{"id":167,"date":"2010-05-07T16:24:45","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T22:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/?p=167"},"modified":"2010-05-07T17:28:23","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T23:28:23","slug":"career-day-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/07\/career-day-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Career day advice."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I gave presentations to Grade 9 and 12 students at Carlton Comprehensive High School for career day.  I told them about what I do and I gave them a couple of questions to try out being a business consultant.  When I was asked to do this, I thought about myself in high school and how I got to this point in my career.\u00c2\u00a0  What would I tell myself if I had the opportunity to give 18 year old me some advice?  I wanted to make this as inclusive as possible, as I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know these kids or their backgrounds.  So I came up with four rules for them to find their best career choice.<br \/>\n<figure id=\"attachment_168\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-168\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/ben-stein.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-168\" title=\"ben-stein\" src=\"http:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/ben-stein-300x294.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"294\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/ben-stein-300x294.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/ben-stein.jpg 322w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-168\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A shot of me giving career advice.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<p><strong>Rule #1:  Do what you like.<\/strong><br \/>\nThis seems rather obvious but I see young people pressured into following in the footsteps of their parents, friends or older siblings.  Life is too short to do things you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to do.  It was at this point that I told them that video games were a perfectly good use of their time and build skills for lots of modern careers.  I might have caused some trouble for some parents because of this, but oh well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rule #2:  Education is mandatory.<\/strong><br \/>\nMany young people are enticed by fast money doing labour in a booming business.  They may see the benefits of education being far away and payback for work being instantaneous.  The trouble is,\u00c2\u00a0 the marketplace always changes and today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thriving industry can be tomorrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disaster.  Without credentials, it is extremely hard to break into new industries.<strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Rule #3:  When you find a potential ca<\/strong><strong>reer, contact somebody that is currently doing that job.<\/strong><br \/>\nAsk them questions about the job.  Most people I know are happy to share their experience with young people.  This will also help students decide if they want to pursue the career further.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rule #4:  Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t chase money for money\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sake.<\/strong><br \/>\nA number of the recruiters at the career fair try to entice students with how much money they can make.  The trouble is, if you do a job strictly for the money, you won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be good at it.  You will have a hard time advancing and will be considered lazy and unmotivated. The money you were promised will never match your expectations and will never be enough.\u00c2\u00a0 If you find something that you like, you will be better than most at it.  You will find it easier to advance and the money will find you.<br \/>\nDo you have any advice for young people? We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to hear from you in the comments section.<br \/>\nPS \u00e2\u20ac\u201c One question I posed to the classes was based on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/toc.html\" target=\"_blank\">TOC<\/a> section of the website.  All three classes answered the question right where we find seasoned managers choosing the wrong answer quite regularly.  Are we teaching out common sense in business school? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d best leave that for another blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I gave presentations to Grade 9 and 12 students at Carlton Comprehensive High School for career day. I told them about what I do and I gave them a couple of questions to try out being a business consultant. When I was asked to do this, I thought about myself in high school and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-careers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abonarconsultants.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}