How to remove restrictions and choose a dream profession?
Choosing a profession is not easy. At Punkt B, we do not provide career guidance through testing. According to the results of research by analysts of the job search portal SuperJob.ru, this method helped in choosing a specialty only in 21% of cases.
This method is ineffective as well as excursions to enterprises, the study of directories of professions. They do not work because they are implemented without considering psychology. And the question of choosing a profession is reduced to solving problems: “I just do not know myself” or “I do not know current professions.”
Misunderstanding and ignorance of oneself and one’s strengths, lack of relevant information about professions are also “barriers of choice”. But the simplest and most surmountable, located on the tip of the iceberg. It is important to identify the implicit barriers below the pyramid and to define a strategy for successfully overcoming them.
Barrier 1
Choosing a profession is responsible.
Choosing a profession is certainly a responsible step. But the story of responsibility is not easy. After all, in 90 cases out of 100 in our view, there is a synonymous relationship between the concepts of responsibility and guilt.
This is one of the features of the Russian vocabulary and mentality. In Russian dictionaries, responsibility is a situation when a person is responsible for a block of work. And if there is something wrong, then he is guilty, and answer him.
In foreign dictionaries, the meaning is slightly different: responsibility is a situation when a person is responsible for some block of work, his task is to make it well done. He has all the necessary resources at his disposal.
Therefore, for English-speaking people, responsibility as a concept carries a completely different meaning. If in Russian there is some negative connotation in this, in English responsibility is a privilege, an opportunity, a right.
How does this interfere with the choice of profession? 9 out of 10 participants in our programs, in different formulations, voice the same fear – the fear of a responsible decision. Their way of thinking is: “If I choose the wrong thing now, who will be to blame?”
As part of working with participants, we do exercises that allow us to see and then separate the concepts of responsibility and guilt. So the focus on responsibility shifts, and there's this realization that it's not guilt, it's cool. We talk about responsibility as a right, as a power, as a trust.
Exercise alone cannot change everything. But shifting the focus from “responsibility = blame” to “responsibility = resources” is a major step in breaking the barrier of choice.
Barrier 2
“You choose once and for life.”
Yes, many still believe that the choice of profession is “for life”. Once you choose, you can’t get off this road.
In this age of super-speed, regular career changes and new skills are often a necessity. But the “once and for all” attitude still sits very firmly in our picture of the world. Therefore, this barrier also needs to be addressed.
Barrier No. 3
“Work and slave are synonymous words, and work is hard labor.”
When parents whose children cannot choose a profession come to us for consultation, we start with adults. First of all, we ask, “What is the job for you?” If choosing a profession from parents passed the association of working with hell, the lack of a full life, then you do not want to meet with it. And I think: suddenly it will, and your personal hell will not have to choose.
That is why one of the most important tasks of a good career guidance program is to work with motivation and the right attitude, starting with the words: “Work is ...”.
And it is very important what adult relatives say about their service, and what you tell about your working days at a family dinner.