Try Before You Choose -- the need for experiential career education

For many young people in the United States, career choice is arbitrary and conducted with little or no experience. Many people choose an occupation on the basis of a stereotype with little knowledge of what people in that occupation actually do, how it feels to work on the tasks and problems, or what the joys and frustrations are. Career choice can be particularly problematic for low-income minorities who often have limited exposure to positive career role models. Yet no other decision in life has such far-reaching consequences. One’s income, spouse, family, friends, leisure, neighborhood, security and peace of mind are directly influenced by career choices.

Some people with luck and good guidance make satisfying career choices, but many others find themselves stuck and miserable in unfulfilling jobs. Sizable investments of time, money and emotional energy go into training for occupations which ultimately prove unsatisfactory. Nearly half of adult employed Americans would rather be in a different line of work and would make a different career choice if they could choose again. They report significant job-related stress and believe their skills are not well utilized. Some 69% would seek additional information if they were choosing a new career (National Career Development Association, 1988; United Press International, 1995).

Career decisions are not a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. The U.S. Department of Labor has estimated that a twenty-year-old will switch career directions an average of six times in a lifetime. With accelerating technological changes, mergers, layoffs and economic fluctuations, the need for help in career decision making will intensify. Some job turnover is inevitable and probably desirable, but it is wasteful of human talent and energy and detrimental to human happiness for large numbers of people to be making choices that they regret or that underutilize their abilities.

Career choices can be made on the basis of any factor—warmth of the climate, parental suggestions, or occupational prestige. A study by Walls (2000) revealed that high school students aspired to occupations that were the highest in status, mental requirements, earnings and preparation time. However, the one factor that is often unknown and thus is not considered will ultimately be the most important—first hand experience of the actual work environment and tasks related to that profession.

What help is available to people in making critical career decisions? Vast quantities of occupational information are available, but reading factual information about carpenters, actors and computer programmers has little appeal. Even though these resources transmit some accurate information, they can also communicate many career myths and misunderstandings. These materials are often created from the perspective of adult professionals, and are not necessarily relevant to what students most want to know about different careers. The challenge, therefore, becomes to educate people experientially as well as intellectually.

One Solution: The Career Video Project

Since the passage of the national School-to-Work Opportunities Act in 1994 there has been a steady growth in programs that provide experiential opportunities for students in the work place. Job shadowing programs, in particular, have grown in popularity over the last few years as a means to help introduce young people to different career opportunities. For example, in 2003, a job shadowing day sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, America’s Promise and Junior Achievement, attracted over one million student participants and more than 100,000 participating employers (Job shadowing: Current News, 2003).

We have recently begun testing a new type of experiential activity, the Career Video Project. In this activity high school students are teamed up with career volunteers and they create a video about that person’s occupation. The students are matched with a career professional employed in a field of potential interest for the students. The students meet with the career participant, and they mutually plan the types of tasks, activities and information that are most salient and should be included in the video. The career participant then “stars” in the video, and the students do the videotaping and production work. Students are encouraged to make videos that are creative, entertaining and that show people actually doing their jobs, not just talking about them. Students are also encouraged to include themselves in the videos—for example to show themselves interacting with the career participant or engaging in tasks at the job site. At the conclusion of the activity a class session is devoted to showing all of the student-made career videos. The resulting videos are then posted to a web site (http://www.inspired2work.com/) where they can viewed by other students interested in exploring different career directions.
The Career Video Project provides a number of advantages over traditional job shadowing programs, some of which include:

• Collaboration. The student does not just meet and passively observe a career participant, but actively collaborates with the career volunteer to come up with ideas for scenes for the video and to decide what information should be included.
• Active Participation. In traditional job shadowing programs students often passively watch the career participant and ask generic, pre-scripted questions. There is little opportunity for students to shape the experience. In the Career Video Project students are encouraged to create well organized videos that are entertaining, informative and that capture the most important aspects of the career. To do this they must become actively involved in planning the video and in processing the information. They have to come up with interview questions and create a story board of desired video scenes. During the video production they have to take an hour or more of video tape and edit it down to less than twenty minutes of the most important material.
• Structured. In traditional job-shadowing activities the students and the career participant are often unclear about what they are supposed to do. The Career Video Project provides a structured activity that provides a flexible yet focused way for the students and career participant to interact and spend their time. The project also provides a tangible product of the interaction—the career video.
• Motivational. Youths tend to love working in creative ways with new technologies and enjoy creating stories. Digital video production taps into youths’ associations with screen media as a preferred means of communication, and is an excellent way to enhance student engagement in educational activities. At the present time thousands of digital videos have been produced by K-12 students, often through organizations such as the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, or the Visible Knowledge Project at Georgetown University. By incorporating the creation of career video as part the job-shadowing activity, it makes the project more fun and memorable for both the students and the career participant.
• More Alternatives. A problem with job shadowing programs is that each student is limited to visiting a single career participant. Students often choose careers that they are already familiar with and thus are not exposed to new possibilities. By creating a video, the student’s individual experiences can be more broadly shared. A class session can be devoted to displaying all of the student videos, so each student is exposed to many different careers. Because the career videos are posted on a web site, they are available to anyone in the world with internet access.
  

First student-made videos posted

We have posted the first set of student-made videos to the Inspired2Work site. The videos were created by Stanford University students for the class “Psychology 192, Career and Personal Counseling.” Many of the videos are about Stanford alumni or affiliates, who graciously agreed to share their work experiences with the students. A special thank you is in order for Nancy Hosay at the Stanford Alumni Center, who helped find the video volunteers. Great job, Stanford students!

Help others create satisfying lives and careers

We are starting the Inspired2Work Video Internship Program, where we team up student video makers with volunteers working in different occupations. We match the student with a person employed in a field that the student wishes to learn about. The career volunteer stars in the video and collaborates in its creation, but the student does the actual videotaping and production work. The resulting video, if approved, is then published on the Inspired2Work site, where it can be viewed by others who are interested in that career. We encourage the students to make videos that are creative and entertaining. We want to see people doing their jobs, not just talking about them. We also want the creation of the video to be fun for everyone involved. It is a wonderful opportunity for the students to meet and interact with an established professional and find out what his or her occupation is really like.

Students can find out how to get involved in the Inspired2Work Video Internship Program here.
Career professionals can find out how to become a volunteer video participant here.

Star in a video and help others learn about your career

Do you love your job? Would you like to share your passion for your work with others? If so, you may want to volunteer to star in one of our student made videos.

We are starting a new program where we team up student video makers with volunteers working in different occupations. We match the students with a person employed in a field that the students wish to learn about. The career volunteer stars in the video and collaborates in its creation, but the student does the actual videotaping and production work. The resulting video, if approved, is then published on the Inspired2Work site, where it can be viewed by others who are interested in that career.

We encourage the students to make videos that are creative and entertaining. We want to see people doing their jobs, not just talking about them. We also want the creation of the video to be fun for everyone involved. It is a wonderful opportunity for the students to meet and interact with an established professional and find out what his or her occupation is really like.

If you are interested in volunteering to be a video participant, please send an email with the subject line “Volunteer Video Participant” to rbabineaux@inspired2work.com. In the body of your message, provide a brief description of your current occupation and your work history. It helps if you can give some specific examples of the types of projects/products/tasks that you work on. Also, provide a phone number or email where you can be reached. We will match you with a group of 1 to 3 students who will be making the video. The students will then contact you to schedule a convenient time for the videotaping.

The happenstance approach for creating a satisfying life and career

We have all heard the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It embodies the traditional matching model for career selection. You are supposed to identify your abilities and interests and then match them to a career that requires those characteristics. From this perspective choosing a future career direction appears to be a logical and deliberate process. You choose the appropriate career goal and then work to acquire the necessary education and training. People are viewed as incomplete until they declare their future occupation and begin to pursue it. Indecision and chance are frowned upon. We think this matching model is unrealistic and outmoded.

The matching model might make sense if people had stable characteristics that fit only one occupation. But this is not the case. People are multifaceted and continually changing. Occupational opportunities are continually changing too. Any given occupation includes people with diverse backgrounds, personalities and talents. The matching model doesn’t fit the reality of people’s lives nor the constantly changing economic climate. Few people end up being employed in a job that they chose through a logical matching process. Instead, they are constantly adapting their occupational activities as the result of a long chain of unplanned events.

The Happenstance Approach

John Krumboltz, Professor of Education and Psychology at Stanford University, has come up with a new model for explaining career development that he calls the “Happenstance Learning Theory.” Its central premise is that you learn to initiate actions which generate unplanned but beneficial events. Some of the key ideas are as follows:

• Always keep your career options open
• Continue learning as long as you live
• Make it your goal to enjoy a satisfying life
• Deliberately take actions to create unplanned events with unexpected outcomes
• Use mistakes as a good way of learning
• Use every job as a way of learning new skills

An excellent introduction to the happenstance approach can be found in the book, “Luck is No Accident,” by Krumboltz and Levin (2004). The book is practical, humorous and filled with lots of real life examples from people's lives.


Inspired2Work – Taking Advantage of Happenstance

The goal of Inspired2Work is to help people create more satisfying lives by taking advantage of happenstance events. We want to encourage people to look at their lives and careers in a new way by providing educational programs and materials. We want to encourage people to experiment, explore and have fun. We don’t think it is necessary or even desirable to declare your occupational goal in advance. The question should not be, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It is more beneficial to ask, “What would be fun and helpful to try next?” Here are some of the things we are working on:

• The creation of the Inspired2Work video library which will include thousands of inspiring and informative videos about different occupations.
• The Celebrating Work Internship Program, where we introduce students to established professionals who collaborate with them in the creation of new career videos.
• The Corporate and Educational Seminar Program where participants will learn more effective methods of using the happenstance approach for creating a satisfying life and career.

The origins of Inspired2Work

The idea for Inspired2Work arose through what John Krumboltz might call "happenstance.” John, a professor of counseling psychology at Stanford University, has long been interested in finding ways to help people establish meaningful careers. His dream has been to create a way for people to explore different occupations, not just by reading about them, but by having the opportunity to do some of the work involved.

In the 1970’s John created educational materials called Job Experience Kits, which had activities related to different professions. For example, the carpenter kit included nails and wood and had you do some basic tasks related to framing. The kits were distributed by an educational publisher, and were well accepted in schools and counseling centers. In the late 1990’s, John continued working on his dream by developing the Virtual Job Experience, an immersive multimedia program that allowed you to see what it was like to work at a given job. His first prototype was about working as an advertising account executive. The resulting multimedia CD-ROM was a tremendous accomplishment. John, who is a natural story teller, designed the entire story board. The program is interesting, humorous and challenging. It gets you involved in tasks related to working as an account executive, like pitching proposals and doing market research. Unfortunately, the production costs were prohibitively expensive, and John was unable to raise the necessary funding to create the library of programs that he envisioned.

My consulting work focuses on educational technology, and I have been getting more and more interested in the ways that user contributed content can be used in education. One day, I was thinking about home made videos, and I wondered if they might provide a way to create career related content. I met with John and posed the following question. What if we could create a web site that had a library of thousands of amateur-made movies about different jobs—would this be something he would be interested in doing? It turns out that John is a movie hobbyist and has been making home videos for years. He immediately saw the power of using videos as an educational resource, and he liked the idea of focusing on user contributed content. We then began moving forward to make the idea a reality.

We ended up naming the web site Inspired2Work because it expresses the focus of our endeavor. Too many career related resources focus on information rather than inspiration. They are full of facts and data, but leave you feeling bored about jobs. Both John and I feel that establishing a rewarding career requires trying out lots of activities to find out what you like and dislike. Ultimately, the career that is right for you is the one that you have fun at. The goal of Inspired2Work is to allow people to explore many types of work, and to hopefully find work that inspires them.