h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How does a youth choose which career to study for? There are lots of online career wizards and the like, but none of them seem very helpful. Does anyone know of a useful online tool? Of course, it's perfectly ok to just work hard in general, but my eldest is thinking about what she would like to do, and it would be nice to give her something to work towards, even if she changes her mind later.

Well, what is she interested in? And where do her talents lie?

A career should be a vocation - a calling. If it doesn't call her, there's no point in searching for it. It will one day. I suggest she just continues to study those school subjects that interest her and that she's good at, until it comes along.

If the youth is unlucky, they'll useually end up following advice of career advisors and the like, and end up studying something they like, which useually turns out to be a long-term waste of time, too few adults are honest enough to say 'go to the money['... Which isn't to say the two are mutually exclusive, but its quite easy to go slightly down the wrong route, spend a few tens of thousands of pounds on a BSc and MSc/PhD, and realise it was all a total wast eof money, and you've nothing more to look forward to than thirty or forty of years of unemployment until a retirement into abject povity even worse than the unemployed years were.
Of course, sometimes ones likes/preferences/interests, can tie into somethign that is likely to yeild a job but not always so

If you have any aptitude whatever for mathematics, do something accountancy/finance related. If not, something management related.

Do not under any circumstances study science or engineering - those subjects are for people who live in countries with growing manufacturing economies and forward-looking governments, or alternatively people who want to spend their lives being underpaid.

Unless you have a family connection to the profession, do not study law, as you will find it hard to secure work.

Do not study any "academic" subjects such as English or History. These subjects are fine for people whose parents can secure them an internship in some firm or other leading to work, but for someone who lacks the correct connections, you can take your 2:1 and spend your days asking people if they want fries with that. Or be a teacher, if you're an antisocial workaholic and don't want to have any free time to interact with other adults.

You shouldn't need telling whether to study medicine - if you want to be a doctor hard enough, you'll already be on track to be one by the time you're doing your GCSEs. If you're not, it's already too late.

The money and the comfortable relatively stress-free life is in management, accountancy and finance. If you can live with basically being a parasite for your entire career, you'll retire healthy and prosperous.

Be extremely suspicious of anyone who tries to convince you any of the above isn't an accurate reflection of how the real world is.

Hey Hoovaloo - you forgot to mention studying Drama and Dance.


*stands well back*

I dread to think where teaching would stand in that pantheon.

B

>> Or be a teacher, if you're an antisocial workaholic and don't want to have any free time to interact with other adults.<<

What kind of teachers do you know? All the teachers I know (i.e. most of my family and friends) have great social lives. Still, for the moment I wouldn't touch teaching with a ten foot barge pole and I couldn't recommend it to anyone given how bad things are getting.

If your daughter genuinely isn't sure, she should keep her options open as much as possible. An A Level combination of Chemistry, Maths and History would keep most doors open to her, the few degrees that she wouldn't be able to access with those three are highly specialised and people generally know they want them.

I work we use kudos for a broad careers guidance test and it's got a lot to recommend it: simple to use and interpret, can be very detailed if you stick with it and answer all the questions (there are hundreds it can ask) and has a wealth of information. Her school will either have a subscription or know someone who does so you can do it for free. We tend to do it with the year 10s and 11s but I've used it as an adult and it came out with some pretty accurate results.

The big bit of advice I can give is don't get bogged down in this idea of one career: very few people end up that way these days, most people end up shifting careers several times during their working life. Unless it's something like teaching, medicine, dentistry, things like that, the best bet is to keep your options open and get as much extra curricular stuff as possible.

I know so few people who ended up working in anything vaguely related to their degrees... asides those who ended up in teaching, actually...
Hoovaloo basically has it right I think.

Whatever he/she choses will be wrong anyhow.
The people I know who did sciency/maths things all ended up in computing/writing type jobs/office/no-one-knows-what-they-actually-do-jobs, and those who did arty farty lit dance drama psychology philosophy, seemed to end up in science/engineerring/mathmatics jobs.
Of course, neither group likes where they eneded up, and all are now crippled by their student loan repayments.
'options open' probably is the best idea, but there always comes a point.... I can't help thinking I'd have had a better 'science' career, if I'd taken that* wildly underpayed job in the MAFF when I was pre-A-levels, and sort of just went along with where that took me... Degrees seem constantly devalued as more jobs that don't need you to have one deicde they need you to have one
ahh, perhaps I should have become a farmer afterall, its what our careers adviser told us to all do...

I ticked some random things off a list. It kind of worked.

"for the moment I wouldn't touch teaching with a ten foot barge pole and I couldn't recommend it to anyone given how bad things are getting"

So... you basically agree with me, then?

As for what kind of teachers I know... they break down into three categories:
1. the incompetent
2. the depressed, disillusioned who are looking for a way out, any way out, of a profession they've grown to loathe, but who find that their experience as teachers has not equipped them for a job in the real world, and they can't afford to go part time or do supply because that same experience now renders them uncompetitively expensive when compared with wet-behind-the-ears NQTs.
3. antisocial workaholics who don't have time to interact with adults.

There's some crossover between (2) & (3). Hopefully, the headlong lurch towards academies will mean the ludicrous job security those in category (1) have enjoyed will soon be a thing of the past, and the education of the next generation will be placed almost exclusively in the hands of the newly qualified, as anyone with any concern for their own wellbeing gets the hell out of the profession, or more likely, if they have any sense, doesn't get into it in the first place.

Teaching in this country seems to have cycles. We went through a cycle, a while back, where pay and conditions lagged industry quite badly, older teachers were retiring and not enough people were there to take their place. The government responded with free tuition, payments to train, golden hellos for those doing scarce subjects, even paying off the loans of those teaching the particularly in-demand ones.

Then the law of supply and demand caught up with the teaching profession, and there's no longer a shortage. In fact, there's a glut. So unsurprisingly pay is no longer romping away, conditions are being nibbled away, pensions are under attack, etc. etc. etc. And because they're still regarded as on a cushy number, teachers don't get the respect that nurses or firefighters can depend on. Of course, it doesn't help that they can't organise themselves into a union. Hilariously, the people we trust to educate our children have hit upon the brilliant idea that, if having one trade union means you can negotiate from a position of strength, then having four or five different unions must mean you're four or five times stronger. And they wonder why they don't get any respect...

"Hopefully, the headlong lurch towards academies will mean the ludicrous job security those in category (1) have enjoyed will soon be a thing of the past"

I suspect that's being a bit *too* hopeful. What's more likely is that the incompetent ones become a lot cheaper to employ and consequently a lot more prevalent.

Grape-stomping! That would be a great job for a young lass.
Has she got clean feet? Pretty ankles? Can she run on the spot
while holding up her skirts?

Sounds like the perfect life to me. And while you might think
it means living in the pastoral splendor of France the fact is
good grape stompers are in demand everywhere these days.

Even the southern bits of Merry Olde Angle-land, are enjoying
rapid vineyard expansions due to global warming.

Buxom barmaids always seem to do well too.


~jwf~

When you figure it out, let me know. I'm 42 it's about time for me to choose one.

I only know one teacher, and she's in one of two modes:

1. When she's working, she's overworked and miserable.
2. When she's unemployed [which is often], she's bitter about her life.

Children who grow up in families that have family businesses often have to make a decision whether to take over the business from their parents or strike out in a different direction. Most of the examples I can think of [morticians, plumbers, etc.] are likely to be passed down to the family's sons rather than daughters, though.

A good career for an English major would be library work. In the U.S., to be a professional librarian you need to get a Master's degree in Library Science. I don't know what the requirements are in the U.K.

Career Choices:

a) exotic dancer
b) nurse
c) circus performer
d) benefits officer
e) air hostess
f) border patrol officer
g) priestesse
h) civil servant in government department or QUANGO
i) taxi driver
j) social worker
k) fast food employee
l) child carer
m) actress
n) accountant
o) Software programmer
p) retail
q) secretary
r) personnel officer
s) learn chinese and emigrate
...

a) If your eldest is at school / college she should go to the careers officer / the teacher assigned to that duty
b) cursory glance through the interweb ...
National Careers Service: https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/
Free Career test (I haven't checked it)
http://www.ipersonic.com/career/

The National Careers Service seems to be a good place to start (plenty of tools etc)

>> often have to make a decision whether to take over the business
from their parents or strike out in a different direction. <<

By a strange (?) coincidence I recently inquired of a friend and
fellow British Car Club member (he has a red Jag 150 Coupe)
who I actually knew back in high school as well, why he did not
carry on the family business - which was quite prosperous and
well known and he and I were not from the same social circles
at high school. I asked him because at 68 he is still working in
spite of failing health and refuses to retire saying with a smile
that he cannot afford to. If he had kept the family business he
would have been very well off and likely own two Jag 150s.

He shocked me by saying he was offered the business on his 16th
birthday and turned it down because he was simply not interested.

Ah sweet rebellious youth, what does one know at 16, eh.

His father was pissed and shortly afterward sold it all off and
retired in luxury. That business would eventually fail under new
management after fifteen or twenty years. By then my friend
was at his prime and quite successful in upper management in
a very different field in which he is now considered an expert
and a genius. But he is a wage slave to absentee ownership, a
regional bit of a global distribution system in a market the
owners would loose without his oversight. And being 'global'
they wouldn't really care or really know how to fix it.

So he can't afford to retire from it since it now depends on his
leadership and business skills. Hundreds of employees depend
upon him to continue managing a firm which he does not own.

Life is strange. Life is a bitch. But the moral seems to be
that one should follow one's own interests if not one's heart.


~jwf~

I bet there are college courses in grape stomping -
and wine making and all that stuff, specially in
Californi(kate). Not a bad life, the vineyards
and the vintners.


~jwf~

>> He shocked me by saying he was offered the business on his 16th
birthday and turned it down because he was simply not interested. <<

Perhaps the father should have introduced his son into the business at a much younger age.

On a separate note: there are more jags (Polluticus metallicos) in this world than jaguars (Panthera onca)