Careers, opinions and other people’s futures

I once considered becoming an air traffic controller.

A friend’s father told me they all retired at 35 from stress.

And that was that. I crossed it off.

Was it true? I still have no idea. But an adult had said it with confidence, and apparently that met my research standards at the time.

I often think back to that moment when I hear family and friends offering young people advice about their futures. At Christmas lunch, Aunty Sue asks what they’re thinking of doing after school. “Maybe a chef,” they say. “Oh, you don’t want to get into hospitality,” Sue says. “You’ll be working when everyone else is out enjoying themselves.” With the advice now flowing, Uncle Max joins in: “You should get into accounting, like I did. You can’t go wrong with that”.

Usually, people mean well. They’re passing on something they’ve experienced, heard or come to believe. But when a young person has little other information to draw on, a few words from an adult can carry quite a bit of weight.

When you care about a young person’s future, it’s natural to want to help. But before offering advice, it’s worth pausing for a moment. How much do you know about the work they’re interested in? How much of what you’re saying comes from your own preferences? And what do you know about the young person’s own work interests?

“I’d hate those hours in hospitality,” you might think, and that’s good to know. But whether the hours would bother the young person you’re talking to is another question.

Even your firsthand experience could need some unpacking. You might have loved the work you did in one job but found the pay, your manager, or the workplace culture hard to bear.

Or you might have hated the detailed, methodical tasks in one job you found yourself in, wondering how some of your colleagues could happily spend hours (even extra time) doing the very tasks that bored you senseless.

That’s why we think it is so important to look beyond a job title to the activities the work actually involves. But with so many occupations out there, we need a framework to make sense of them: what people do each day, where the work takes place, and with whom and for whom. Then we can consider which aspects appeal to us – and which don’t.

Work Sync’s Work Map provides that framework. Its eight work themes and three distinctive work domains help us make sense of the world of work, understand how occupations can be grouped, and reflect on our own work interests in the different areas.

If you’re curious about how your career choices and work experiences fit, take a look at Work Sync’s Work Map.

As you explore the map, think back to work you’ve done – what you enjoyed, what you didn’t – and where those activities fit within the work domains. You might find yourself thinking, “Well, that explains why I liked (or loathed) that job so much.”

And next time careers come up in conversation with a young person, you might see both their interests – and your own – in a new light.