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Andrew Layman, CEO of the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Last week, the Department of Education held a workshop on career guidance in schools. Having been asked to present a business view of this, I had to apply my mind to the issues involved.
And the fundamental one, it seems to me, is that schools need to prepare young people for the workplace and adult life, more than they need to focus on any particular career. Indeed, by the time many of our school pupils enter the working world, a plethora of careers never heard of currently will have been introduced.
Already we have risk managers, sustainability managers, knowledge managers and a host of others for which students could not choose a dedicated and vocational course of study. This would be the difficulty if career guidance were to be offered in the traditional form.
In any event, teachers have little knowledge of the world of business and the careers which it offers.
Another significant factor is that advancement in a career usually requires flexibility; people often end up doing, very successfully, something entirely different from what they were “trained” to do. This didn’t used to be the case.
I chose to teach and didn’t contemplate a change for 30 years. While this might reflect on some shortcoming in my personality, I’m sure it was pretty common for the generation. We felt a sense of commitment to what we had been trained to do. We viewed with suspicion those who changed jobs frequently.
In my experience, employers, who are often bitter in their criticism of school-leavers (and those from universities, for that matter), are looking for a range of qualities which make people worth investing in as employees. To be more accurate, they despair that the lack of these qualities is often overt.
One of the speakers at the workshop was Cas Coovadia who quoted a former chief executive of a large corporate whose maxim was “employ for attitude; train for skill”. Yet, in some jobs more than others, the level of skills can be critical.
It is do-ability that is required, so that companies do not have to devote resources to teaching the skills that should have been assimilated during training. Among the important attributes that employers look for, and often fail to find, are receptiveness and adaptability, a willingness to work, a willingness to learn (with the acknowledgement that there is much to learn), discipline, ambition without expectation or entitlement, initiative and enterprise and the understanding that careers are built from experience and are not overnight phenomena.
By the time young people enter adult life, they should have been taught these things. Parents used to do this far more than is the case in the 21st century. But schools have a role, too, and it’s not one that involves direct instruction only. Indeed, direct instruction as part of the curriculum is a small, though not insignificant, part. Far more important is the example of the school and its teachers and the learning environment created.
The qualities of successful employment in careers of young people’s choices need to be reinforced continuously. This, I think, is the most important career guidance. It needs to be complemented by two things: the conscious efforts on the part of teachers (and parents, of course) to help young people know themselves better so as to make wise choices, and a good deal of exposure to what goes on in the adult world and the world of work.
A directory of available careers simply can’t cover the ground. People with experience can, but unless things have changed, public schools are constrained from inviting people in to speak to pupils.
Above all, I think we have to address the reality of continuum. School is an unreal world, and university is even more remote. These, essentially artificial environments, are not adequate preparation. It is this which renders the world of work a mysterious place and a foreign terrain. No wonder so many can’t cope with it.
* Andrew Layman is the CEO of the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
