By Melissa Kerlin and Susan Schneider
The articles and initiatives are everywhere. People from all walks of public and private life are calling for adults to step up and teach kids the basic, relevant life skills they will need to have independent, productive and fulfilling lives as valued members of the workforce.
In speeches he gives across the country, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez, underscores the need for marketable skills training. In one speech, entitled, ‘Getting the Skills to Compete,’ Gutierrez said:
“If there is one piece of advice you can give people today, it is to increase your skills. The bottom line is that when you have more skills, you’re making more money…It could be a vocational skill. It could be an electrician’s skill. It could be the skill to fix air conditioners. Something. But you need skills.”
Well-known MSNBC.com career columnist Eva Tahmincioglu, wrote in a recent essay titled ‘Tough Love: Help your Grown Child Get a Job:’
“Is there a twenty-something unemployed kid lying on your couch?
If so, you’re not alone. Quite a few parents write me about their struggling adult children, many who are fresh out of college, who just can’t get on the right career path or any path at all.
Many found the professions they had hoped to break into weren’t as easy to break into. Others haven’t quite figured out what it is they want to do, biding their time in the rooms they grew up, in waiting for the career fairy to show them a sign.”
And Paul Graham, the successful computer entrepreneur and philanthropist, delivers a popular speech to new graduates entitled, “What You’ll Wish You Had Known” that includes this sage piece of advice:
“If I were back in high school and someone asked me about my plans, I’d say that my first priority was to learn what the options were. You don’t need to be in a rush to choose your life’s work. What you need to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if you want to be good at what you do.”
But how do adults open kids’ eyes to the wide world of exciting jobs there are to choose from? How do they excite kids about their schoolwork and connecting-the-dots between the subjects they love and finding a fulfilling career? Most adults only have their own narrow career paths to draw from, so the ways in which they can help their child discover his or her unique calling is narrow too.
Two former human resources marketing executives, Melissa Kerlin and Susan Schneider, co-founders of Tailwag Studio, Inc., have recently published a line of very creative career exploration and employment preparation materials that address these challenges. Their ‘CareerWise, Grow Up. Get a Job.™” materials help kids explore, prepare and become excited about joining the work-a-day world by discovering their inherent talents, interests and natural abilities.
Kerlin and Schneider developed these products after working for almost for almost 20 years apiece as ‘behind-the-scenes’ executives for agencies that provided recruitment and retention programs for employers across the country. They helped create employment brands for companies ranging from Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft and Nokia to Jack in the Box, The Walt Disney Company and AOL.
They frequently heard from hiring managers that new graduates are not prepared with basic work-world skills such as how to articulately discuss their career goals or why they should be hired. Nor are they comfortable with basic employment practices such as job interviewing and discussing a compensation package.
Kerlin and Schneider decided to apply their experiences to the development of materials that are based on what employers wish kids knew and thought about before they enter the workforce. It is a perspective that is very different from that found in most career exploration/employment preparation materials.
CareerWise Grow Up. Get a Job. materials also help kids hone reading, writing, presentation, research and interviewing skills and help them become familiar with the employment worlds’ jargon, practices and employers’ expectations. The exercises and activities do not ‘spoon feed’ kids any answers. They have to figure things out for themselves – an important life skill in itself.
Besides helping kids understand the reality of what employers’ expectations are in the real world, CareerWise Grow Up. Get a Job. materials get parents and kids sharing dreams, plans, hopes and fears. They help everyone plan for the day when kids can leave their parent’s nest with the confidence and skills to go out and feather their own.
Visit www.GetCareerWise.com for more information.
