One is thinking more about how to make social interactions go well. For example, I have a tendency in ‘work’ settings to want to jump straight to business. So that was my initial inclination on advising calls. But it’s actually important when discussing career decisions with people that they feel at ease and like you find it easy to communicate with each other. So I’ve tried to increase the friendliness of our initial interaction, rather than jumping straight in with really specific questions.
Most of the cases where I’ve been most helpful to people are ones where I had really specific things to recommend: a particular job they seemed suited to, an internship they could immediately apply for, or just a specific person likely to know of a research project they could get started on. Whether I happen to know of an opportunity really suited to the person is of course often a matter of luck, but it’s made me more likely to check our job board before I talk to someone for things that might match their background. It’s also made me appreciate how important it is to talk in concrete terms about the specific next steps the person might take after the conversation (including things like when they might take those steps).
Providing people with encouragement is surprisingly often useful. Job hunting is really stressful and time consuming, which makes people pretty keen to apply for fewer options than might be ideal. Also, trying to go for the most impactful job often means taking a less traditional route, or doing something that doesn’t follow naturally from your background. So you could easily be in a position where your family and classmates all think that the option you’re considering is pretty weird, which makes it very natural to question whether you could really be right in pursuing it. Getting an outside view from someone who has the same values as you and can look at your situation more dispassionately than you can often be surprisingly helpful for counteracting both these effects.
Sort of tangential, but on the topic of encouragement during the job hunt process, I found that after doing a number of interviews with people in the midst of a career change process (from a wide range of backgrounds), a good number of people felt energized/encouraged just by having the chance to talk about their situation. This was a context where we mostly did active listening and asked some guiding questions. I think being able to explicitly think through a career change and take a bird’s eye perspective might be very valuable for some people.
What are some things you learned on the job that helped you become better at giving career advice?
One is thinking more about how to make social interactions go well. For example, I have a tendency in ‘work’ settings to want to jump straight to business. So that was my initial inclination on advising calls. But it’s actually important when discussing career decisions with people that they feel at ease and like you find it easy to communicate with each other. So I’ve tried to increase the friendliness of our initial interaction, rather than jumping straight in with really specific questions.
Most of the cases where I’ve been most helpful to people are ones where I had really specific things to recommend: a particular job they seemed suited to, an internship they could immediately apply for, or just a specific person likely to know of a research project they could get started on. Whether I happen to know of an opportunity really suited to the person is of course often a matter of luck, but it’s made me more likely to check our job board before I talk to someone for things that might match their background. It’s also made me appreciate how important it is to talk in concrete terms about the specific next steps the person might take after the conversation (including things like when they might take those steps).
Providing people with encouragement is surprisingly often useful. Job hunting is really stressful and time consuming, which makes people pretty keen to apply for fewer options than might be ideal. Also, trying to go for the most impactful job often means taking a less traditional route, or doing something that doesn’t follow naturally from your background. So you could easily be in a position where your family and classmates all think that the option you’re considering is pretty weird, which makes it very natural to question whether you could really be right in pursuing it. Getting an outside view from someone who has the same values as you and can look at your situation more dispassionately than you can often be surprisingly helpful for counteracting both these effects.
Sort of tangential, but on the topic of encouragement during the job hunt process, I found that after doing a number of interviews with people in the midst of a career change process (from a wide range of backgrounds), a good number of people felt energized/encouraged just by having the chance to talk about their situation. This was a context where we mostly did active listening and asked some guiding questions. I think being able to explicitly think through a career change and take a bird’s eye perspective might be very valuable for some people.