Alice Jones had just got off the phone to a client in Wales earlier this year. The client had not been able to speak to Jones as she was rushing to meet her son whose best friend had committed suicide. "I was quite shocked," says Jones. "Why would a 15 or 16 year old think they had no future?"
She talked to her colleague Katie Slater at career management firm A Brave New World. How could they help young people who didn't think they had a future? "We wanted to be able to give them the tools to be creative about their futures," says Jones.
The result is a careers workshop programme held over two half days. It is aimed at teenagers from 14 through to university age. "The idea behind it is that we felt that age group lacked structured career guidance in school," says Slater. "They are given guidance on what university to apply to and what subjects they should study based on their exams results, but no-one looks at what motivates them, what they value and what they are passionate about."
Values
She says she has seen countless clients in middle age, often working mothers, who have reached a crisis point and realised they fell into their career path without ever considering what it was that they valued in life.
"People need self awareness at an early age so they are clearer about what they want from life," says Slater.
Jones adds that recent research shows many teenagers drop out of university courses. She thinks part of the reason is they are unclear about what motivates them. "Your values underpin everything in your life," she says. "And they generally stay the same throughout your life. Young people need to know how their values affect them and apply them to the kind of job and life they want."
The workshop involves lots of interactive games, for instance, posters of certain careers are put up on the walls and students are asked to stand by the one they would most like to do. They then have to talk to each other about why they want to do that job. "Sometimes it becomes clear that it is their parents' influence and we explore that," says Jones.
Networking for teens
Other issues covered include how to revise, how to study, what GCSE choices to make, visualising what their future might look like and how they might like to work and how this might fit in with parenthood.
The first workshops for schools are likely to be held next Easter and will be held away from a school setting. Jones and Slater already have individual private clients in schools and the response has been very good from students, parents and teachers.
Another area they will cover in the workshops is networking and they are looking at the possibility of setting up a career networking website for teens. "Young people need to learn to network from an early age," says Slater. "They need the confidence to be able to walk into a room of strangers and network." Part of the confidence building
involves getting teenagers to look at their own personal achievements and not to focus purely on academic success. If university is not for them, they should consider alternatives such as apprenticeships, for instance.
The course will cost £250 plus VAT for the two half days, including workbooks. Slater and Jones are also looking for private sponsors who could sponsor teenagers to do the course.
"The idea is only an acorn at the moment, but we hope that if there is interest from parents and others that we could expand it into something quite powerful," says Jones.
A Brave New World is looking to talk to parents about their thoughts on the programme. Email alice@abravenewworld.co.uk and katie@abravenewworld.co.uk
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