The truth about how the profession ruins students’ career dreams

In 2015, I have given more than 50 career lectures, which I attended for Profession at universities, secondary and primary schools. If each of these lectures lasted as little as 45 minutes, it would be one complete working week last year just talking to young people about what their future career path might look like. In many cases, however, career guidance turns into a horror story about parents wanting their child to be a “manager.” Or it turns out that a high school student on a high school or a high school age has no idea what he would like to do in life, or, perhaps, he could. But most of them know how much they would like to earn. Lots!

The student profession

Today’s students in schools hear about how to write a good resume or an engaging cover letter, how to prepare for a job interview, and so on. But they still repeat the same mistakes. During the lectures in schools, I therefore relied on a negative experience.

I focus on what a student has to do to stay out of work after school. Already during interviews with teachers and educational counselors, I warn them that from my lecture the student will not learn what to do to find a job. On the contrary, in a career counseling center, young people will learn how to write a failed CV, why they should incorporate a lot of mistakes into it, but also that they should not make themselves known in any internships or competitions.

I will also acquaint them with why it is good to study simple universities in small towns all over Slovakia. I’ll tell them why the minimum wage is a lifeline. I scare them that the dream of “a lot of euros” is so far away, and I also get used to teaching them math. When I tell them about the unemployment rate, I show them that a 35% unemployment rate among young people really means that one in three young people cannot find a job.

Profession teaches to go the hard way

Schools today, unfortunately, are unable to answer the question of where to go to study. And even the parents don’t know. There is a lot of talk about the dual education system, but how should an elementary school student find out that he might enjoy working with his hands if we do not give him the delightful feeling of tapping his thumb with a hammer or creating a product? The labor market is changing so dynamically that many of the children who are in primary school today will work in trade unions that do not even exist today. The advice I give to students is therefore very simple. Go to hard school.

Education is largely a matter of hard work. In order to be able to answer the question “And what after school?”, We work with the expectations of employers. We monitor trends in the labor market and can forecast. Not perfectly, but we can provide information on the basis of accurate data about which school graduates employers are interested in. We can tell children that if they study a certain field, they will have a job, we can help them make decisions that will help them earn interesting funds in the future. We motivate them to think about the teaching profession as well.

The profession does this for employers

Yes, etc. I consider meetings with students to be very important for several reasons. The main thing is to verify whether the upcoming generation of graduates and future employees is really as unprepared for entering the labor market as our employers report. The second reason is that we are trying to understand why youth unemployment is not falling, even though employers are investing heavily in training today.

I can also call the third reason a need. The profession constantly does its utmost to bring the best candidates to its corporate clients. Therefore, in presentations at universities, I also show currently available internships from specific companies. That’s why in high schools, I tell students about which employers in which region are looking for graduates. And in primary schools, I take into account in which fields the work could be in five or ten years at all.