San Francisco and Careers

I am standing at the security fence of the Team NZ Emirates America’s Cup base on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, and I start talking to another photographer. We are both trying to get a shot of the big boat, ‘the 72′,getting into the water, helped by a huge crane. He explains the procedure to me, telling me he is San Franciscan, but a supporter of the Italian boat. I note he is also wearing an All Blacks Cap! ( my wife’s a kiwi he says, I love it there.)

I remind him of the days when yachts just tied up and didn’t need cranes to get in and out of the water – he says these aren’t boats these are big expensive kites! And when you see them flying over the San Francisco Bay you can see what he means. Huge adaptability in skills being shown by our yachtsman and great courage also.  I walk on to the local breakfast cafe used by my SF daughter for many years, and being close to the yacht base it has plenty of  team members there, Oracle included. But when they talk to each other, it is kiwi accents that you hear. A global career in action – and the locals are really behind us.

At the cafe I join the many others working on their laptops- my work is finishing the new Career Management Guide focussed on employability and self management skills. Self -Management – the transition to higher study or the transition to the workplace, begins with ways to self manage study and monitor progress. Project Manage Your Study introduces the workplace concept and skills of  Project Management as a means of encouraging organisation of study in a new and relevant framework, with the motivating factor of learning a future skill.

The Understand Employability section encourages the self-assessment of baseline workplace starter skills as well as more intermediate skills for tertiary students. Knowledge of the Professional YOU is required across all age groups as employers make it clear what they want is for young people to know what this means in the workplace. Two remarks that I heard recently highlight this:

-A conversation with an employer: ‘I employed my brother, but he turned up as my brother not as a new worker.  I didn’t want my brother here, I wanted a professional graphic designer. ‘

-Another conversation with a 23 year old unemployed graduate who said, “My personality is a bit much for most employers.”

“Why don’t you leave a bit of your personality at home?’ I asked.  “Employers are not paying you for your personality. Give them the worker you, the one  that did so well at her studies.”

” I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said. This was a bright young woman who hadn’t picked up  that work required a contract for behaviour as well as performance, and she is not the first young person to fail to understand this. We think they know this….but many don’t. Help them realise there is a Professional YOU and a Casual You, a productive you and a social you. They don’t all come to work at the same time!