Soul Destroying Job Search

For those who can remember the bad old days, I left school in 1980 and endured the failing youth employment policies of 'Youth Employment Programmes' and the dreaded 'YTS' (Youth Training Schemes). For those younger readers, I’m afraid ‘the system’ for getting young people into work was about as ineffective as it is today!



It would be hard to think of a more lacklustre and innovation-less process to inspire young people about their career plans. Yet here we go again using a sausage factory approach to solving the challenge of getting more NEETs (a young person not in education, employment or training) into the workplace and off welfare payments.


Back then, I remember working as a so-called Assistant Professional Golfer 'thinking' I was on a credible training scheme, but basically I was working 60 hour weeks for £12.50 and being taken for a ride. When I look back it would be hard to imagine how a young person could be taken advantage of to such an extent, but policy-making seems to be cyclical or we have very poor memories as to what does and doesn't work.


What doesn't work is churning young people out of school without a viable and sustainable career plan. I've argued with the entrenched attitudes of old-fashioned teachers in common rooms stating that young people go to school to learn, not to develop a career plan or decide what to do with their lives! I'd say we're teeing young people up to fail if they leave school clueless about where their strengths and weaknesses lie and exactly what career attributes they possess to offer a future employer. Yet I know school after school who churn-out young people ill-prepared to even make a decision, let alone have any real idea about what goes on in the world of work outside. They are effectively ‘institutionalised’ and it can take them years to adapt to the realities of the world; which comes as a huge shock to many.


Fair enough, the careers profession has failed miserably to develop a credible presence in society as all people ever do is talk about who awful their career guidance was when they were at school. Well, I need to tell you, my early career guidance may have been dreadful, but I owe my livelihood to an inspirational Careers Adviser, who I have thanked in posts elsewhere. (My main aim has been to develop a tangible and non-esoteric approach that gives people traction quickly; without the touchy-feeliness associated with many career guidance approaches.)


In terms of Soul Destroying Job Search, we need a career plan if we're to stand a chance of jumping the obstacles between unemployment and a worthwhile job…and surviving this trial of attrition! People derive meaning in their lives in a vast diversity of ways. No two people are alike! Self-confidence stems from self-understanding, self-acceptance and formulating the ability to see oneself doing well in the world.


As I bang on and on about, people with a sense of purpose in their lives are charismatic. They attract positive attention from others. They're simply attractive. It's not rocket science, yet thousands and thousands of people get into their mid-life and have no clue about where their career attributes and strengths lie.


On a day-to-day basis many millions of unemployed people, the world-over, sit in front of a pc screen in search of a job. Statistically, this is rarely where their next job lies. I’d suggest switching computers off and going and talking to people about how they made their career decisions. How did they uncover their career strength? What skill do they make the most use of on a daily basis? What do they like least about their job?


If you ask your contacts for a job, you might risk embarrassing them. If you ask them for job-related information - especially the people who demonstrate a passion for their work - then there are few people who would turn you down.


The exciting stuff happens when you find someone who shares your interests, shares your passions for work and you have career attributes in common with. These are the potential gatekeepers to helping you land your next job. You won't have to ask, they'll recognise the right potential in you and do what they can to assist. A shared interest can form a powerful bond.

Your challenge is talking to enough people to get you to the person who shares your interests and can help. But rest assured, it has to be better than banging-your-head-off-a-brick-wall, in isolation, at home with your pc, in solitary confinement, with no money. This is what I recognise as a 'Tail Spin'!! And it is a pain-filled, bad news story for everyone.

The words of a 92 year old fulfilled careerist

Denys Taylor, my sagely pal from my native Northumberland, led an illustrious career in the advertising and public relations industry. Typing this blog from his apartment, he shares a number of career managements tips for young people entering the labour market.
Having spent 2 weeks in 1936 with career experts from the British Society of Industrial Psychologists, their main kernel of advice was guidance towards a career as a marketing executive.
He would have it that guidance has to come from outside; that we're incapable of seeing our own attributes and being objective in ourselves.
We're no wiser today than then. We're no nearer guiding young people effectively today than in the 1930s. "There are so many distractions now; young people are doing things for pleasure and not necessarily illumination."
Where will enlightenment come from? Is hardship prerequisite to personal growth. It certainly helped many people during the course of Denys's long journey. He says he's pretty disillusioned by the prospects in the world today, it's getting bleaker because we're not getting wiser. For all the increase in knowledge and productivity, the world doesn't appear to actually grow.
Sadly, he regards his inevitable departure "as the end of not understanding". He reminds me of Ghandhi's famous quote: "prayer is the yearning in one's soul for more wisdom"; not subducation or approbation.
More optimistically he would like to see the older generation providing more career guidance and passing-on insight. "Every school ought to have a Careers Adviser on the staff".

I hope to be able to return to Denys to capture more of his career reflections next week. Denys, having hailed from Northern England retired from his position as Managing Director of CAPRA (the Cooperative Advertising & Public Relations Agency); having melded 920 separate cooperative initiatives into a single national marketing policy.

Answers to Unemployment Number 1:

Make a considered career decision first - the job you truly love is far easier to land than the one you don't!

Career Sustainability: A blog for Britain's Unemployed Young - 'generatin...

Career Sustainability: A blog for Britain's Unemployed Young - 'generatin...: A few months ago I got a call from the BBC to originate some ideas for an upcoming series 'Up for Hire' , on BBC Three. I don't recognise th...

A blog for Britain's Unemployed Young - 'generating futures'

A few months ago I got a call from the BBC to originate some ideas for an upcoming series 'Up for Hire', on BBC Three. I don't recognise the DNA of many of my ideas in the show that I witnessed as I sat in the studio audience last night, but it has been a thrill to be involved in a show creating such a buzz and getting such an important topic on the media radar.


The 4 show series, condensed into a single week, tracked the job search fortunes of 4 long-term unemployed young people, 2 graduates and 2 non-graduates. At BBC Centre in London last night, after the show, it was great to speak to Kirsty and Chris, two of the recruits, and see them brimming with the confidence of the kick-start the show has injected into their early careers.


Watching each of the four 'recruits' grow from pretty dreadful first attempts at the 'minimum wage' jobs they did in the fun park on Monday night and gradually, show-by-show, gain traction each night, to ultimately transform into purposeful workers by last night (Thursday 20th October) has truly been a feat to behold. But to meet them in the flesh was to sense their palpable sense of positivity and focus.


They had grown from 4 hapless, clueless youngsters bumbling through the minefield of joblessness, into purposeful adults in what seemed like a 72 hour blinking-of-an-eye over the course of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night's extended 1½ hour show.


These four young people grew tangibly, of that there is no doubt. Yet where I am left is with a feeling of regret, not warmth and optimism. For these young people are four out of an unemployed population of 1 million young people in this country trying to break through. As a nation we really ought to be ashamed of ourselves for getting in such a mess and leaving the next generation of workers in the dole queue before they've even smelt success.


As most family values focus on breathing opportunity for growth, development and, above all security, in the lives of our young, we should as a nation - an extended family - feel remorse for how we are kicking our young people in the teeth as we are in 2011. The unemployment epidemic hitting our young people is destructive and threatens to ruin a whole generation who will take years to absorb the shock wave.


My early career was blighted by the failures of Thatcherism to tackle youth unemployment and I had soul-destroying experiences of YTS (Youth Training Schemes) and YOPs (Youth Opportunity Programmes). These experiences marred my early career and took 10 to 15 years to recover from. We are about to repeat the same mistakes again.


At 32 I crashed into the buffers, having lost another job, having rolled with punches throughout my twenties, I was dumped out of work again in the recession of the early 90s. My previous 15 years I'd often liken to sprinting down a dry grassy slope barely able to keep my feet beneath me. Having left home at 17, it was a constant fight for self-preservation and sanity.


However, I then got my first real career guidance interview with an inspiring Career Guidance Practitioner, who sat me down and helped me dissect, consider and reconstruct my 'career attributes'. The effect was transformational. I clearly had no clue who I was or what I could amount to before the experience and, as the 4 'Up for Hire' recruits I saw grow on TV this week, my life suddenly began to gain traction.


Within 2 years I had studied a year's postgraduate diploma in Career Guidance, survived a Probationary Year as a Careers Adviser, and taken on a Special Needs caseload working in schools and colleges looking after the fledgling career decisions of mainstream students alongside 'the gifted and talented' and learners experiencing emotional and behavioural problems. Their gaining traction instilled an immeasurable job satisfaction within me.


Working with the young people and seeing the results I was achieving with my career decision making method heralded the genesis of my Career Dovetail Formula; based upon my repeated discovery that my clients had little or no self awareness on the one hand, and on the other virtually zero awareness of the kinds of jobs that existed in the labour market. In essence, the laws of probability meant it would be unlikely they would ever fall into the best career path to capitalise their innate career attributes as most people seemed to entrust the bridging of childhood to adulthood to luck rather than fore-planning.


Positively leveraging our intrinsic qualities gives each of us a sense of self-affirmation and meaning to get-on in our lives. Forgive me, but I get really pissed-off when people say it's okay to randomly squander our talents and to allow young people to bump through job-after-job never really discovering a sense of purpose and more often than not, becoming increasingly demoralised.


It's bullshit to say it isn't important to invest in career decision making early. We seem to have got used to living in a world where mucking around and never planning a course towards our future is okay; a world where it is not 'pc' to mention failure. That might have worked in our land of plenty, but let me tell you the party is over - really over - especially for the young people trying to start-out and feed a family today.


A whole new generation of young people are going to starve if they are not tuned-in to the power of their vocational abilities. For the next decade life will be a challenge for anyone who dares leave the education and training system not able to stand up on their own two legs and steer a course towards a well-specified career goal. The days of bling are over - fake sparkle doesn't cut-it anymore - it's the real deal now. The day of judgement has arrived - career judgement. Lay firm foundations, construct solid job structures, build sustainable futures. And repeat.


For too long we have taken accountability away from politicians, educators, parents and young people. Our commercial arena is simply not getting the skills it needs to remain competitive. Organisations are filled with under-performers; a Herculean, tiny minority prop up the rest. Katie Hopkins made some unhelpful inflammatory remarks on 'Up for Hire' as an alleged expert on the subject of higher education. However, had she tempered her melodramatics into greater poignancy - she would not have murdered any hope of a constructive debate - because hidden within her tantrum were some bitter home-truths.


The UK labour market simply cannot absorb 50% of school-leavers going on to achieve a degree - "mickey mouse" - or otherwise. It is true that there are some morbidly indulgent degree pathways that rank alongside the most far-fetched I've ever heard of: a degree in the Vulcan language! Indirectly, it is great that the inimitable Ms Hopkins has catapulted this topic into the media; albeit toxically. But let's bring this debate's temperature down to a simmer and take a more objective look at what is going wrong with youth employment.


'UK Inc', as Prime Minister, John Major, once referred to it, has a finite labour market capacity - in real-time. It is more or less of a fixed size. Year-on-year for the last 3 years this market has shrunk. This is frightening even when it does not take into account the terrifying demographics with our population growing at 500,000 p.a. a shrinking teenage population and a seemingly, ever-growing and bulging population of pensioners in need of a workforce to generate the interest on their investments. To be globally competitive surely we ought to be properly auditing what our labour market has and what our labour market needs?


Teetering on the cliff-edge of an economic disaster, the UK has a grave choice to make. Either we equip our young people with the self awareness, labour market awareness and self-assuredness that a competitive marketplace needs or continue into some kind of national trance; a self-denial zone where the ship is really sinking but we're not capable of accepting reality.


We've led an entire generation up the garden path thinking they don't have to stand on their own two feet to survive (could this be 'welfare syndrome' an unfailing sense of being provided for and never having to do anything to survive?). We've convinced them that it is okay to base our whole ambition on a set of wannabe X-Factor principles where everyone is going to put food on their table by signing badly? Bear in mind the miniscule percentage of successful wannabes, as opposed to the legions of 'auditionees' who go home empty? Yet week-after-week, everyone is glued to their goggle box waiting to get famous. Or know someone famous. To fawn.


The same mentality seems to have hijacked the country's training systems. A combination of union might and political incompetence killed our once illustrious apprenticeship frameworks. As a nation we have not adjusted to the demise of our heavy industries and stepped-up to the demand for future-facing industries. We now copy rather than innovate.


We perpetuate the 'brain-drain' through not empowering REAL TALENT; the kind of talent that authentically contributes to society and generates good will as well as good taxes. Our economy has lapsed into reactivity, and the paradox is that within the space of people lives, still with us today, we've gone from top - and year-after-year - we're slipping further down the league tables. The reality is that unless we (the UK) approach this problem differently, we are on course for Third World status within a lifetime.


As I have written elsewhere, our country's obesity epidemic is just a metaphor for what we're like inside as a nation. We're not dedicating out skills, forgetting how to apply them and have taken our eyes of the prize; only a few of us are genuinely conscientious. It has been too easy during a prolonged period of plenty to get lazy. And out of this lull have come certain degree courses that might as well be millstones around our young people's necks when what they need is some impetus and a lifejacket.


In addition to reaping the backlash from dreadful economic policy, when Gordon Brown was prancing around in his invisible suit, and all the policy-makers and the voters were so intoxicated by the endless stream of cheap money they daren't tell him that he'd torpedoed his own ship, we have started killing-off and demolishing the whole superstructure that helped target the needs of young people and give them a helping-hand in working their future out.


In spite of announcing the launch of an 'All-age' National Careers Service in November 2010, John Hayes has done a U-turn and, having closed the vast majority of the country's careers centres, he has replaced it with a national helpline phone number (he caved-in to Gove). Mindlessly, at just the time the nation needs it most, virtually the whole of the professionally qualified careers profession has been made redundant. When was the last time an entire specialist workforce was put out of work and the media didn't give a hoot?!


The standard retort is that no one ever received helpful guidance from their Careers Adviser. I know this subjective view to parallel bad restaurant reports. A restaurant can give pleasure to 999 customers, but it only takes the 1000th to spread bad reviews and spells disaster. There are some remarkably inspiring Careers Advisers working in this country. And it seems through our period of plenty we have found a way of feeling we just don't need them anymore. We will live to regret it. Or at least our economy will… and then our children… and then their children's children.


Consider what success might look like for a moment:

• We gear-up our National Careers Service to partner with industry leaders and help them envision what our country needs to construct an economically dynamic labour market.
• We do the numbers - we properly audit the shortfall in skills and we work to facilitate an education process that produces those skills.

Four years ago we were massively oversubscribed by qualifying medical students where supply outstripped demand for their skillsets.

Two years ago a Law graduate could not get onto the all-important training year with law firms because all the law firms were shedding staff to keep their firms afloat.

Yet few of the universities tempered their approach to offering places and we all sat watching as the water in the ship started to lap at our knees

• As Draconian as it might sound, we sanity-check all degrees on the basis of the contribution they make to society. And no, this doesn't have to be the death of the Arts!

We ensure all young people who embark upon a degree course or apprenticeship understand the destination and job prospects that pathway to the workplace holds for them. They consider their prospects ahead of time.

• We reinstate Careers Action Plans for school and university leavers to capture each stakeholder's commitment to the chosen career pathway.
• We start career counselling, competency identification and aptitude assessment earlier in school to enable young people to build upon the momentum derived from known strengths not a never-ending quest.
• We set-up a national computer database which accurately describes the tapestry of jobs in our economy and interfaces it with labour market supply.
• We knit our labour market-together to build a congruent, integrated and sustainable system where commercial, economic and labour market demand are in relative alignment.

As Steve Austin's boss said, "We have the technology...." We can rebuild our labour market. But we need some visionary thinkers to takeover the helm of the ship and steer a course to more fruitful waters. As it stands, our problem is that we are welded to convention at a time when we need pioneers to invent new ways of thinking and give them the support they require to turn our ship around. Everyone possesses a real talent for something. Let's help them develop.


As good as 'Up for Hire' was on the BBC this week they missed an opportunity to truly inspire. There was an elephant in the TV studio. Not once did they properly tackle the subject of career planning. Nobody seems to have noticed but me. The 'career guidance' phrase wasn't even uttered; (although this is partly the fault of the career guidance profession for never getting their PR right - but that's another story!)

My final point comes back to the difference that was made on four young people's lives when experts and experienced workers invested a few hours in their development. Each of those youngsters was despondent due to long term unemployment and a lack of any prospects existing on the horizon. The relatively short time it took to turn them on to how exciting their prospects could be, if they only knew, created electricity in each of them and transformed their outlook for the good - and for good.


It is time to catalyse a movement where Government neglect can no longer be a factor in the future of our young people's careers. There is a way of turning this ship around. We need a lobby to turn this ship around and we need it today.

Jamie Oliver famously coined the phrase that our schools are 'nutritionally barren'. Today I want to warn everyone reading and ask that you repeat my words to everyone you know because we are also 'vocationally barren'!!


I am launching The Purpose Foundation to help young people lay the foundations of purpose in their lives and to partner with industry to recover our industrial excellence.


Together we can get the numbers right and tailor education and training systems that not only turn-out well-rounded and well-adapted young people, but in addition we generate unprecedented momentum in our industry with the aim of becoming a truly sustainable economy so that our children's, children's legacy is one worth inheriting.
Not like the one we're leaving them now.
The Purpose Foundation Manifesto
If you are interested in supporting this initiative please sign-up at:


http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Purpose-Foundation-supporters
Once we have enough support, we can build something truly inspiring from there!
Please spread the word and help grow a movement.
Duncan Bolam


http://www.blogger.com/duncanbolam@careerdovetail.co.uk


This publication/blog/ article is intellectual property of and explicitly owned by Duncan Bolam. Career Dovetail©®™ is a Registered Trademark and the property of Duncan Bolam © 1998-2012.

Job Feed My Soul

For many, many years I was despondent at the complete and utter lack of meaning in my career. And I mean despondent. The expectations of others seem to cloud my judgement. In retrospect, I recognise that I was tetchy, arrogant, unfulfilled and in a constant state of unrest.

As my own story goes I lost my dream job at the age of 32 and slammed into the buffers. I became a resident of ‘Skid Row’ and found myself in an utter and complete tailspin. There were one or two occasions where I questioned whether I could even go on. Life was bleak and the day-to-day outlook did not seem to be improving. I was in a rented bedsit, on the dole, on the breadline, living on baked beans and struggling to cope with being what I regarded at the time as ‘down-and-out’. How damaging we can be to ourselves.


In the depths of my despair someone I had previously regarded as a friend for life, a person I held in hugely positive regard, asked me what felt like being a failure. I thought I’d hit rock-bottom, but I soon found out I was wrong. This kick in the teeth knocked me even further down. I saw my ‘friend’ through a different lens. That was December 1994. I remember it well because I lost my job, reputation and roof-over-my-head on 4th December.


I’ve written about it at length elsewhere, but in the interim period I received my first bona fide career guidance interview with an inspirational Adult Career Adviser called Mike, and I owe him a huge debt of gratitude to this day. His guidance compared to that of an alchemist as he took me from the depths of despair and skilfully guided me towards my renaissance.


By the end of the first week in January 1995 my life started to show green shoots like the snowdrops hale the end of dark winter months. That metaphor still works for me all these years later as I watch for the early Spring. The same way my heart skips a beat when I see the first swallow arrive on my horizon. It is these uplifts that feed our soul. Somewhat ironically, I had been accepted onto a postgraduate diploma in Career Guidance and started the rebuild process and germination of the person I knew, deep down, I had the potential to be.


As my friends who knew me before my transformation will tell you, finding my ‘calling’ changed me deeply. And I emphasise that I use the word ‘calling’ in a completely non-Lutheran sense. (I’m no longer a conditioned Christian, as regard myself far more a Holist in my outlook.) What I mean when I say calling is that I tapped into the innate vocation that lives within each and every one of us. My life transformed because every faculty I possess, every life experience, every career attribute, is drawn-upon and channelled daily in my job and repays me the dividend of meaning and fulfilment.


Having done my year’s postgrad I went on to my Probationary Year as a Careers Adviser, relocating to Surrey and working in three mainstream secondary schools and one special needs school. I tapped into a new-found self belief as young people were mirroring my enthusiasm for my job in some form of virtuous circle that spread the dividend outward.


Gradually, the traction came back into my life. In truth, the traction probably entered my life for the first time! As now I had a vocation my identity and self esteem became more strongly anchored. I found where previously people might have regarded as arrogant and argumentative; I became increasingly comfortable in my own skin, peaceable and contented. No longer feeling hunted and forever in pursuit of fulfilling my potential in some far-flung fantasy. I had tapped into my innate strength and it was feeding me.


Nowadays, I see no greater pleasure in my life than guiding others towards tapping into their inner vocation and uncovering the career attributes that can feed their soul. You can see the ‘before and after’ in their eyes. I know what the experience felt like in my own life; like the dark in a cave and the beach on a summer’s day – total contrast! With and without.


I see the eyes of meaning-filled people sparkle with a perpetual intensity that is infectiously charismatic and nurturing; especially craftspeople building tangible products with their hands. These are especially wholesome jobs – the epitome of ‘Career Sustainability’ – career identities that will last for the long haul of a lifetime.


Whereas, people in dead-end, meaningless jobs, and those unfortunate people not to have any work in their lives, can seem soulless and empty; with tapping into the affirming powers of meaningful work instilling that all-important sense of purpose and virtue being the remedy to our quest for the meaning of life.


Working with what you’ve got within in you is invigorating on every level. It truly uplifts the soul and builds the life. The toughest part is placing one’s trust in others to help decode what your calling is because part of being human is that we’re not always very skilled in recognising what we’re best at. Our filters don’t work this way .


Only the weak and faithless perpetuate their lot by never seeking help. The process of reaching out and connecting builds stronger bonds in stronger communities; the more meaning in the community, the more peace everyone enjoys. Life goes on, sustainably.
Feed your soul and others’ today – tap into your career attributes – help others tap into theirs - purpose feeds all of us and lifts our souls.

Career Action Plan

If you're seriously into self preservation and avoiding unnecessary risk, then why haven't you invested time in your Career Action Plan lately? Not having one is akin to going on vacation without travel insurance, risky and potentially downright irresponsible.

Sit down and contemplate what your career attributes are: skills, strengths, vocational interests, experience, competencies, qualifications... how they piece together and how they dovetail into the World of Work. Plan your way ahead and instill purpose in your life. Develop your perfect interview script for your dream job. Don't give up until you have designed it.

Need encouragement? Why not do the sensible thing and hire a Career Development Professional. You service your car and pay a mechanic. Why not invest in servicing your career because introspection like this is one of the toughest tasks you will ever perform, but when the economy is spiralling downwards, having a preconsidered career strategy detailed in your Careers Action Plan is a key component in any contingency plan and perpetuating your income.

Don't think big companies spend millions a year on contingency plans if they're not important. Why not be prepared, sort your Career Action Plan out without any further delay.