When I was in high school, students were prepared for many career directions. Every day I passed the school’s automotive repair shop where auto mechanics was taught. Some of the guys who took auto shop were in my English class. At some point schools pivoted to mainly serve the college bound. Then they sharpened their focus on STEM–science, technology, engineering and math, especially for girls. Why schools only care about gender parity in STEM and not all the other unbalanced occupations is a mystery to me, considering job prospects in many STEM areas are not particularly good. Schools, both K-12 and universities, need to rethink how they advise students and keep the three important element in career advising in mind.
The Three Important Elements in Career Advising
Choosing a career involves three important elements that should be considered. The TIP approach includes Talent, Interest, and Prospects. Talent is the ability someone has to perform certain tasks. Is he/she good at math? How about drawing? Maybe music? Interest is what the person enjoys doing and whether a particular career would be fulfilling. Prospects are about job market and the opportunities for career success. Talent and Interest are characteristics of the person and can be assessed with psychological tests. There are many measures of talent ranging from the scholastic aptitude test that measures verbal and quantitative ability to psychomotor tests that measure how well people can work with their hands. Interest tests, such as the Self-Directed Search, can help match individuals to careers. Prospects is a feature of the job market. In the U.S., the Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, tracks job trends and publishes projections of job openings in the future. Information about specific occupations can be found on the online database O*NET, along with information about the KSAOs (knowledge, skill, ability, and other characteristics) needed for each job.
Choosing Careers
Educators, whether in high school or college, should apply the TIP approach when advising students about careers. Each of the three elements is important, and our job is to guide students by considering what they are good at, what they want to do, and what the job market is like. When I was in college, I took a vocational interest test that told me my best fit was art or music. But I knew that I didn’t have talent in those areas–I couldn’t draw a straight line or carry a tune. My third choice was science. My interests drew me to psychology and then industrial-organizational psychology. The job market solidified that choice.
Too often I see professors push students in the direction they want to see them pursue. Undergraduates might be pushed to go to graduate school, and graduate students are pushed to become professors. But in many fields, there is little demand for professors, leaving individuals with PhDs trying to make a living as low-paid adjuncts. Even in industry, there can be limited demand in many fields, even within STEM. Some areas have shortages whereas for others there is an oversupply of people.
A Balancing Act
The TIP concept considers job choice to be a balancing act among the three parts. An ideal choice joint optimizes all three. Do I like what I am doing, am I good enough at it to be successful, is there a market for it? For some people, one of the three will take priority. One person might be so focused on interest that they will pursue it even if they are not particularly talented and there is limited opportunity. Another might be so focused on opportunity that they will take a job that they don’t particularly like. This is a personal choice, but it should be an informed one, which is why the three important elements in career advising are critical.
Image generated by DALL-E 4.0. Prompt “Image of students at graduation.”
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I used to worry that I didn’t seem to have a particular career goal or vocation, but over time I’ve found my choices have largely been driven by my values – how do I want to feel about my work, and what sort of impact (in a broad sense) do I want organisations I work for to have on society and to espouse as employers? For me, this focus on values over anything more specific has been supported through my practice of Acceptance Commitment Therapy (a values-based approach). And I wonder whether it could be a helpful basis for careers advice too; it may be distressing not to be able to achieve a particular ambition, but considering how one’s values can be otherwise met may mitigate against this and encourage a flexible mindset.