to think a decent schools careers advisory service or educated parents is the only way to get a career?

[chocolatecremeegg]

I have an OK job which has taken me a long time to get, had to work my way up literally from the bottom. I can't help wondering though, whether if I'd had a good careers advisor/teacher at school I could have achieved my real potential. I wanted to be a social worker but was told this would be to stressful and advised to become a secretary. Nothing against being a secretary but I was getting really good grades, was young and enthusiastic and thought I could be "more". Unfortunately my mum, a single parent, was to busy holding down 2 jobs to raise me and my sisters so obviously didn't have a lot of time or experience to encourage me to broaden my horizons. I just wish a careers advisor/teacher had said to us all at school "why don't you think about being an optician, dentist, accountant, doctor etc etc" and this is how you do it. What makes people at a young age know for e.g they want to be a dentist? When I look at my very high achieving colleagues, many of them seem to come from very well off backgrounds and went to excellent schools. What I'm trying to say really is this: If your come from a background where no-one in your family has ever had a "professional" job or vocation and you go to a crappy school with no careers guidance, do you ever stand a chance of getting into professions like medicine or law? I feel so sad sometimes because I know if someone had sat me down and told me that it was possible for someone like me to think of e.g being a vet I know I would have thought seriously about it and my whole life could have been different.

True pointy but the problem there is that the aim to get everyone going to university doesn't seem to also inform the people going that there are differences between different courses at different institutions.

So again the people in the know go to the good unis and study courses which they know will lead onto a good job/further study/something useful/something that they want to do.

While the people not in the know go and study something which they don't realise will count for very little when it comes to getting a job afterwards and lumbar themselves with debt in the process.

As with careers advice there should be good university/degree advice to show people what the various courses actually could lead onto.

Ditto A-Levels and GCSEs. For eg a person with a vague idea of becoming a doctor could unknowingly scupper themselves as early as GCSE options thus making things much harder later on.

It should all be much more transparent and not just for those lucky enough to have parents/the sort of schools that tell them this stuff.

I'm a careers adviser too. The number of kids who seem to think a job will land in their laps astounds me.

We work with adults too by the way...

I totally agree with moomaa, I would have liked careers advice to talk more about lifestyle aspirations as well. I would like to hae been made to think about things like whether I would like to live in a city or in the country and whether a family was important and what jobs would fit around these things. Also about job security and redundancy, which jobs are more secure.

My careers advice was to tell me I didn't stand a hope in hell of getting into my chosen "elitest" profession. My headteacher refused to give me a reference for the job and my economics teacher told me that if I get in, he would eat what was left of his hair and build a nuclear fall out shelter.

I got in. And 20 years later I am still in this profession and pretty senior.

Don't ever give up on your dreams. And the added bonus of being able to say "I told you so" is so satisfying!

My parents weren't educated and the school careers advice was done by our maths teacher and was rubbish. Didn't stop me from pursuing a career I'd decided on when I was 8.

I had no careers advice, my school wrote me off and i was not even offered the chance to do a levels.
I did exactly what i was told i couldnt do and am now in a senior position.
I was invited back to that school to give talk on my career and how the support i got from the school helped me get there.....
I took great pleasure writing my letter refusing to do so.

YANBU. I was first person in my family to go to university, but only because I had work experience (which I arranged myself) in a local laboratory where they suggested doing a biochemistry degree. I know that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I really wish that I'd had access to someone who could've talked me through other options. I got a bee in my bonnet about the biochemistry and did that as an undergraduate. I did get a good degree, but (because of indifferent careers advice in school, coupled with the fact that no-one I knew had ever been to university) I don't think that I did the degree course best suited to me. Have since done an MBA and now heading in a direction better fitting to my 'talents' i.e being bossy and ticking boxes!

On the plus side, met DH when at college studying for aforementioned biochemistry degree, been together 13 years now, happily married with 2 DCs!!!!

It really depends on you imo.
Neither of my parents had professions, just jobs. But my mum was more than capable and in the last 10 yrs has turned her job, with a lot of hard work, into a career. She did however push me hard and was disappointed with my career path.
As for school, well I went to an all girls grammar in the 80's that was very science/engineering and is not me at all. The careers advisor didn't even know where to start as I was the only pupil in my year wanting to go onto Art College and not Uni.
I work in Advertising on the creative side, and mostly I love my job. I will be pushing my boys for career satisfaction though as opposed to status or remuneration.

Easterspirits - me too!!!

My DS1 had very good career advice-the problem is that he doesn't know what he wants to do. I think that very often you only find out what would have been a good choice later in life.
Career advice is a huge field-DS3 knows what he wants to do but it took us months to find out the best system to do it. I go to meetings and ask questions that no one can answer in a straight forward way!

I'm sorry purpleduck but your comment "we cannot tell people what they should and should not do" leaves me aghast. I did not and do not expect a careers advisory service to tell me what career path I should follow. However, what I would expect is to be given information on as many career paths as possible so that I can make an informed choice. Surely the job of a careers advisor is to make people aware about careers they may otherwise not have considered/known about and how to pursue these. Unless you have formed a very sure opinion at a young age about the career you would like to have (maybe based on the jobs your parents do, especially if you come from a middle class background) how can any young person be expected to know when they're say 16 or 17 what they want to do with the rest of their lives. This is why some people end up in dead-end jobs- the alternatives were never explained.

I remember having a very short careers advice meeting in middle school and I think that was all. I have no idea why it was only in middle school. I said I want to work with animals, I wanted to be a vet, a list of animal type jobs that I already knew existed was reeled off to me. End of appointment.

My parents didn't expect much either, that was a bit crap, have pointed that out to my mother quite recently, as I struggle through uni as a single parent. (Therefore I think I would say in addition to good career advice or educated parents, determination CAN get you through, but it has been in a very round about way.)

chocolatecremeegg, i totally agree too. Similar things happened to me when trying to chose a career path.

Now i am in the situation of looking at this through my childrens eyes. Once again the careers advice is not helping my daughter at all. All the courses she wants to do cost fortunes and there are no grants, if she got a scholarship she needs money for train fares, which i just haven't got. So looks like her dreams are over because of money.

loflo, i used to think the same about hairdressing, but not anymore! My sil trained as a hairdresser from school, worked in local salon for years, recently her husbands business failed and sil has kept a roof over their heads by working evenings and weekends. The work for a hairdresser is always there. Whereas i need to be employed to get extra work and that is hard at the moment, sil just pops a few cards around and the phonecalls pour in!!
As for the joiner career, where i live there is such a shortage of joiners/plumbers/electricians and the ones that we know who are working in this trade are doing very nicely!!!
My views differ, in that alot of my eldest childs friends who went to uni are now out of work or doing part time work in the supermarket as can't find a job in the career of their choice.

blossomsmine - what does you daughter want to do? The thought that my child couldn't follow thier chosen career becuase I could afford thier travel or fees scares the hell out of me.

A younger friend of mine is 25 and £50k in debt through training to be a solicitor. He's due to qualify in the summer and no sign of a job or a training contract ...

It's kind of frightening really. I guess you just have to have faith enough to make a huge investment in yourself. So I don't think that the children of less affluent parents can't pursue their dreams. They can but it's massively harder. Not fair of course.

mrsstig, she wants to be a dance teacher. She is a natural and is taking exams in all genres of dance but needs to go to dance school.....

I no we can't afford any of the good schools or even the train fares to get her to any others but i still think i will call connexions next week and see if they have any suggestions, don't suppose so

My dd does a some professional work at the moment but it isn't well paid as she is still a child and the money goes to the dance school, otherwise we could save that.

It is a worry.

Aren't there software programs now that guide people into careers based on their preferences ?
Career advice at my school was shocking, I was pushed towards being a dental nurse I went to the library and found out it paid £7k at the top of the profession (in 1992) and promptly went off to Uni instead.
However I think the world is a different place now and parents doing their best actually have very little knowledge as to what career suits their child.
I would say to mine, unless they want to be a Doctor, Solicitor, Vet there's little point in University.
My Dads words of wisdom was fruity fruits are advertising get yourself down there to apply.
I took great pleasure in telling my family at my graduation what I achieved was despite of him not because of

I did a career thing online a couple of years ago.

It said I should be a mortuary assistant/embalmer

Although possibly the conversation would be better than in my current role

what's your current job then?

So you wouldn't recommend it then ?

PMSL I'm kind of wondering what responses you have to give to end up with embalmer

SAHM!!!!!!!! ROFL

And a couple of days working in an office with some very very very earnest women...

Tell you what I'll see if I can find a survey thingy could be interesting to see what we should all be doing ...

Sod it I've given up already. I did find a personality thing which seems to say I'm a right bastard but nothing highlighting my suitability for working with the deceased as yet...