Job Hunting Through the Ages

By Dorothy Nixon

Planning for a career certainly was simpler two million years ago. In the Stone Age, there were hunters (men) and there were gatherers (women) and you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out where you fit into the work-a-day scheme of things.

Career planning was, frankly, beside the point. Your elders taught you all you needed to know and every job was for life, which isn't saying much considering the short average lifespan at the time.

Then along came fire, or, more succinctly, the technology to harness fire. Overnight a nifty new calling was created. If they had had writing back then the want ad might have read:

Had they had writing back then the want ad would have read:

"Needed: One Keeper of the Sacred Flame. Prestige position with many perks including much less chance of being eaten by a wild animal. No wet blankets or hot heads need apply."

Rumour has it, the Big Chief's nephew got the job.

Decades, centuries, millennia passed. New technologies were invented (discovered?) which, in turn, spawned many new and exciting jobs. With the Iron Age, for instance, there emerged a demand for metalworkers. Good King Arthur may have got all the credit for pulling the "sword" from the "stone," (now, isn't that sooo typical!) but it was his mega-biceped, sooty- browed blacksmiths who quite literally forged steel from raw ore to inspire the colourful myth.

The Stone Age led into the Agricultural Age. Even more workers were needed with specialized knowledge of, say, planting cycles, crop rotation, and animal husbandry.

Unskilled laborers toiled on the farms permitting the relatively leisured citizens of the burgeoning cities to share of the earth's abundance from afar -- freeing them up for other pursuits. For the day-dream prone of the time, the first real boring service job was created, shepherding.

Time passed, ever so slowly still. Then almost overnight, in the mid seventeen hundreds, an invention by James Watt in England, the steam engine, enabled the arrival of a promising new age, the Industrial Age, with its sprawling, smoke-spewing factories and its crying need for manual workers to make THINGS and salesmen to sell the THINGS, and pitchman to promote the THINGS, and middle-management types to liase between the workers and the owners - and sometimes to take all the credit for the smooth profitable production of those ingenious, tantalizing oh so useful and timesaving THINGS.

Any degree of formal education was an asset in the Industrial Age and a university education virtually guaranteed a person a superior position in society.

Historically speaking, the Industrial Age is but yesterday, so why does a university education today sometimes seem to guarantee our kids nothing but a congratulatory card from Grandma? Because we've entered the Information Age, occasioned by the computer chip, an age that comes complete with its own annoying set of buzzwords, (most related to technology and the economy); scary words like globalization, downsizing, and cyber-cafe.

The ubiquity of these buzzwords is a good indication that no one really knows what's going on at the moment. Consequently, planning a career path can be a bit of a crap shoot.

Futurists are even saying that everyone is going to have a number of careers during his/her lifetime. Job hunting in itself will become something of an indispensable skill from now on.

So, here, (seriously) are some career planning and job hunting tips for your kids that most experts agree upon:

1. Make sure they are computer literate: but first understand that MOST jobs in the new economy won't be in the high tech sector: that industry has a very low worker to workload ratio. Some studies tell us that areas like plastics and woodworking will be the big job growth areas in the next few years. The trades will be begging for workers, too, and the biggest growth of all will be in the service sector. Still, virtually all sectors will require workers to use computers to some degree or another.
2. Make sure they have a grounding in math and science; but don't scrimp on those reading and writing skills. Employers today say they are looking for workers with a good balance of communication and analytical (problem-solving) skills.
3. Have them learn more than one language: It's a global economy, remember. Most educated people around the world have a knowledge of two languages or more. Shouldn't your kids?
4. When the time comes to find that job have them create a network. Human nature being what it is, who you know is as important today as it was in the Stone Age, but for those of us who are not related to the Big Paduga, networking is the answer. One way to start a network is to join an association of like-minded professionals or students.
5. Have them understand that learning is for life: With the rate of change occurring today, knowing how to adapt to new learning challenges is all important. Even after they've landed landed that dream job, they should keep taking courses. Their competition will be.
6. Have them develop PR skills. Even if they work for someone, an entrepreneurial attitude and skill set will serve them well, skills such as public speaking, promotional writing, and even media relations will be useful in the future.
7. When the time comes, have them polish that C.V. The resume is still an important tool in the job hunt. Just remember that the first pair of "eyes" perusing their CV may be those of a cold-hearted computer looking for nothing but keywords. Keep the layout simple.
8. Have them make good use of the Internet. The advent of the Internet both simplifies and complicates things for the job hunter, but for research no tool is more useful. They should use the online databases to learn about companies with growth potential or to study a company's profile in depth before an interview. And there are more and more job sites being created every day!
9. Have them look for academic or vocational schools with work/study programs or internships. If they can't make that happen, they should volunteer while at school with a non-profit organization to acquire experience and references.

Good advice. Yet, when all is said and done, many employers claim they value a good attitude in an employee over skills and experience. Those qualities your children (hopefully) are picking up at at home and at school right now; attributes like honesty, a sense of responsibility, perseverence, a positive outlook, the ability to work alone or in a team and the ability to accept and learn from mistakes all count for something in the future job market.

© Dorothy Nixon, all rights reserved