Informed choice or chance and accident? How did you end up in your career?

Simple question, but if you’re anything like me the answer is a winding road of often, in
fact mostly, accidental choices, opportunities, mistakes and chance events.

Now this is all well and good I tell myself as I reflect on my first teenage paper round and local supermarket job. But sooner or later shouldn’t I have fleshed out some sacred
vocational pathway that honed my skills towards an ultimate calling that optimised my
potential?

What about you? Reading this, are you reflecting on an intentional and carefully
developed pathway full of self-actualisation and accelerating potential?

My first memory of considering this question was at school; I’d decided I wanted to be a cameraman. Our class had just got back from being in the audience of a local TV nature programme, spent time observing the behind-the-scenes work of the recording team. I felt inspired. But in the years that followed that inspiration dimmed, my school experience was partly, and at times mostly, an exercise in survival. I’d ended up with solid GCSEs and A Levels that were, in terms of my choices, as much about whether I thought I could actually “do” the subject, (and also whether I liked the teacher).

Similarly, as I chose University, intern and ultimate graduate opportunities, a feeling that these were all sensible, but in many ways accidental choices that I’d use to add to my CV to help my eventual life’s calling at some later point in time. Here I am writing this, 25 years later, still unsure if I ever properly assessed perhaps one of the most important questions of all of our lives. How about you? Was your approach along similar lines to mine? Did you feel you had what you needed to make informed choices?

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel like I’m writing this from a position of failure. I’m
very proud of the roles, achievements and perhaps most importantly, people I’ve
worked with since, albeit there’s been some mistakes which I’ve tried to learn from, but still regret. Not to mention that some of the best opportunities I have had, came about to some extent by chance.

There’s a more serious point in all of this, how do we help support our schools, colleges
and support organisations in helping young people working on their own pathways?
How do we give more young people more opportunities, chances and help inform their
choices? In my view, this is much harder now.

A couple of points from the Future of Jobs Report by the World Economic Forum:

• Two fifths (39%) of workers existing skill sets will be transformed or become
outdated over the 2025-30 period.

Are young people future proofed in studying what they need for the future then? Or
learning things that will soon become outdated? Or to some extent has it always
been the case that things we learn at school get gradually updated over our lives?

• AI and Big data top the list of fastest-growing skills.

How many young people (or adults for that matter) know someone with careers in
these areas or have a sense of whether they might like a role with these skills?

Should we redouble efforts to grow engagement between industry, employers and
education institutions to help give learners more informed choices? This can be
simple to say, but complex to make happen. There is some inspirational effort happening out there though in my view.

• Broadening digital access: 60% of employers are expecting it to transform their
business by 2030.

Let’s not forget the Digital Poverty Alliance report that estimates 1 in 5 young people
are in digital poverty. If more and more careers involve digital, are young people
sufficiently versed in digital skills and have access to reach these opportunities?
So where am I going with all this? What helps ? And how can I help?

As you can probably tell from reading this, I don’t view myself as some shining
example to help inspire progress. But one thing I have been fortunate enough to
develop over the last 10 years is a wide range of examples of trailblazing efforts and
people working constantly to help make a difference with some of these challenges.
I aim to help share their / your insight.

So what’s your own experience of these things? Are you involved in work to grow
skills, experience and inform choice for young people that others might benefit from
hearing about? What’s working? How do we make progress?

I’ll be putting together a series of these articles (with your help) to try to feature
perspectives well beyond my own. I’d love to hear from you, please do reach out.

References:
https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025
https://digitalpovertyalliance.org/digital-poverty-in-the-uk-a-socio-economic-assessment-of-the-implications-of-digital-poverty-in-the-uk/