Although progress is being made in teaching self-awareness and decision making, these subjects do not necessarily focus on systematic methods of career decision making: For these methods the guidance profession is relying mainly on traditional approaches to finding skills and interests plus some newer approaches to exploring occupations.
The traditional method for determining skills and interests is, of course, testing. Yet giving youngsters tests simply signals them that the information about them-selves is going to come from some other source and not from them-selves. They may listen to and even agree with test results but they have learned little about how to identify their skills and interests on their own.
The newer approaches to learning about occupations are career, education, explorations, and experiences. All three are vital to career decision making but they usually do not offer students the chance to learn how to spot the skills and qualifications required by an occupation or how to relate the skills they have to that occupation. It is one thing to observe, read, or be told that the airline reservation clerk writes up a ticket, but another to understand that ticket writing is a form of universal skill called record keeping. This chance to learn how to translate a specific skill into its generic equivalent is usually overlooked.
The reason for this lost opportunity is that students have not been coached first in how to identify their own skills and interests; in fact, just the opposite occurs. A test might tell Mary, "Your interests are the same as most computer programmers' interests," but it does not alert her to the daily evidence, past or future. She does not learn that her playing chess and winning debates are evidence of logical thinking, a skill that can be used in computer programming or innumerable other occupations.
Also, Mary may get the impression from the testing process that some other person or instrument is really going to be responsible for picking a career for her. Her natural dependency on parents, teachers, friends, and guidance counselors is enhanced by this conventional approach of telling her where her interest is. Someone else does the evaluating and reporting; someone else is really still in charge. So she does not see herself as the prime mover. It is not surprising that this same dependency on others for career decisions surfaces on her first job and possibly every job thereafter. She sees the boss is largely responsible for her future.
A Natural for Students
After teaching this process to about 300 people I have found it a natural for students. One high school senior who first claimed he had never enjoyed or done anything well finally described his favorite pastime, playing baseball. He was delighted to find that he used 15 skills playing second base: observation, following instructions, fast reactions, thinking ahead, close team work (in-fielding), independent activity (at bat), eye-hand-body coordination, physical energy, numbers, mobility, practice, dependability, perseverance, showmanship, and competition. By the end of our first session, when I pointed out that some of these were traits much prized by employers, his self-esteem had risen noticeably. An English teacher/adviser used the method in class.
A liberal arts senior at Northeastern University said she had liked parts of her college career and had done well academically, but she wondered how to relate a liberal education to a career. The group analyzed the skills it takes to be a liberal arts college student: planning, decision making, investigating, research, ideas, imagination, gathering data, consulting, reading, writing, figuring, evaluating, synthesizing, listening, following instructions, setting goals, following through, meeting deadlines, working under pressure, relating to others, independence, competition, budgeting, and self-organization.
Among these factors she saw a considerable number that were common to her other achievements. Although at the start of the workshop she was stumped about what she could do, when she finished she had begun to see several realistic possibilities. But this was not to say she had made a final decision. She did not want at this particular time to get "tracked" but she was learning how to get on or off a track. The others in the workshop also realized that their four "useless" years in liberal arts had produced a flock of employable skills.
The rueful testimony of these seniors included such comments as, "If I had taken this earlier it would have helped me decide my major," and, "If I had analyzed myself this way in high school I would have had some idea what I was good at." At Columbia University, where these basic concepts have been used in a workshop for five years, the students say the process "liberates them." Rarely had anyone asked them before to focus on what they liked to do. Alumni report that they use it as an aid to lifelong development of a vocational philosophy.
Universal Application
My impression from training fourscore school and college counselors and from coaching individuals is that the method has universal application. The process is reasonable structured: Examine only your successes. Spot the skills and traits used. Translate these factors into generic terms that are transferable to other experiences. Determine which of these links occur most frequently. Keep watching for these common-denominator talents when exploring careers. Focus on learning the process rather than expecting immediate outcomes. And yet, outcomes will result from learning the process. These methods, I believe, can apply to people of all ages, levels, and backgrounds.
The practice of this methodology is not always simple. Some people find it harder than others to conceptualize. They find it hard to see, for example, that a systematic approach to solving a mechanical problem may be related to a similarly systematic approach to solving problems with people. A high school junior had trouble seeing that the precision required for knitting and piano playing could relate to the precision required in a research lab. She could still relate piano playing only to being a musician.
The process also seems to require coaches who are both teaching and counseling oriented. These coaches need skills in teaching groups about ideas and words and in counseling individuals on a one-to-one basis.
The principle that people can learn, what talents to use in the future by researching what talents they used best in the past, is incontrovertible. It serves as a lifelong guideline for making career decisions and insures the individual's remaining the prime mover in making these decisions.
