a brilliant article on career counselors

Career counsellors should find a new job
By Lucy Kellaway

When I was 16, a careers adviser came to my school. She made me do various tests and then told me to avoid any job that involved words. I would be better off, she said, doing something technical; however, if I fancied a bookish career, then I might be able to make it as a librarian.

This didn’t appeal to me – all the less so as my dad was a librarian – and so, with a 16-year-old’s contempt, I dismissed her, her pathetic tests and her even more pathetic recommendations. What a shower, I thought.

Alain de Botton has recently had a similar experience and reached a similar conclusion. When researching his new book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, the populist philosopher took himself off to be assessed by a career counsellor, who told him that he would be okay at most middle-ranking managerial jobs, and then suggested medical diagnostics – or leisure.

De Botton thought the whole thing pretty pathetic too. Indeed, he was not only dismissive of this advice and adviser – whose office apparently smelt of cabbage – but has condemned the entire industry on the strength of it. He argues that, given that we spend most of our lives working, it is extraordinary so little effort goes into making sure round pegs are in round holes.

Now that I’m no longer 16, I feel much more philosophical about it than this philosopher. It isn’t the fault of counsellors that the advice is almost always miles off the mark. It is because the whole idea of career advice is hopeless. Even the best tests in the world would not help as there is no formula for matching round pegs to round holes. Finding the right job is as subjective as finding the right spouse. Whether or not our job suits us depends not on our aptitudes – most people with a reasonable education are capable of doing most white-collar jobs – but more on whether or not we fit in, which is something we can’t know until we try.

‘Whether or not our job suits us depends not on our aptitudes but more on whether or not we fit in’
Not only is career advice hopeless at telling us what is the right career but it can’t even tell us what is the wrong one. My counsellor urged me to avoid words on the perfectly sensible grounds that my reading speed was painfully slow, my spelling terrible and I confused “there” and “their”. However, not being obviously good at something doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make a career of it. You just need to want to succeed at it enough.

De Botton claims that, in the absence of better advice, most adults end up stuck in jobs chosen by their 16-year-old selves. This is nonsense. Most people who don’t like their jobs don’t stick in them for a lifetime – they try something else. The process is like dating. You go out with someone and, if it doesn’t work, you dump them and move on.