How to hammer a square peg person into a round hole

Career advice is often slated for failing to pick up on young people’s talents. But our expectations of the discipline are rather unrealistic

WHEN I was 16, a career 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.

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 with 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.

In any case, I think 16 year olds can be quite good judges of what will suit them. From time to time, I go to career evenings at my children’s schools and talk to teenagers about journalism. The first time I did this, I was horrified at how gormless the pupils seemed.

I asked them why they wanted to be journalists and they shrugged and said they liked the idea of it. But then I realised that, as they have no notion of what working life is like, they base their choices on looking at people they know who do that particular job and seeing if they can imagine themselves being that person. This strikes me as the best test there is.

Why I eventually opted for journalism wasn’t because I wanted to write but because friends of mine were journalists and I wanted to be just like them.

Modern 16 year olds seem far wiser about their careers than most of my school friends. We were too busy rebelling to think straight. My husband, the son of a Tory MP, spent his late teens and early 20s wanting to be a Marxist revolutionary.

My first stumbling career move was into banking – equally shocking in the eyes of my left-wing parents and an equally bad choice for me.

Could this be why de Botton wanted to be a philosopher?

His father is a wildly wealthy Swiss financier. The only philosopher among my friends is the son of a shipping tycoon and I wonder if there is a pattern here.

If your father has devoted his life to adding to his stock of wealth, surely the most rebellious thing one can do is not only to find money meaningless but also to make a career of finding meaning in meaning itself.

Last week’s column remarked on how few pop songs there were about office life. This prompted a heroic search by readers for further examples. Thanks to their efforts, I’ve been able to put together a white-collar Top 10. It goes like this.

1. Daysleeper– REM

2. Frankly Mr Shankly– The Smiths

3. The Day Before You Came– Abba

4. Working for the Man– Roy Orbison

5. Matthew and Son– Cat Stevens

6. Sick Day– Fountains of Wayne

7. I Need a Holiday– Scouting for Girls

8. Step Into My Office, Baby– Belle Sebastian

9. Manic Monday– The Bangles

10. Money for Nothing– Dire Straits.

This last song is a slight cheat as it is about a nine-to-five worker envying the job of the rock star: "That ain't workin'/That's the way you do it/Get your money for nothin'/Get your chicks for free." – ( Financial Times)