What's your Path ?
21 Aug 2018
What’s your path?
I was absolutely delighted to see a Hashtag bursting round twitter when the Scottish exam results came out
#nowrongpath
As my eldest starts college on Monday, having had the last of his school results, it made me think about the pressures these young people are under.
The pressure we have all been put under at some point. The Hashtag was wonderfully done. Loads of people showing their paths to where they are now, and most of those paths were beautifully windy and quite a few bumps along the way. Very few were straight lines.
So those children we once were, are we doing now, what we wanted to do?
I’m not a doctor or a film star, not smart enough academically for the first one and the second …well there is still time yet.
I wanted to save the world at school, so I went to Jordanhill college and trained to work with young people mainly in drug prevention and now I own my own Recruitment Company. My path has included New Zealand Helicopters, Business Analysis, Bar management and lots in between.
Mark left school at 16, was a carpet fitter, roofer, ranch hand in Calgary, sold hoovers for about a nano second and then took himself to university, got 2 degree’s before landing in Recruitment.
2 very windy paths.
So, sitting down with the eldest, urging him to university or collage, telling him to push himself at exams, didn’t really sit with us. It would have been hypocritical for us to do it. His 6th year was a year for him to let off steam and enjoy himself. Luckily his 5th year results meant he could get into the course he wanted so he didn’t have to try too hard. He looked at everything, history, being pilot and even a blacksmith. We encouraged it all. He has decided to teach PE. He will be brilliant at that, but then I reckon he will be brilliant at anything. No, I’m not bias.
However, there are loads of kids out there facing huge pressures to get the right results.
What I say to them is, choose something you love, enjoy school, if its music or art – go for it. If you want to be a Lawyer or a Doctor, fair enough, but if not, don’t panic too much. Everyone’s path is different.
So, what about us grown-ups? Same rules apply. We see candidates and clients come from loads of different paths. Especially in IT. Retraining, moving departments internally and ending up in areas of work they would never have through possible when walking the corridors at the high school. Especially Project Management and Business Analysis. It wasn’t mentioned with the guidance counsellor when I was at school (maybe I’m showing my age now!).
When I speak to candidate’s now, I ask them what their childhood ambition was. Hardly ever matches where they are now. What we do talk about is what part of their roles do they really enjoy now? How can we turn maybe 25% of what they do each day that they love, into 100% of the day in a new role.
Ambitions don’t end when you leave school, they can be “in 6 months” “in 3 years” “in 10 years”.
We are here to facilitate anyone who fancies a career change, the leap of faith shouldn’t be daunting, it should be exciting!
You never know, when you sit down to eat your popcorn at the flicks, I could be on the screen!
Never say never.
There is #nowrongpath