, including getting accredited to use the MBTI (R), Strong II (R), and DiSC instruments. These days I use these sparingly but strategically, as part of my work with clients, but these are never 'all' I do.

Along the way, I began developing my own 'theory' about careers - it is not new (nothing is!), but it is about story, and how this can be used to assist people to see a shape to their lives and to reshape, further shape them. More about this is available at www.storypractitioner.blogspot.com and will be further expanded in a book that I PLAN will be completed this year (if I didn't plan it definitely won't happen!). In short, developing a sense of their life's narrative can empower people to see that things have happened for a reason, and that, whether this is conscious or not, often a result of some planning (especially the good bits).

Narrative works in many ways: linear, thematically, in uncovering patterns - we can use story to help us plan more appropriately, by highlighting ways we have sabotaged our own efforts in the past. Understanding our own career narrative helps us understand the past, identify with the present, and make plans for the future.

One of the mistakes Jim and the other proponents of 'no planning' make is spreading the idea that plans are concrete and that they are relatively static. Plans are a way of laying a foundation, of taking a look at life, of weighing up options. A good plan will create a more heightened awareness of opportunities (or Happenstance, as John Krumboltz calls it)and enables us to take advantage of them. For instance, around mid-2010 I noticed a sense of dissatisfaction with my own career, and started to explore this. I realised I needed a project of some kind, something with a bit of meat that I could get my teeth into.This was something new to me, an exciting new venture to contemplate. In August-September 2010 I started planning. I established the ingredients: something fresh, that would last at least 6 months, preferably a year, that I could put my mark on and see some real outcomes. It would be a career-related project, one that involved a team, not just myself. I waited patiently, talked to people, received encouragement from some and some weird looks from others.

Guess what! In November 2010, when the opportunity arose, I grabbed it with both hands. It was, literally, the job of a lifetime, everything I could have wanted, and more. Never before in my life have I been so specific about what I wanted - I was planning in full flight for something that had not even appeared by then, but planning enabled me to see it clearly in my heart and in my mind.

It is really hard to beat the experience I had in 2011, but I have every confidence I can do the same again. If I didn't believe this, I wouldn't be able to help others do the same.Assisting people individually to plan effectively, especially for long term, significant career change, is a hallmark of our profession, as is using the tools strategically and wisely. Along with this goes the ability to tap into their passions, to empower them with an attitude for success, and the confidence to take the appropriate steps, such as a course of study, new connections, taking new risks and trying things that take them out of their comfort zones. These are the core elements that work in combination to create career success.

More to come.

The Trouble With Careers

Careers are curious beasts, they can spin off in weird directions without much warning. For example, you might come into work one morning to find someone has cleared out your desk for you, which probably means you have been made redundant (unless you have been found out for doing something illegal, in which case I have no sympathy). Or you might find out, as a colleage of mine did a few years back, that your body has said 'enough is enough', and announced through a stroke or heart attack that it is no longer willing to do what you have been asking it to do.

Sometimes, the change is positive, but the ramifications can be just as derailing. Take me, for example. You may have noticed that it has been around six months since I posted my last blog. This is because last November I had a career change - a big, unplanned, unexpected and unprepared-for career change that sent me spinning off in a new direction.

This new opportunity is something I have been calling 'the job of my dreams' since I first saw it posted. I simply had to have it. I went all out for it, even though I was not technically even allowed to apply for it - fortunately I was the only applicant! Maybe I scared everyone else off, or maybe this was a true moment of happenstance in my life.

The job itself - well if I told you the actual responsibilities you might wonder what all the fuss is about. And to tell the truth I would not probably be wanting to do this job for the next ten years - but it is what it represents that is so mindblowing. It is a culmination of everything I have been working through in my life, drawing on all my skills and interests, and challenging enough to maintain my interest. It is a brand new role, fresh and alive for me to put my mark on it, to show how I can create something and make it work.

Suffice to say that I have loved every minute of the past six months, I have not had one single day of not wanting to go to work, which is in itself a first. The best thing about my job is my team of 8 staff; the next is the management team that I form a part of, which is highly supportive and innovtive as well as providing me the time I need get on with my own job. The third thing is that there is a large a variety of components, and fourthly I guess that I am never bored - a big plus for me, as boredom is my enemy.

I do truly feel blessed to have had the opportunity at least once in my life to absolutely love everything about my job, and to get paid for it s well! Needless to say, with a more-than-fulltime job my work with private clients, along with my writing plans, have been temporarily shelved. I say temporarily because I know that one day I will go back to these, they are part of me now, even when I am not doing them.

So you might be wondering why have I called this post 'The Trouble with Careers'? I suppose I have been thinking about why careers are problematic for so many of us. When we have a great job, we worry about losing it. When we are unhappy with our job, we might fail to see and make the most of opportunities. We might even worry that we don't deserve a great career, or what we think is going to be a great career turns out all wrong.

Sorry if this all sounds a bit weird and complex, but what I really mean is that true careers are transformational - they change us, help us grow and become better people, and we make them happen by our attitude. This has reinforced what I call my life's work, which is summarised in another blog storypractitioner.blogspot.com - check it out if you want to see what I mean.

If I can backtrack a little to September last year - despite all the successes I had experienced in my career and life to that point, I was not a happy chicken. I was bored, restless, wondering if there was anything left in the world to excite me. I knew I needed a new challenge, some kind of project, but I had no idea what this looked like. I talked to everyone who would listen about this and got a lot of advice, all of which I ignored, and some job offers, which I rejected - I knew that I had to wait for the right thing to come along. And it did.

Was getting this job an act of desperation, and I am making more of it than I really should? (after all at the moment I am only on a contract for another three months). Was it just a lucky break, or true happenstance? Does it have something to do with being incredibly focussed? Or can we base this success on some strategic planning, networking and clarifying my career direction?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I am loving my job, loving life, and loving me for probably the first time in my life. Am I fooling myself? Let me know, honestly, what you think?

If any of what I have said is meaningful to you, I want to know. For example if you have ever had (or currently have) your dream job - even if it was not a forever job, you know like that short term relationship that was a mindblowing experience while it lasted. Or is this something you likewise crave, so much that you are no longer counting down the days till your next holiday? And have you felt transformed in any way by your career? I'd love to hear from you.

Being part of the In-Crowd - whoever that is for you

Who we hang out with says a lot about ourselves and what we value. Of course, sometimes we don't have too much of a say in this; the circumstances we find ourselves in are not always chosen by us, for one reason or another.

To relate this to working life, people who are unhappy at work are often not so much focused on the kind of work they are doing, but where they are doing it and who they are doing it with. Conversely, sometimes a job we would love to do is made less attractive by the kind of people who are already there.

Confused? I'll use myself as an example.

My work provides opportunities to engage with widely varying communities. Talking to a group of professional writing students last week about career planning really energised me, while talking to a group of sales managers a while back made me feel like slashing my wrists. This had nothing to do with the content of what I was presenting, but everything to do with the community I was delivering to. The students loved me, I loved them - I definitely felt like part of the in-crowd. The managers? Well I might have been from Venus, as any connection I felt was slim indeed.

Further on the matter of in-crowds, I have often fantasised about the idea of being a real estate agent. I have had a passion for this industry since I was about 9 years old when I visited my first display home. I was so excited that I immediately starting saving my pocket money (five shillings a week) with the hope of buying that house (cape cod, three gables, green-shuttered french doors, double lock-up garage) myself one day. The saving didn't last, unfortunately, as I soon developed a passion for vinyl (both records and clothes - it was the sixties!) which provided more instant gratification.

What stops me being a real estate agent? Obviously, I don't fit in with the real estate community. I could do the work, if I could do it my way, and if I could change the culture of the industry, given that I share none of its values (such as making a profit at all costs) and it shares none of mine (everyone deserves a nice house to live in). House buying and selling being a highly commercial enterprise rather than one in which social justice ever has a chance, and knowing that it would take a lot more than me with a placard to turn the tide on this industry, I run a mile from it instead. I simply don't have any sense of connectedness with the real estate community.

What has kept me in the career industry for over thirty years, even when I am feeling overwhelmed and defeated, is the people that form my community. Here, I definitely feel part of the in-crowd. While there are some members who would make great real estate agents (if you get my drift), in general career people are more like me - and I call them my friends, my allies, my mentors and confidants.

It makes sense that, when planning a career change, or even when thinking about it for the first time, we should all give conscious attention to the kind of community we want to be part of. Who is our 'in-crowd'? Where is our ideal setting for work? Which communities do we want to serve, or service?

Obviously within industries there are a range of communities. For instance, a banker might want to deal with large accounts, perhaps in a global organisation, or they may prefer to be locally based, such as in a community bank or credit union. Adapting this to other settings, it is easy to see how the communities of each occupation and profession would vary widely.

Of course, our community does not only consist of those we work with, but the clients we work for and the kinds of needs they have. Compare the in-crowds of a doctor working in a large metropolitan hospital, one operating in a small country town and another in a third world country - each of their 'patient' communities, along with their wider 'in-crowds' will differ.

Investigating the communities one is part of, and would like to be part of, are important elements in career planning. Sometimes, the biggest and most troublesome component of career change is in penetrating a new community - in fact, most unsuccessful career changes relate to a lack of visibility and acceptance, rather than a lack of work skills, knowledge and expertise.

Like John Holland said way back in the sixties, perhaps we should start any career decision-making activities by focusing on who we like to be with rather than what we like to do. Conversely, if we really like the idea of doing a particular job, we should spend some time considering how to become known, accepted and respected by that community.

So if you are considering a career change, or are finding work less than enjoyable, who is your in-crowd and why? I'd love to know.

Career tests - do they work?

The Career Development Association of Australia's national conference was held in Adelaide a few weeks ago; one of the sessions I attended was a research paper delivered by a colleague who I admire greatly, Dr James Athanasou. The paper was, in many ways, a culmination of a lifetime of work, and the conclusion was that career assessments are incredibly unreliable - so unreliable, in fact, that Jim actually proposes that these should not be used until we ensure we have industry-wide agreement on terminology, criteria and metrics. The other message I got was that we should not be inflicting these inventories on the general public until testing of such instruments is much further advanced.

If anyone is qualified to make such bold statements about how the industry operates, Jim would have to be a top-ranker. Recently retired from his post at UTS; Jim was a pioneer in the career industry in Australia, and has had the opportunity to witness the development of career and vocational assessment instruments over the years. He himself developed one of these, the Vocational Interest Survey, over twenty years ago.

Jim's clear message at the conference - that career assessments do not work - was supported with several slides containing data to show how the various instruments currently and previously in use bear little resemblance to each other; also it was made evident that there is no identifiable correlation of career success, happiness,fulfilment, or even satisfaction (the hallmarks of our trade) with the completion of any one of these instruments. As a graphic image to reinforce his point, Jim revealed a picture of a young person walking along a road, being covered by a cloud of dust from a passing bus. The cloud of dust represented the career confusion created for the young person by the administration of an interest assessment. Add to this another paper by Dr Mary McMahon, another giant in the industry, who at the same conference argued that career instruments were created by middle aged, middle class white males (and which therefore have little relevance for a significant percentage of the population), and it seems like we are in dire straits.

Nonetheless Jim's talk included some hope that, one day, a career assessment tool may be developed that will be relevant and useful, however much needs to be done. Personally, I fear that this is a long shot, for many reasons, the main one being that careers, and life generally, are messy and unpredictable. Second, I doubt that any career instrument can actually cut throught the layers of a person's skin to get to the heart of the career interest gene, if in fact one truly exists. One further reason for my scepticism is that people on the whole still don't believe they can expect to have a job that is interesting, fulfilling or even just nice. Too often, this notion is consciously or unconsciously perpetuated by parents, teachers and other well-meaning adults who instill the importance of getting a 'real job' (whatever that means), rather than a job one really likes.

On the whole, by the way, parents tend to be appalling careers educators. As well as being to close to the game, for various reasons they have usually failed to manage their own careers effectively - a large percentage of Baby Boomers, having failed to have, or realise their own career dreams, don't know how to help their kids have them, while Gen X parents, whose start in working life was characterised by the boom and bust of the 80s and 90s, still live in fear of what might happen if one is not prepared financially, and in the process have made their children fearful of stepping off the corporate treadmill, even when this is shaky.It appears to be much easier for people of all ages to buy into a preconceived idea of how we should live and work, rather than to dare to be too radical and different.

Whatever the reasons behind most people's career choices, therefore, it seems that the least of these is to do with genuine interest in, or passion for, that work, therefor career interest assessments are never likely to have a great impact on people's futures, no matter how much time and effort is into building sophisticated tools.

So at this stage, it seems that all we can do is acknowledge the prevailing situation and continue to use these less than adequate tools in the absence of something really worthwhile, knowing that they are unlikely to enhance our clients' career decisions even if they take notice of the results.

Or, we can, on the other hand, encourage our clients to throw caution to the wind, to take risks with their careers and to become extraordinary, in one way or the other, with no safety net to provide a soft landing. As a professional, I have to ask myself which of these is the more ethical stance. Where does my responsibility lie? Others in my industry may disagree, but I am of the persuasion that people should feel empowered to follow their hearts, but what right do we have to tell them this? For example, what if following one's heart leads to financial risk, or a truckload of other risks for that matter? What if it causes arguments within one's household, or worse - disinheritance, expulsion, alienation? Are the costs of this method also too great, and if so, where does this leave the career development profession? I would be very interested to hear what other career development practitioners and our potential clients have to say on this very important issue, as the implications for our industry are huge.

What happens when you stop but the work doesn't?

A few weeks ago, I was doing some tidying in my office and I fell - one small error of judgement on my part and five subsequent seconds of chaos has led to three weeks of lost work hours.

Fortunately my injuries were neither sufficiently visible nor serious to put me out of action permanently, and to the world at large I was probably 'as normal', but every minute of my waking and sleeping hours since that time has been a reminder that my body is not functioning as it should. Pain also dulls the mind, so I have become haphazard and forgetful, which is perhaps more troubling than the physical issues of walking slowly and painfully, spending five minutes getting up from the couch, leaving something that has dropped on the floor rather than adding to my pain by picking it up.

Well I think I am finally 'on the mend', I have managed a couple of full nights' sleep and am thinking more clearly. I am sure my family is glad as well, I do not make a good patient! But all this strangeneness has caused me to wonder about people who have continual pain for long periods of time and permanent injuries to manage, not just for a few weeks but forever.

What does this mean to careers? I have helped many people with disabilities to find work and to adjust to newly developed restrictions, in a surface way. I have been aware that there is a huge emotional component to living with newly acquired disabilities as well, but I have never really thought of the myriad adjustments that must be made to tasks and in contemplating how to go about managing these when a person has real limitations to what he or she can do. Being a constant multitasker, for me doing many things simultaneously is important in getting through the day; doing them quickly is another way of ensuring life runs reasonably smoothly. A third element of this is that I have never before had to put off a task, simply because I can't physically do it at the time. Overthe past three weeks I have learned to put some things on hold, such as walking to the postbox, until the pain of walking is minimal. Having good and bad times in the day is not something that was part of my repetoire, in the past (and hopefully in the near future) I have wanted to do something, and gone off and done it.

All this has given me new respect for people who manage significant disabilities. I have been thinking a lot lately about what is really important, what activities must I continue to do to ensure I feel happy and fulfilled. If I had to limit myself, what would I drop out, what would I make sure I had the time, energy and ability to do, and how?

This brings me back to my work as a career coach; we all know that at the core of good career management is a sense that we are doing work that best fits with our personalities, values, interests. It might be a useful exercise for us all to reduce ourselves to thinking about just one thing we would need to do to make living worthwhile, and then add more things to the bucket in order - one would presume that the things added later would be less essential.

I'd like to hear if others try this exercise and what results they get from it. It would obviously relate to things other than work.

Impossible workloads - a career management issue

This year, an increasing number of my existing and new clients have been asking me to help them address workload issues. They often introduce the subject as a need to manage their time better. The reasons for this vary. Typically, a staff member has resigned and not been replaced - so those who remain must share that person's workload. Another situation might be that a company diversifies, absorbs another company or adds new products or services. Unfortunately, the more competent negotiators or work avoiders (you know, those people who never seem to be around when volunteers are called for) are able to minimise the impact of this, forcing those with a greater conscience and/or work ethic to take a larger share.

Either way this invariably leads to:
1) A readjustment of an individual's role - this is usually done organically rather than by design and in cooperation with management, the person is simply expected to add new tasks or duties - it is rarely acknowledged as extra work though, and is usually shrugged off as 'we all have to pull our weight during this difficult period'. It remains hidden from the world until the position description needs to be rewritten, often because the person has resigned or become too incapacitated to do the job any longer. At which point management usually decides it is actually two (or three) people's work and the poor person who has left, miserable and disempowered, finds themselves replaced by an army or two.

2) The need to develop new skills and knowledge - from what people are telling me, this rarely involves being sent off for professional development, rather the person might be instructed to locate information internally, either by trying to establish methods from static data or out of date manuals. If they are lucky, there will be someone around who knows a little bit about the work who can be a sounding board (provided that the other person isn't also going through the same thing)

3) The requirement to work longer and longer hours. I am astounded at the hours being put in by blue and white collar workers - typical days for fleet controllers and fork lift drivers right through to accountants and recruiters are sometimes up to 16 or 17 hours! The saddest thing about this is that most of these people do not even like their jobs - the reason they chose them in the first place was so they could have a good life once the work day was over - now all they are doing is falling into bed between shifts.

As a career coach, this information is critical. For many years, I have been expounding the view of 'doing what you love' - I have said so on Channel 7 News and on Red Symons morning show. Now I have real ammunition with which to propel these words.

Those who know me well may be tempted to call me a hypocrite. After all, don't I typically work a 16 or 17 hour day? the answer is 'Yes, often I do.' But how many of those hours do I love my job? I think you know the answer to that one. Sure, at times I am grumpy, feel overloaded, and wonder how I am going to do everything. But I get them all done anyway (well the important things). Do I have good time management skills? I suppose I must, but I don't don't do the textbook time management stuff - I work with my strengths at the time, or else I manage myself in a way that gets me to the finish line on an essential task or project, and then reward myself with a task I enjoy.

The point of this post is not to discuss time management skills and how to develop them, it is to recognise that being overworked is systemic to the noughties, and that to cope with this we need to develop some survival strategies. So, here are the Top 10 survival strategies for working in demanding environments:

1. Do everything you can to work towards the goal of doing work you love – you will resent the work you are doing much less if it is a good fit with your passions, interests and challenge needs.

2. Learn to say 'No' or 'Not yet' when asked to do something outside your usual duties while you analyse how much work is involved, rather than saying ‘Yes’ and feeling it is your responsibility to make it work. At the very least, negotiate by requesting for some duties to be temporarily or permanently reallocated.

3. Ensure that 90% of the work you are doing is useful and essential to the core business – this is especially useful to remember when handling telephone and email communication, as so much time is wasted in these activities.

4. Set some milestones and announce your achievements regularly to show others you are doing important work that is vital to the organisation's success

5. Avoid any meetings that don't serve a strategic need for your work or your own career development

6. At the end of your (normal) shift, practice standing up and announcing that you are leaving, and do just that!

7. Keep important people in the loop as to what you have achieved, what is still outstanding and when this might be done if there are no significant interruptions. Once each week is good.

8. Do everything you can to cut down time spent on tasks by minimising mistakes and unnecessary duplications – taking a few minutes each day organising your workload may save you hours of work.

9. Spend at least ten minutes three times per working shift contemplating your job, what you are doing there and why, and how this is making your life more meaningful.

10. If none of the above steps works, actively seek out a new role with an employer who appreciates your unique attributes and who will see employing you as a great investment, on your terms.

Some thoughts on Career Punctuation and Life Planning

Those who know a bit about me know I am also a professional writer. This has no doubt informed the title of this blog. I think it also provides a good analogy for my message this month.

Lately I have been pondering the credo of 'life is what happens while we are busy making other plans' and what this actually means. It seems that those of us who do plan (and I am definitely a planner and goal setter), tend to do this in a rather grandiose way. Well, why bother making plans if they are going to be about everyday things. We want some magic, something a bit edgy, don't we?

For instance,have you ever heard someone say, 'Oh yes, I have a plan - I want to have a really boring life with nothing much that happens, I hope to get married to someone I can only just tolerate, have one or two kids of average intelligence and looks, oh and I don't want to get promoted or have any kind of career satisfaction. Oh yes and I hope I don't get lots of money and free time to travel and do all the things I am interested in.' The sad thing is, all of these elements do characterise many of our lives. So much for planning!

Of course we should plan to have the superlative things in life, to have some great achievements, fantastic adventures, or to be seen as the best something-or-other or to win a great title such as President of the such-and-such club, or, in the spirit of that great pageant, to achieve something spectacular like 'world peace'.

But we also all know that, for the most part, our lives will in fact turn out to be quite ordinary. We will fail to achieve many or most of our grand plans, hopes and dreams. Most of us can easily identify with the words of Shirley Valentine: 'I have led such a little life. Why are we given all this life if we only ever use a little bit of it?'

Because we can always dream much larger than is realistically achievable, this does not mean we should not dream at all, it is just that we tend give them too much power.

I like dreaming, but I think this needs to be seen as an important activity that is intrinsically entwined with our humanity. When we realise that dreams can only inform our plans, we can start to make some headway towards living a great life.

Dreams don't care that we only exist for around 80 years or less, or that we only have human power not super powers. So, in acknowledgement that much of life is reasonably uneventful, how do we make it unique, satisfying and fulfilling? The answer may lie in the notion of 'career punctuation'.

Career punctuation is both an activity and a list of surprising results - these both relate to living an insightful and more satisfying life. No one person's life can be spectacular every day - even Ghandi and Lawrence of Arabia had lots of ordinary days in which little happened (just watch the movies if you don't know what I am talking about).

Regarding the activity part, what I am proposing is that each of us should factor in some 'exclamation days', some 'question mark days', some 'full stop days', even some 'quote days'. I won't go into what all these days mean here, as these form the chapter of a book I am writing, however what it means in effect is that we should actively program some days into our schedule that are extraordinary. For example, someone who dreams of climbing Mt Everest might plan on doing some mountain climbing activities for one weekend a month, or one month each year. The person who dreams of becoming a best-selling author might dedicate their time to writing a chapter of a novel each month. These smaller 'punctuation' events can be celebrated in their own right. Eventually, some of us will achieve the bigger dreams, but even if we don't, there is usually enough joy along the way to more than compensate.

Regarding the surprising results part - well, we all have achievements and interesting things happen when we least expect them. We need to acknowledge these points in our lives - for example, someone thanks us for a small favour, or we become the recipient of an unsolicited award. Perhaps we win a competition we never thought achievable - this happened to me in my twenties, when I won a work table tennis competition against all odds - this was such a surprise to everyone that the whole staff discounted it as a complete fluke - I still remember it with pride thirty years later. Giving ourselves credit for these results makes our lives that much less ordinary.

Perhaps thinking about career punctuation will make us all a bit more satisfied with ourselves, our lot in life, and our achievements, and make us realise we are just that little bit more remarkable than we might have led ourselves to believe. And, along with that, we have a new measure for career success - so that can't be too bad!

Where is a good Change Agent when you need her?

A friend and colleague, assisting me through a crisis of sorts this week, reminded me that a personal strength of mine is that I am a change agent. Sometimes I don't feel this is a strength. Sometimes it is quite tiring, because I find it hard to just sit and accept things the way they are, even if they appear to be working OK. There is always the need to be revising procedures, searching for new projects, finding a place for a great idea to be introduced or implemented.

The world needs change agents, because we see better ways to do things, we invent new ways to get things done, we see outside the box of 'what is' and focus on what can be. We motivate people to change as well, which is usually a good thing.

Change seems to be an integral component of emerging industries. Environmentalists are change agents who want us to interact more kindly with our natural world. People in the IT industry are constantly inventing new systems, languages and applications to both drive and adapt to tne contemporary world.

Career development practitioners are change agents as well, because we want people to have better lives, more meaningful careers, to move on to something that is an improvement on their current situation.

Change is not always warranted, but, too often people fight change when it is useless to do so. There is an inbuilt survival urge to maintain the status quo (even when the status quo is less than desirable) - this is the law of equilibrium which has a strange power over us. The trouble is, it is an outdated response and one that is unsustainable in a constantly changing world. It also requires a great deal of effort - as soon as we get outside our comfort zones, whether or not we have instigated this ourselves, we subconsciously pull ourselves back a little.

It would be easy if we could go to sleep at night making a wish for how we wish we were, how we wish the world was, and wake up in the morning a new person with a new life, but this rarely happens outside of fairy tales. Real and lasting change is thus often neither fast or radical, but slow and steady, more often than not implemented as two steps forward, one step back.

On the surface, career change can sometimes happen quickly: we are made redundant, we acquire a disability, we find ourselves uprooted from our world due to a small or large scale tragedy as happened in Haiti this week.

In reality though, these changes are often pragmatic and practical. As a change agent involved in careers work, I have come to realise that my ways of working does not suit a lot of people. I can help people to prepare a fantastic resume, I can coach them through the interview process, but this is only fulfilling (for me, and, I would argue, for them) if these activities are related to real change.

What is real change? I describe this as transformational change, which involves examination of one's dreams, hopes, real strengths, areas of challenge, and aiming for a career-life that is wonderful rather than simply workable. We often use phrases like 'unlocking potential', 'finding a true vocation' etc. but these have sometimes unpleasant connotations, for example, that we need to be constant striving and/or giving up our human desires in order to have a 'proper' career or 'true' vocation.

Not so, in fact, career change using the transformation model means not struggling, and not giving up anything (well anything that is really important) except for belief systems that are past their use by date and habits that are less than useful. Unfortunately, in a consumption-driven society we have all been conditioned to see some things as essential - the big house, car, holidays, expensive clothes (or at least a constantly changing wardrobe). This thinking traps us, it locks us into dollar signs on employment contracts, into sacrificing more important things like spending time with friends and family, time in the garden or even just time sitting still and doing nothing.

It is the way of the world that some people will be rich and others poor, that some living environments will be friendly and others alien, that some people will live long and others will die young. But what if you spend thirty years building wealth, only to find it disappears in a blink because you placed too much faith in a particular investment? What if you work out at the gym seven days a week for twenty years, only to become a paraplegic slipping on a just-washed floor? It happens.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't save money or exercise sensibly, but it is all a matter of proportion. So much of what we do is unconscious, related to coping with life rather than living. Ask yourself, how much am I doing something because it is beneficial, and how much am I doing it through habit, stress, anxiety, compulsion? Above all, how much am I doing something to avoid doing something else?

As a career practitioner I ask myself, my clients and those around me the hard questions. I do not tend to be happy with superficial answers to these questions, especially when these are dismissive or an attempt to control what is really an uncontrollable environment. Real change begins within, and happens only alongside a healthy dose of self-belief. As we learn to appreciate the small improvements we are making each day, we see change as a positive thing, something to be treasured rather than feared.

So how do you identify a change agent? These people will become your best friends as the world becomes less stable; look for people who are tolerant, open-minded, non-judgmental, risk-takers, who make the most of opportunities, and who are not worried when things don't work out as planned. Change agents do not need to see others fail so they can be seen as winners, as only when everyone is winning does positive change actually take place.

The rise of the career futurist

I have been reading a lot lately about futurists and wondering whether or not I can and should call myself one. As a career practitioner, it seems that I am, more than ever, focusing on the future and trying to keep ahead (as much as I can) of trends in order to best help my clients and to inform my writing. After all, most people realise they can't change the past, but they might have some control over what happens in the time that is yet to come.

Not wishing to sound pompous or to just be jumping onto the latest bandwagon, before deciding whether or not to add this to my already lengthy repetoire of job titles I thought it best to do some research. So I started by googling the word 'futurist' (and wondering at the same time if there is something more futuristic that I should be doing, but hey, google has been pretty good to me up till now!).

I found out some interesting stuff. This site came up number one in the search results: wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn. The first thing I learned was that a futurist is 'a theologian who believes that the Scripture prophecies of the Apocalypse (the Book of Revelation) will be fulfilled in the future' - hardly a 'new' label then, how disappointing!

The next definition was: someone who predicts the future. How eclectic? Smacks of crystall ball gazing and John Edwards. (Who hasn't got an opinion on 'Crossing Over'?).

And the next: futuristic - 'of or relating to futurism; "futurist art"'.
I also learned, thanks to Wikipedia, that 'Futurist is an album released in 2005 by Alec Empire'. In fact, many songs, works of art, plays and movies of late have included 'futurist' somewhere in their titles, themes or blurbs. But don't get too excited yet, this term was 'first used to describe an artistic movement in Italy around 1910 that tried to express the energy and values of the machine age'. Dig a little further and you will find out that 'Futurism was a 20th century movement in art which encompassed painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and gastronomy. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti initiated the movement in his Manifesto of Futurism, published in February 1909'. So, paradoxically, something that is futuristic may well describe things from the past.

Next link: 'One who studies possible futures'. How universal and ubiquitous! This could be interpreted to mean that anyone thinking about the future can be a futurist. All you dreamers out there, listen up - you have a new jazzy title!

In mainstream society, however, the term 'Futurist' has become quite serious, as commercial, political and community organisations alike struggle to ensure their own futures as well as cope with ever-changing needs and demands. Most of us are probably most familiar with this term as it has come to be used in the business world. In this sense, a futurist is someone who has some claim to being able to accurately advise on trends (and/or about how trends operate) to help enterprises plan for the future. (Sadly, it is this notion on which the Futures Exchange is also based, and we all know how successful that has been!).

But futurism is not all smoke and mirrors. I am an advocate in that I believe focusing on the future provides us with ample scope to fix something that is not working, change our lives for the better, and work towards achieving something we feel it is important.

For a career practitioner, this is a much more interesting and challenging way to work with clients. It also keeps us on our toes, and focused while we find ways to encourage and motivate our clients to build happy futures for themselves, through a combination of envisioning and practical tasks, a positive attitude, and a dose of faith.

Those of us who would like to call ourselves career futurists have some excellent role models on which to base our work. Well-respected and credentialled members of society who call themselves futurists are growing in numbers each year. Organisations, some of which operate in virtual space, are being set up at an alarming rate, and they are attracting people from diverse fields including geneticists, environmentalists, climatologists, public benefactors, defence personnel, politicians and community group leaders.

Australians who call themselves futurists include Bernard Salt (KPMG Partner) and Dr Marcus Barber (www.lufg.com.au.) Maree Conway (www.thinkingfutures.net) comes close to calling herself a futurist; Maree 'works with people in organisations to enhance their long term thinking capacity and to use that thinking to build stronger strategy.'

I have heard these and other futurists speak and what they have to say is compelling.I can relate to a lot of what they say to my own work, and there is definitely a level of commonsense in approaching careers work from a futuristic perspective. I will stop short of stating that everyone in the career development industry is, or should be, a futurist, however in order to be the best at what we do I believe we should all be treating the future with respect.

In my 'working definition' of a futuristic career development practitioner, he or she would be, at least:
1. assisting clients to create their 'preferred' future, to examine trends in their present occupation and industry, or the one they wish to enter, in order to help them make adequate preparation, including ongoing learning and skill development,
2. working alongside clients while they elaborate their future vision while at the same time being aware of what may happen in the wider world context (in order to minimise and manage the risks involved while taking advantage of the new),
3. taking time regularly to update their own skills and practices in order to continue being innovative in the way they go about doing their own work so that they can meet present and future needs,
4. engaging in activities such as ongoing reading, attending seminars and webinars, listening to and watching relevant broadcasts and reflecting on how these can inform best practice, and
5. contributing to an ongoing futures conversation by providing up-to-the-minute expert information on the world of work of today and beyond to media representatives, politicians, business or community leaders, or members of the general public.

If the future doesn't inform our practice, then, I would argue, we cannot really call ourselves career development practitioners. While no one can actually predict the future, it would be irresponsible of people like me not to incorporate some well-researched speculation into our programs.

And if you are likely to be seeking the services of a career practitioner, either as an individual or as an organisation, perhaps you should be asking them whether they consider themselves a futurist as well.

Job Career and google - gobbledegook or a whole new language

I am a career development practitioner. What does this mean to you? If you are like most of the world's population, probably not much.

This is a problem. It is a problem for you, because without knowing about me and my colleagues and what we can do, you might be missing out on something unbelievably good: a better time at work, personal fulfilment,a feeling that life makes sense, and yes - achieving your dream career.

This is also a problem for me, and for my fellow career development practitioners, because without you, we have no job, we can't earn a living, and we can't achieve our own career dreams. We feel unfulfilled and dissatisfied.

The career development industry itself is just a little over one hundred years old. A man called Frank Parsons is the 'father' of our profession, establishing the first career assessment in 1907. Mr Parsons was the first person to show people that they could choose their own career. This was radical - prior to this time young people were handed a career, either through inheritance of the family business or because this was the work available in their area, and this was pretty much it for the rest of their lives.

Parsons' career planning tool was simple but effective, so effective in fact that career development practitioners still use a version of this today. Basically it involves establsihing career interests, working styles and personal preferences (or values) which become key career ingredients for that individual, then turning these into tangible career goals and developing a plan to make it happen.

Behind this simplicity, there is a lot of skill required. Unfortunatley, career development practitioners often do our jobs so well that we are almost invisible in the process. Let me explain.

If you are successful in your career and you have had the help of a career career adviser, counsellor, or coach, the success is all yours, and you will have put in some effort to make it happen. But perhaps a career counsellor was there at the start, helping you to sort through the haze of options, or to help you come up with ideas in the first place. Perhaps a course adviser was there to help you to make sense of the courses on offer to help you become accredited. Perhaps a career coach kept you motivated during times you thought it was all too hard.

These days, career development practitioners often take on all these roles to help you through each stage of transition. Obviously, to have all these skills requires a lot of training and ongoing skills development.

Even if you haven't ever actually seen a career person, our very existence has helped cause a mindshift. I am sure you would find it difficult to conceive of a time when you would have been stuck in a job for life, whether you loved, hated or loathed it. For this, you can thank the career professionals who have pioneered this way of thinking and working over the last hundred years.

If you have always thought that career people 'just work in schools', 'help with course selections', or 'are just for people who are not coping at work', it is time to think again.

You probably aren't aware that there are a lot of career development practitioners working from home offices or in co-located offices around the world. Alain de Botton's recent book called 'The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work' has a chapter on career counselling in which he describes the work of one rather quaint career development practitioner. Whether this is a good or bad advertisement remains to be seen; certainly people moving into this field come from a range of backgrounds and age groups, this is not addressed in de Botton's book.

OK, so what does all this have to do with google?

Given that the career development profession needs to be more widely marketed, and given that the Internet is arguably the best marketing tool in the world today, I am concerned that google may well dictate the future of our industry.

I have a website; it describes what we do accurately. Visitors often comment on how appealing it is, how easy it is to read, how professional it looks. They often decide to use our services. However, for every person who finds the site thousands of others do not. This is because the google search engine does not understand the words we use. Admittedly, it relies on input from searchers, who don't know what career development is - are you beginning to see the problem?

So, let's say you want to change jobs or figure out what you want to do with your life. What words do you enter into the search engine? Well, our recent research into google searches show that 'career advice' (which does not describe what we do at all well, nor does it sound attractive to most adults), 'resume help' and hardly sensible phrases like 'job career' and 'get help job' are popular. Should I change the words on my website from 'We are a group of career development practitioners' (which is the term we want you to know describes us and what we do) to 'We are job career people'?

Doctors, accountants and lawyers don't have these problems because their industry terminology was set well before the advent of internet search engines. But for the career development profession, we must now decide whether we should be led by the almighty cyberspace god Google, or to find some other way to get our message across.

I doubt that will happen, the Internet and google are far too entrenched. So just be aware that although we might just have to bow to public pressure and call ourselves 'career advisers', we don't actually give advice, but what we do give is so much more useful to you - we help you manage your working life in a way that reflects your individuality and prevailing needs at any one point in time.