September 1st, 2020 | Should You Consider Working As a Career Advisor?

In general, I find the fact that I’m not the only person working on helping PhDs with careers, a good thing. It would be a very lonely place otherwise. There are is a number of good, competent people working in this space. I listed some of them in my recent blog post, “All the Online Resources For PhDs In Transition To Industry.“ 

However, in career advisory, there are also lots of people who just smell “easy money” in it. Yes, people feel lost in the job market these days. So, why not read and compile twenty books you’ve read about this topic? And then, tell people that they are unique like snowflakes? That all they need is just to “follow their passion”? And then cash them for it? 

As a consequence, there are tons of these shady “career advisors” out there. They take the shortest route to make people feel better for a while by repeating cliche statements about careers and telling their clients what they want to hear. Or, they produce tons of content through YouTube channels and podcasts and create a lot of buzz around it. 

Yet, when you listen to this content, you can’t get over the impression that they are not interested in others as much as in promoting themselves. If you talk to other people on a camera, it’s good to have a bit of the “Oprah factor” — some personality and empathy for others. 

Yet many people who do this, don’t even have these qualities. Instead, they produce fry material that lacks deep insights, added value, valuable information, or a sense of humour. It contains large amounts of pseudo-language instead. Namely, thousands of empty phrases such as “I’m so happy to contribute,“ “Thank you so much for sharing,“ “I feel for you,“ etc. It’s so hard to get your message across on top of all this noise!

It Hard To Start.

The barriers to entry are indeed very low in this area. Basically, you don’t need any license or university diploma to start working as a career advisor. Furthermore, there is the “first-mover advantage.” 

Those who started their business five or ten years ago, now have much more recognition and valuable contacts. That holds true even if they don’t perform any R&D, don’t have in-depth knowledge about the topic, and mostly teach the common knowledge that you can find everywhere online.

Many people searching for help with careers trust “the hive mind” – which is a natural human instinct. So, they go with the numbers and reach out to the biggest players in the field even if they offer worse services than smaller players. Therefore, even if you have really interesting insights and original observations and valuable content, it’s still a long way to go before you get enough recognition to live off of what you do.

Everyone Tells You That You Are Doing A Great Job But…

…they don’t necessarily want to pay you for it. You can experience this phenomenon in many situations. Unfortunately, in many countries career advisory has become yet another way for universities to get more money from the government, and create more jobs for their own people. They get their salaries, and in exchange, they “organize courses” for PhDs, namely invite external professionals and independent coaches to give talks and workshops — for free of course. After all, you give talks to promote your services—makes sense, isn’t it? 

To summarize, you pay your taxes to the government so that people working at the universities get their hefty salaries. And then, they invite you to deliver the content for free so that they can justify their salaries. Which are paid from your taxes. Lovely.

At the moment, my approach to this issue is that, whenever I speak about my personal story and motivations, I don’t charge. However, when I give a workshop that contains my original content—the practical knowledge about the job market that I acquired in the process of working on this subject, and the exercises that help the attendees navigate the job market—I do charge. Unless I propose the talk myself, but that’s a very rare occasion. Everyone in this space has their own approach though. I also fully understand the speakers who charge for every single public appearance regardless of the topic.

So, this pathological model is becoming more and more prevalent. If you are an external career advisor, then universities often perceive you as a potential competitor rather than a collaborator. Of course, I’m not speaking about every university I have ever encountered. There are also research units which treat independent professionals and content creators ethically and respectfully. I’m just saying that I see this model more and more often and that this trend really worries me.

Also, people often choose a “free” service from the university only because it’s free for them. They don’t recognize the added value of paying extra for quality. The difference between external career advisors and those hired by universities is exactly the same as the difference between private startup accelerators and accelerators at universities. 

Yes, you can go to university-based accelerators and get business consultancy equity-free. But how many successful corporations started there? Private accelerators work better for many reasons. People who work there went through the process by themselves, understand what business is all about, and have all the valuable contacts in hand. 

This is why it’s worth sharing the cake and giving away a little piece of your company (usually, 3-10%) rather than seeking for equity-free advice. Business developers working in startup accelerators didn’t learn about business from textbooks. They learned it from practice, and they are pros today. 

Similarly, private career advisors know how to develop careers because they had to build careers “in the real world” all by themselves. They have a broad understanding of the job market and useful contacts in the industry. Yes, you can get free advice at the university. However, it’s still much better to invest a few hundred Euros in external, quality services to speed up the job search process. Every extra month spent as a jobless person effectively makes you lose ten times more.

It’s Easy To Get Robbed.

It’s also easy to get robbed while working in this space. There is almost no protection for Intellectual Property. If some other person in this space reads your book or attends your lecture, they might “get inspired” and start reproducing your ideas. Even university career advisors can rob you! 

On a few occasions, it happened to me that career advisors working at universities wrote to me asking for a meeting. They expressed their interest in the workshops offered by my company. However, during the meeting, they were making notes only to thank me afterwards for my wonderful ideas as now they know better how to organize their own courses.

Paradoxically, the only way of protecting your ideas in this space is not to hide them from the crowd but rather, to do quite the opposite. Namely, to talk about it on social media and in public all the time. In this way, the audience encodes that it was your idea from the very start. 

Otherwise, you can be sure that your ideas will be—either voluntarily or involuntarily—”adopted” sooner or later. No one will be able to steal Simon Sinek’s idea of the golden circle because he is known worldwide and vocal about his concept. So, to be safe, you need to present your ideas in public as often as you possibly can.

By the way, you can encounter all the aforementioned problems in pretty much any free profession in which you need to develop a personal brand. There is always competition, it’s hard to protect your IP, and it’s hard to start. So I guess these issues are not specific to career advisory.

Things Get Complicated.

Your relations with people will get even more complicated from now on. Sometimes you are so physically tired from your job that all you want is just to rest and chit-chat with friends. So, you find a free evening and go—but after you finally sit down and rest, after 30 seconds everyone looks at you with THAT LOOK on their face and the conversation turns to jobs. 

And sometimes you feel like people invite you to dinner on purpose. They know that 2-3 hours of good career advice is worth much more than 10-20 euros spent on cooking you dinner. Sometimes, I come home after “a peaceful evening with friends” completely wasted. 

The same about dating—sometimes you go for a meeting that is supposed to be a date and it turns out that the guy is more interested in jobs than in you. For worse, once in a while a client will fall for you—not that strange given that all you do around them is listen to their stories and motivations, and support their career choices.

Your Private Life Can Melt.

Related to the previous point, your private life can shrink to zero. Talking about careers is close to talking about life in general. Therefore, virtually every private conversation can naturally gravitate towards talking about jobs. This feels awesome at first, but can also become tiresome in the long run.

Actually, recently I came up with my own way of dealing with the situation. When I go for lunch with friends and they start talking about jobs, I solve the problem in “the Room style.” Well, that works.

Sssh.

You can’t talk about your best projects in public. The main reason is: that in career advisory, trust is very important. All the information shared at the coaching sessions is confidential—especially if these are 1-1 sessions. And usually, the most colourful and accomplished people are also the most private. They just don’t want people in their circle to share any details about their private stories. 

Not to mention new projects I’m working on in the company, that are now in stealth mode. I have to wait with sharing until the official premiere. For this reason, I can never talk about my most exciting projects in public or list them in my resume.

The Flood Of Regrets.

When people start trusting you, they also start treating you as a sort of a priest. Namely, they tell you things that they would never tell even to their own spouse. For instance, they talk about all the regrets of their lives. And then, all of a sudden you learn that everyone has regrets. 

Even very successful people believe that they made suboptimal choices in their careers—even though they reached the very top in their discipline. Sometimes it also goes in counterintuitive ways. Those who are at the top regret it the most. They discover that they chose the wrong mountain to climb. Yet they can’t admit this in public as they are role models to others. 

To sum up, while working as a career advisor, you’ll be flooded with sad stories. So many people regret pretty much all their professional lives and feel pitiful about the fact that they can’t turn back time!

Different Mines – Different Depths.

Every new person is like a new mine. It is, obviously, very exciting. So, every time, you try to figure out the real motivations, talents, strengths, and weaknesses of the other person. And you attempt to dig deep enough to uncover their Real Potential. But not every mine is the same deep. Some mines are full of gold and wonders. You sigh when the meeting ends and you need to get back to the surface. Some other mines are shallow and empty. Or even worse: they contain a toxic gas.

The vast majority of people whom I encounter, give me a great deal of inspiration and energy. However, once in a while I meet someone who leaves me with a deep feeling of sadness. Some people are just very poor or inexperienced at analyzing themselves. Their goals and values are tangled so badly that I have no chance to unfold such knots. 

And some people don’t have insight into themselves deep enough to communicate on the level that would allow them to build any career plan. That leaves me with no tangible material to work with. I’m goal-driven and when I meet a new person, I want to reach the target. Namely, to help them. And sometimes, people give me no chance to do so.

Heuristics.

Career advisory is not rocket science. Although you have a reasonable answer to almost every question, once in a while you will get a question you just can’t answer. As I mentioned in a blog post from a few months ago, “The Nosedive,” the knowledge about the job market is more of street knowledge than textbook knowledge. And, the street tends to be noisy. 

Thus, you can’t give a 100% guarantee that the solutions that you propose will work out, especially given how quickly the job market and people change. And, how much you need to rely on heuristics. I feel responsible to give good-quality information, but I also don’t want to overpromise. Heuristics increases the probability that you will succeed—but after all, every situation is different.

No Bad Days At The Office Allowed.

In general, company owners are supposed to give a good example to others. I described this phenomenon in my recent book, “What Is out There for Me? The Landscape of Post-PhD Career Tracks.” However, career advisory is a special case here. Since you advise others on how to get their dream jobs, you are expected to live your dream. 

And, have a true blast at work every single day! Even though I recognize that my general job satisfaction is high compared to what it used to be before, I have weaker days once in a while. Yet, I can’t let anyone notice, as this might easily get misinterpreted as a lack of professional competency.

Telling The Truth? Not Cool.

You often need to tell people what they don’t want to hear. People often self-sabotage and cannot admit that they spent the last 10-15 years on the wrong career path. They always try to find a logical explanations for their decisions. For instance, the fact that they have spent their whole youth doing something they don’t enjoy at all and are not talented for. They also don’t take it lightly when you tell them that they might miss certain values desired in the job market. 

For instance, when you tell them that they are apparently convenient and salary-oriented, with no genuine interests, and have no value for employers—regardless of their academic titles. Some people get bitter after chatting about careers with me, but what shall I do other than say the truth?

People also don’t take it lightly when you tell them that the job search process is probabilistic. And, there is no guarantee that the person reading your motivational letter is going to give you a thumbs up, as this is to large extent dependent on their personal taste. They just don’t get the concept of probability and expect a formula. Not gonna happen.

So, You Just Talk To People, Right?

Many people believe that as a career advisor, you do nothing at all. You are just talking to people and getting paid for it, right? Just asking them questions? Well, in reality, putting both my analytic mind and empathy to use at the same time makes me burn a lot of calories. Sometimes I walk away from my desk after a meeting with pain in all my muscles.

Just One Drink!

If you are not assertive enough, in career advisory, your alcohol consumption will get over the roof. As a matter of fact, many people only open up after having drinks. So, especially if you already had a drinking problem before, fasten your seatbelts because you are going for quite a ride. Even my genetically enhanced, double-engine bulletproof Polish stomach couldn’t handle this amount of booze.

So, in the end, I stopped drinking at all. High time for this—if I didn’t stop at that point, I would have become wreckage in a few years. The recent popularity of non-alcoholic wines and beers helped me in sticking to this decision. The non-alcoholic drinks far improved in quality over the past few years and were recently massively adopted by Dutch restaurants. Now, I can go out for drinks without a necessity to be the only person by the table who doesn’t have a glass next to their plate. What bliss.

I Will Have a Good Sleep After I’m Dead.

In this job, work is never finished. Yet you have a strong motivation to improve every hour and every minute. As a result, you can work yourself to utter exhaustion. I don’t even remember when was the last time I slept for eight hours. A long time ago for sure. And what will happen after the lockdown, when it’s time to travel and the opportunities to speak in public from the comfort of your own home are no longer there? I don’t even dare to think about this now.

What You Are Not a Native?

I’m of Polish origin. After many years of working in English, you still use some language peculiarities as a non-native. Unfortunately, some people can judge your competencies by that and trust you less, regardless of how professional and well-informed you are. Just use more bottleneck to add to the pot.

The Total Recall.

In career advisory, you need to develop a very good memory for people. I always had a good episodic memory: I remembered single events and sequences of events, who said what, and what was the reaction. I also had a good memory of facts such as numbers or dates. 

As an undergrad, I didn’t even note phone numbers from friends because I was automatically memorizing them after hearing the sequence of digits just once. I also had a relatively good spatial orientation. I could walk for two hours through the streets of a stranger city just once, and come back the same way without a mistake.

But, even though I’m a people person, I was never good with people’s faces or names. I was also messing with professions and other personal data such as the city of residence or nationality. 

During my undergraduate and graduate studies, a lot of people got offence when—after talking to them for half an hour at some conference or public event—I didn’t recognize their faces the next time I met them. Sometimes, someone was saying, “Hi!” and smiled at me in the street. And I was freezing as I didn’t remember the circumstances around our first meeting. And I felt relief only after they explained to me why they had said, “Hi!” in the first place.