When I started Career Counseling Connecticut, I thought that most of my clients would be twentysomethings. That’s not the case. My career counseling clients are pretty evenly distributed among twenty, thirty, and fortysomethings. Fiftysomethings are also not that far behind.
I soon realized why. The work world has shifted for everyone. Those in their twenties are searching to find their traction in a rapidly changing world.
But they, at least, are not starting from what I call “minus zero”. What is minus zero? Inaccurate knowledge or mindset about the world. Misconceptions such as “corporate jobs are secure” and “lifetime career paths” were indoctrinated in people of my generation (I’m 48).
The biggest surprise of my move into entrepreneurship has been that I have had the steadiest path of most every friend that I know. I was in large organizations until 2000. I consulted for smaller organizations for a couple of years and then launched The Learning Consultants in 2002. I did not know, at the time, that I was doing something that would be part of a seismic shift in the world of jobs. What is that shift? The full time, into the indefinite future, salaried job with benefits is becoming more rare. It has gone from the expected common type of work structure for white collar types to one of many possible ways to work. Many in their 40s and 50s are at minus zero in this regard. Even if they intellectually understand that sending resumes into the black hole of Monster.com won’t yield results, their mindset is stuck in 2000.
My biggest success stories have not necessarily come from directing twentysomethings to proper careers but from redirecting older clients into a happier place in the new world of work.
I soon realized why. The work world has shifted for everyone. Those in their twenties are searching to find their traction in a rapidly changing world.
But they, at least, are not starting from what I call “minus zero”. What is minus zero? Inaccurate knowledge or mindset about the world. Misconceptions such as “corporate jobs are secure” and “lifetime career paths” were indoctrinated in people of my generation (I’m 48).
The biggest surprise of my move into entrepreneurship has been that I have had the steadiest path of most every friend that I know. I was in large organizations until 2000. I consulted for smaller organizations for a couple of years and then launched The Learning Consultants in 2002. I did not know, at the time, that I was doing something that would be part of a seismic shift in the world of jobs. What is that shift? The full time, into the indefinite future, salaried job with benefits is becoming more rare. It has gone from the expected common type of work structure for white collar types to one of many possible ways to work. Many in their 40s and 50s are at minus zero in this regard. Even if they intellectually understand that sending resumes into the black hole of Monster.com won’t yield results, their mindset is stuck in 2000.
My biggest success stories have not necessarily come from directing twentysomethings to proper careers but from redirecting older clients into a happier place in the new world of work.