- More school. It used to be said that one benefit of college was that it offered four years to make up your mind about what you wanted to do in the world of work. To what-ever extent this may have been true, the implied promise that a college degree automatically qualifies the holder for desirable employment is less true in today's climate of specialization and the need for technical training. The advanced degree now holds out the same promise of more time to think through a career decision and thus avoid premature commitment.
- First the world, then the yoke. Some students decide they want to see more of life before taking the job plunge. This may mean travel-backpacking on the slopes of Mt. Everest, hitchhiking through Europe, squaring the Arctic Circle-or it may mean taking part in an exotic project, usually on a volunteer basis, such as working on an archaeological dig. One graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, fascinated by Africa, turned up in Nairobi and presented herself to a Quaker-run community-service organization. She was assigned first to help build a school on the outskirts of town, then to teach in an all-girl school 250 miles out in the Kenyan flatlands.
The journey, the experience, goes on until the thirst for adventure is slaked, or, as one cynical placement counselor puts it, "until a sense of guilt grows heavy enough to balance the goof-off." Then the deferrers are ready to fit themselves into the working world-as a preliminary, putting the best face on their adventures so that they look good on a resume.
For some who resist seeking employment, the desire is to have a fling, to sow oats tame as well as wild. For others, it is a conscious effort to stretch horizons, reinforce their vocational thinking. John Shingleton, director of Michigan State University's placement services, makes a distinction between drifting and "stopping out." In his book College to Career, he says:
The concept of "stopping out" is not novel. Goethe referred to Wanderjahr-meaning "the year of wandering about" that precedes settling down. In 1973 some 100,000 students took a year off between high school and college to gain real-life work experience...
Stopping out is not a new euphemism for copping out. It often has been successful. The key difference, apparently, is that stopping out implies a plan, a goal, an objective. You do not take a year off merely "to think." You have something specific to think about. And you also have gained another year of maturity...
Feelings about plunging into the job mainstream or seeking alternatives reflect not only individual preferences but also contemporary values. The old work ethic has been beaten lustily about the ears by the poets and politicians of the counterculture. It is not uncommon for young adults to want to avoid an establishment they look on as venal, materialistic, and exploitative. As a matter of principle, it must be respected. Despite many efforts, business has not been successful in selling itself to the world at large and especially to the group to which it looks for a freshener of its human resources.
First-job seekers who worry about the thought of commitment would feel better if work were not seen as a nose-holding way of earning a living but as a part of life with its rewards and punishments, just like any other.
Without embracing the imperative of the traditional work ethic, many people come to the first-job portal with good feelings about their prospects. Some anticipations have already been mentioned: independence, financial and emotional; the excitement and challenge of the world of work; the prospect of satisfaction and fulfillment in being successful at whatever your job proves to be. People may overcome the commitment problem. But another hurdle looms for some.
"How Will I be Judged?"
The critic Wilson Meisner is given the credit for the insightful statement, "A person could live out his whole life in the twentieth century without discovering whether or not he was a coward." Apparently in our civilized society the occasions are generally lacking that might test an individual's courage.
People standing at any threshold of importance- whether it leads to a social event or to a new way of life- wonder whether they have what it takes to successfully pass the tests that the environment will impose. If it is a formal dinner, will they have the conversational skills to favorably impress diners at either side and be able to follow the dining rituals? If it is a new way of life, as the working world will be, will they have the job skills and the social qualities that will mean easy adjustment to the exigencies of the workplace?
From the first day on the job, people know they will be tested in a number of ways, new and ominous. And many of the trials are not detectable by the naked eye.
There's a story told about Henry Ford, unusual because its narrators sometimes tell it with approval and sometimes with derision. Ford was seeking an engineer to put in charge of one of his planning departments. Eventually the choice narrowed down to two individuals. Henry usually liked to make key personnel choices himself, and so invited the likelier of the two prospects to have lunch with him.
During the meal, the candidate ordered soup, which was placed before him. He picked up the saltshaker and shook it heartily over his soup bowl.
Ford's manner changed from interest to indifference. The meal was finished quickly and the job candidate bidden farewell. Shortly thereafter, he learned that the job had been given to someone else.
Ford told his personnel director: "I would never hire that man; he salted his soup without even tasting it." To Ford, this showed that the engineer made decisions off the cuff without first making sure of his ground.
Perhaps you will agree with the relevance of Ford's test and perhaps you won't. But the anecdote suggests the personal and unpredictable tests of performance that may exist in the business world. The sense of being judged is uncomfortable enough, but when you're not sure of what you're being tested for, nor of the test, anxiety understandably increases.
If you hadn't known before that Moose Glazebrook was touchy about criticism, you would have realized it when Moose punched the sports editor of the high-school paper in the mouth. The sports editor had written that Moose dropped three passes in Saturday's game. While this comment was accurate, Moose took exception to it. Since at 6'3" and 225 pounds he was twice the scribe's size, his rebuttal had force if not logic.
The sports editor should have known: You just do not knock the Moose. You do not even say things that he might interpret as knocking him.
Unfortunately, Moose's athletic scholarship took him to a state university at which the coaching staff did not care whose feelings they hurt. Furthermore, Moose was now playing with teammates who showed no mercy in commenting on his slowness and occasional clumsiness. And they were big. Moose couldn't punch everybody in the mouth.
When it became clear that he had no future as a college football player, Moose was relieved. The president of the local soft-drink bottling company, a heavy sports fan, gave him a job in marketing. Moose was to learn the ropes, and there was a good chance that he could enjoy a tremendous business future.
But it was a nightmare. It was, Moose thought, worse than high school. All these people looking at you and judging you: the sales manager, the training director, the senior route manager who was his immediate supervisor.
One day the sales manager had a little chat with Moose. He said that he liked Moose's energy, his ability to cut right through the nonsense and get to the heart of situations, his ability to handle tough customers.
Then the sales manager said, "About the way you plan your day ..."
"What's wrong with the way I plan my day?"
"I didn't say anything was wrong with it. Yet. But now that you ask, you don't leave yourself enough flexibility to stay with the bigger customers a little longer if questions come up. It's just a matter of experience. But you see-"
Moose told him off in no uncertain terms and walked out. He wondered where he could get a job where they weren't always watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake.
Tests in the school situation are simple in that the process is clear-cut. Students know a great deal about testing under school conditions. They are used to taking tests by the dozen. For example, you take a test on last week's chapter in a biology text or on a particular set of theorems in mathematics. But you can't study as precisely for the tests the work scene may set. The subject areas are less readily identifiable, the standards not always clear, and results sometimes arguable.
Yet, by this somewhat vague process you will be judged, your achievement verified, your status in the group determined, to say nothing of salary and promotability. And along with your boss's approval or disapproval, your reputation will be enhanced or tarnished. If an assignment is sufficiently major, your career may be affected for better or for worse by the way it is performed.
Talk to individuals about to start their first jobs and you get the immediate feeling that judgment by a superior is both anticipated and feared. It's accepted that value judgments made by parents and teachers are "different."
Job tests are not so much of what you know but of what you are. Your ingenuity, your intelligence, your ability to solve problems, your ability to take the initiative and make decisions come under review. These are personal qualities. You are operating much closer to the ego level than you ever have. It is the consequences that count. Materially, the employee may get a raise if he or she does well, a reprimand if results are under par. And psychically, doing well on an assignment, solving a problem, means success, the respect of peers, recognition by the boss-in this new "real" world.
In short, the judgments may have weighty results, and the interest and wariness of about-to-become workers is not misplaced. They have reasons for concern in the trials of the new life.
