I recently spent an evening with Paul W. Boynton, employment supervisor for the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company. During the last twenty years he has interviewed more than seventy-five thousand people looking for jobs, and he has written a book entitled 6 Ways to Get a Job. I asked him: “What is the greatest mistake young people make today in looking for work?” “They don’t know what they want to do,” he said. “It is perfectly appalling to realise that a man will give more thought to buying a suit of clothes that will wear out in a few years than he will give to choosing the career on which his whole future depends-on which his whole future happiness and peace of mind are based!”
And so what? What can you do about it? You can take advantage of a new profession called vocational guidance. It may help you-or harm you-depending on the ability and character of the counselor you consult. This new profession isn’t even within gunshot of perfection yet. It hasn’t even reached the Model T stage. But it has a great future. How can you make use of this science? By finding out where, in your community, you can get vocational tests and vocational advice.
Such advice can only take the form of suggestions. You have to make the decisions. Remember that these counselors are far from infallible. They don’t always agree with one another. They sometimes make ridiculous mistakes. For example, a vocational-guidance counselor advised one of my students to become a writer solely because she had a large vocabulary. How absurd! It isn’t as simple as that. Good writing is the kind that transfers your thoughts and emotions to the reader- and to do that, you don’t need a large vocabulary, but you do need ideas, experience, convictions, examples and excitement. The vocational counselor who advised this girl with a large vocabulary to become an author succeeded in doing only one thing: he turned an erstwhile happy stenographer into a frustrated, would-be novelist.
The point I am trying to make is that vocational-guidance experts, even as you and I, are not infallible. Perhaps you had better consult several of them-and then interpret their findings in the sunlight of common sense.
You may think it strange that I am including a chapter like this in a book devoted to worry. But it isn’t strange at all, when you understand how many of our worries, regrets, and frustrations are spawned by work we despise. Ask your father about it-or your neighbour or your boss. No less an intellectual giant than John Stuart Mill declared that industrial misfits are “among the heaviest losses of society”. Yes, and among the unhappiest people on this earth are those same “industrial misfits” who hate their daily work!
Do you know the kind of man who “cracked up” in the Army? The man who was misplaced! I’m not talking about battle casualties, but about the men who cracked up in ordinary service. Dr. William Menninger, one of our greatest living psychiatrists, was in charge of the Army’s neuro-psychiatric division during the war, and he says: “We learned much in the Army as to the importance of selection and of placement, of putting the right man in the right job. … A conviction of the importance of the job at hand was extremely important. Where a man had no interest, where he felt he was misplaced, where he thought he was not appreciated, where he believed his talents were being misused, invariably we found a potential if not an actual psychiatric casualty.”
Yes-and for the same reasons, a man may “crack up” in industry. If he despises his business, he can crack it up, too.
Take, for example, the case of Phil Johnson. Phil Johnson’s father owned a laundry, so he gave his son a job, hoping the boy would work into the business. But Phil hated the laundry, so he dawdled, loafed, did what he had to do and not a lick more. Some days he was “absent”. His father was so hurt to think he had a shiftless, ambitionless son that he was actually ashamed before his employees.
One day Phil Johnson told his father he wanted to be a mechanic-work in a machine shop. What? Go back to overalls? The old man was shocked. But Phil had his way. He worked in greasy dungarees. He did much harder work than was required at the laundry. He worked longer hours, and he whistled at his job! He took up engineering, learned about engines, puttered with machines-and when Philip Johnson died, in 1944, he was president of the Boeing Aircraft Company, and was making the Flying Fortresses that helped to win the war! If he had stuck with the laundry, what would have happened to him and the laundry-especially after his father’s death? My guess is he would have ruined the business- cracked it up and run it into the ground.
Even at the risk of starting family rows, I would like to say to young people: Don’t feel compelled to enter a business or trade just because your family wants you to do it! Don’t enter a career unless you want to do it! However, consider carefully the advice of your parents. They have probably lived twice as long as you have. They have gained the kind of wisdom that comes only from much experience and the passing of many years. But, in the last analysis, you are the one who has to make the final decision. You are the one who is going to be either happy or miserable at your work.
Now, having said this, let me give you the following suggestions-some of them warnings-about choosing your work:
1. Read and study the following five suggestions about selecting a vocational-guidance counselor. These suggestions are right from the horse’s mouth. They were made by one of America’s leading vocational-guidance experts, Professor Harry Dexter Kitson of Columbia University.
a. “Don’t go to anyone who tells you that he has a magic system that will indicate your ‘vocational aptitude’. In this group are phrenologists, astrologers, ‘character analysts’, handwriting experts. Their ‘systems’ do not work.”
b. “Don’t go to anyone who tells you that he can give you a test that will indicate what occupation you should choose. Such a person violates the principle that a vocational counselor must take into account the physical, social, and economic conditions surrounding the counselee; and he should render his service in the light of the occupational opportunities open to the counselee.”
c. “Seek a vocational counselor who has an adequate library of information about occupations and uses it in the counseling process.”
d. “A thorough vocational-guidance service generally requires more than one interview.”
e. “Never accept vocational guidance by mail.”
2. Keep out of business and professions that are already jam-packed and overflowing! There are many thousands of different ways of making a living. But do young people know this? Not unless they hire a swami to gaze into a crystal ball. The result? In one school, two-thirds of the boys confined their choices to five occupations-five out of twenty thousand-and four-fifths of the girls did the same. Small wonder that a few business and professions are overcrowded-small wonder that insecurity, worry, and “anxiety neuroses” are rampant at times among the white-collar fraternity I Beware of trying to elbow your way into such overcrowded fields as law, journalism, radio, motion pictures, and the “glamour occupations”.
3. Stay out of activities where the chances are only one out of ten of your being able to make a living. As an example, take selling life insurance. Each year countless thousands of men-frequently unemployed men-start out trying to sell life insurance without bothering to find out in advance what is likely to happen to them! Here is approximately what does happen, according to Franklin L. Bettger, Real Estate Trust Building, Philadelphia. For twenty years Mr. Bettger was one of the outstandingly successful insurance salesmen in America. He declares that ninety per cent of the men who start selling life insurance get so heartsick and discouraged that they give it up within a year. Out of the ten who remain, one man will sell ninety per cent of the insurance sold by the group of ten; and the other nine will sell only ten per cent. To put it another way: if you start selling life insurance, the chances are nine to one that you will fail and quit within twelve months, and the chances are only one in a hundred that you will make ten thousand a year out of it. Even if you remain at it, the chances are only one out of ten that you will be able to do anything more than barely scratch out a living.
4. Spend weeks-even months, if necessary-finding out all you can about an occupation before deciding to devote your life to it! How? By interviewing men and women who have already spent ten, twenty, or forty years in that occupation.
These interviews may have a profound effect on your future. I know that from my own experience. When I was in my early twenties, I sought the vocational advice of two older men. As I look back now, I can see that those two interviews were turning points in my career. In fact, it would be difficult for me even to imagine what my life would have been like had I not had those two interviews.
How can you get these vocational-guidance interviews? To illustrate, let’s suppose that you are thinking about studying to be an architect. Before you make your decision, you ought to spend weeks interviewing the architects in your city and in adjoining cities. You can get their names and addresses out of a classified telephone directory. You can call at their offices either with or without an appointment. If you wish to make an appointment, write them something like this:
Won’t you please do me a little favour? I want your advice. I am eighteen years old, and I am thinking about studying to be an architect. Before I make up my mind, I would like to ask your advice.
If you are too busy to see me at your office, I would be most grateful if you would grant me the privilege of seeing you for half an hour at your home.
Here is a list of questions I would like to ask you:
a. If you had your life to live over, would you become an architect again?
b. After you have sized me up, I want to ask you whether you think I have what it takes to succeed as an architect.
c. Is the profession of architecture overcrowded?
d. If I studied architecture for four years, would it be difficult for me to get a job? What kind of job would I have to take at first?
e. If I had average ability, how much could I hope to earn during the first five years?
f. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being an architect?
g. If I were your son, would you advise me to become an architect?
If you are timid, and hesitate to face a “big shot” alone, here are two suggestions that will help.
First, get a lad of your own age to go with you. The two of you will bolster up one another’s confidence. If you haven’t someone of your own age to go with you, ask your father to go with you.
Second, remember that by asking his advice you are paying this man a compliment. He may feel flattered by your request. Remember that adults like to give advice to young men and women. The architect will probably enjoy the interview.
If you hesitate to write letters asking for an appointment, then go to a man’s office without an appointment and tell him you would be most grateful if he would give you a bit of advice.
Suppose you call on five architects and they are all too busy to see you (which isn’t likely), call on five more. Some of them will see you and give you priceless advice-advice that may save you years of lost time and heartbreak.
Remember that you are making one of the two most vital and far-reaching decisions of your life. So, take time to get the facts before you act. If you don’t, you may spend half a lifetime regretting it.
If you can afford to do so, offer to pay a man for a half-hour of his time and advice.