Living Up
To Whose
Expectations?
Did your parents fill your
toybox with “scientific” play
things or give you lots of
books about doctors?
These and other subtle in
fluences from family, peers,
and society as a whole may
cause you to overlook some
career possibilities, says
Ruth Crane, consultant and
co-author of Self-Evaluation
Career Guide (with Marcine
H. Goad, Pilot Books, New
York, 1978, $3.50).
“When you’re exploring
career choices and you come
up with a positive or negative
reaction, find out why,” she
advises. Are you basing it on
what other people expect?
Identify the influence, Crane
says, so you can determine
whether your reaction repre
sents your own feelings. □
Nicholas W. Weiler, a man
power expert for General
Electric’s Corporate Con
sulting Services, aims his
Reality and Career Plan
ning at the undecided, pro
viding advice on “finding
the drummer" in your life,
and developing the proper
career path. He includes
17 exercises to help you
through thedecision-mak
ing process. Reality and Ca
reer Planning, by Nicholas
W. Weiler, Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, Read
ing, Mass., 1977, $7.95.
Reality and
Career Planning
A Guide (ex Personal Growth
n±JM
Ntchotas W Weiler
Preventing
Future Job Shock
Adults returning to school
make up a growing percent
age of college enrollments.
Many are experiencing “ca
reer passages”—returning to
school in order to change
careers or to update knowl
edge in a developing field.
Statisticians say the aver
age worker has two to three
different careers in a life
time; some experts estimate
as many as five. Professional
counselors emphasize that
the key to weathering
changes is skills.
“You can’t predict when
career changes will be—and
they will often happen at a
time when you’re least pre
pared,” says career consul
tant and author Richard
Nelson Bolles.
He identifies two reasons
for career transitions. “First,
some changes are brought
about by external factors,”
he says. “A job may vanish
due to drastic changes in the
whole industry.” The second
reason is dissatisfaction with
a job or a field.
1 hese passages are trau
matic, because workers usu
ally see their skills as ap
plicable to a single field.
The one weapon you have
against future job shock,
says Bolles, is “the ability to
identify the common threads
that run through your life,
whether problem-solving, an
alytical, artistic, or social
abilities. You don’t necessar
ily need to run back to col
lege (to prepare for a career
change). Many times you can
pick up the course content of
a job if you have the required
basic skills.
“Many people stay in a
career in which they are un
happy because they don’t as
sess their skills,” he adds,
“and more important, they
don’t analyze which ones of
those they actually enjoy.”
The time to begin making
that assessment is in college.
And as insurance against be
coming trapped in an unsat
isfying job, Bolles recom
mends that students think
beyond the context of courses
and analyze what transfer
able skills can be gained
from them. □
PROFILES
Bob Reichblum: Realizing a Dream
Most people struggle with the decision of “what to be
when they grow up, ”and sometimes the dilemma lasts
well into the adult years. But a few seem to be born
knowing what they want from life. If you have a
lifelong dream, don’t be afraid to follow it, says Bob
Reichblum, whose career decision was easily made.
“By the fifth grade, when all my friends wanted to be
doctors and astronauts, I was out there videotaping
our baseball games,’’ says 22-year-old Reichblum, a
television news producer for station KWY in Phil
adelphia.
He firmed up career plans early when he became a
studio go fer at age 13. And, while a broadcast
journalism major at Syracuse University, he interned
at a Pittsburgh station. After graduation, the station
gave Reichblum his first full-time job.
“Having a daily deadline is really appealing,” he
says, “and subject matter is always changing. Besides,
it’s one of the few businesses where you can jump on
your desk and scream at the top of your lungs, and no
one blinks an eye. ”
Chris Fallon: Finding a Niche
Chris Fallon. 23, is among a handful of female college
sports information directors. Yet, two years before she
accepted the post at St. Francis College in Brooklyn,
where she is also assistant athletic director, she
“didn’t even know the job existed.”
As a junior in communications at Manhattan Col
lege, Fallon was asked by a club football team to keep
statistics and do publicity. That sparked her interest,
and she volunteered to work in the sports information
office at Manhattan.
Through this job and other part-time work—covering
basketball as a newspaper stringer and interning at a
harness race track—Fallon found working in sports
“lots of fun. ” Plus, she says, “I picked up the working
skills that I couldn’t get through classwork. ”