How To Get Your Students Focused On Their Future

By John R. Jell

John Jell is a former “at-risk” student who now works for Nestlé in the account marketing division.

Did you know that 45% of students who start college drop out?  For those who graduate college, 48% immediately move home with their parents.

Factor in that recent trends show the average age of the college student is now in the late 20’s and the average person will make at least five job or career changes, both employers and graduating students face a real challenge. For students, it is finding a good job. For employers, it is finding good people who won’t quit for $.25/hour more after they invest a lot of money in training.

Why is it that so many students bounce from one job to the next? Why is it so many drop out of college or immediately move back home with their parents after graduating? Why is it the #1 frustration of the business community per an American Express business survey is “Preparing young people for work?” It is because students were not focused on a desired career path while in school and were inadequately prepared to compete for great employment opportunities upon entering the workforce.

The first step is to help your students get focused on the right career. Ask your students a series of three questions; reality check questions to be exact: 

1. Where am I now?
2. Where do I want to go?
3. How am I going to get there?

The first question is easy to answer. Where are they now? Students are attending your high school, community college, career college, technical school, or university. The second question is the hardest to answer; where do they want to go? And if they don’t know where they want to go, how are they ever going to get anywhere? It is like pulling a map out to go on vacation. Until you pick the destination, you can not lay out the route!

When I speak at colleges, one of the first questions I ask students is “how many of you know exactly what you want to do for work for the rest of your life.” The best response I have ever seen was 25% of hands up. That means that 75% of those on the doorstep to the workforce still have not figured it out. Does that scare you as much as it does me!? To help them figure out the answer to reality check question #2, I have another question for them. That question is “Take a look at the pyramid below. Where do you want to see yourself in 25 years?”

The average person today will live to be 78 years old. We all have 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 52 weeks a year in which to achieve. Some people will leave school and end up unemployed and on welfare their whole lives. Others will make it to the top, like Bill Gates and Michael Dell (both, for the record, are multi-billionaire college dropouts who chased a dream). Where do your students want to end up?

Your students have to answer this question for themselves. Before they do, they may want to do the following exercises and take a few additional things into consideration to 1) learn about themselves, and 2) get really focused so they invest their valuable college tuition costs and overhead into building skills in an area they like and want to be good at. Where do we start? I call this the “Like/Dislike” model.

Education should be a balance of formal learning (books smarts) and informal learning (street smarts + people smarts learned from life). As it relates to both formal and informal learning, get your students to first just THINK about what they like and don’t like. History says if a student studies a course they liked in high school while in a post-secondary institution, they will do as well or better. If they study an area they disliked, they will do as well or worse. As it relates to informal learning, have them think about everything related to people, past/current jobs, food, music, etc that they like and dislike. After they have thought about this, step 2 is to have them put it down on paper in a Like/Dislike T-bar. Mine looked something like this:

I did this exercise when I was a senior in high school while bored stiff in calculus. I have to tell you something though. It was the best hour I ever spent in high school because I walked out of that class having learned a lot about myself! Given that I liked people and was creative, plus having done some part-time sales and marketing jobs, I decided then that would be my desired career. One caveat though. I forgot to tell my dad that after 7th grade, I did not want to be a lawyer anymore. I want to discuss this for a minute before introducing the final exercise because friends and family can distract the focus of your students.

When I speak at education conferences, I love to ask teachers the following two questions:

1. How many of you have seen a student give up the change to go to college, or go to a better college, because they wanted to continue to date a certain boyfriend/girlfriend or continue to hang out with a certain group of friends?
2. How many of you have seen a student who was passionate about a desired career area have their parent(s) veto their wishes and say “No, you are not going to be this, you are going to be that” or “No, you are not going to this college, you are going to that college because we said so.”

I have yet to see a hand not raised. Have you seen this too? How many times in your teaching career? If you know a student that might fall into one of these two areas being influenced heavily by their friends or parents, please ask them this next question:

• Twenty years from now, your friends will be married living with their families likely hundreds of miles away, and your parents will be retired doing their own thing. Will either care that you have been getting up miserable to go to work for 20 years because you made choices when you were 18 to make them happy instead of doing what made you happy?

You know the answer to that one!

Have you ever seen the movie Jerry McGuire with Tom Cruise and Renee Zelweger? Throughout that movie, super agent ‘Dickey Fox’ chimes in with great euphemisms. While pointing to his heart he says “if this isn’t into it,” then pointing to his head says “this won’t do you any good.” When it comes to getting focused on one’s future, the heart should be the first place one looks for direction, not the last! The Like/Dislike exercise is a key step in finding what one is passionate about.

Another step is the third and final exercise; doing a SWOT analysis. Once students know what they like and dislike, they need to figure out what they are good at. Most of us will enter the workforce in our early 20’s and continue working into our 60’s. If you are going to get out of bed for 40 years to work, not only should it be something you like, it ought to be something you are good at and are driven to be the best if you want to earn top dollar.

Growing up, I heard many teachers and counselors tell me and my classmates “you can be anything you want to be.” That’s true, yet if you open up your local yellow pages, you will see many different category headings. Under each heading is someone that is very good in that area. Which area is right for each one of your students? What lights their heart on fire and gets their adrenaline pumping?

In business school, we used to use SWOT analysis to examine companies and why they did not succeed. SWOT is a process of looking at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. After class one day, I did a SWOT on myself, but with a twist. I did my SWOT trying to make my strengths stronger.  When it came to being ready to compete with graduates from around the country for limited great opportunities, I wanted my resume to scream to the top. If I wanted to earn top dollar, I had to be better than good. I wanted to be the best candidate! To help my resume ascend, my SWOT analysis helped me identify areas that I was good at in need of attention if I wanted to be the best. A sample of my SWOT is below:

Please let me walk you through two examples on how my SWOT worked. First, as my Like/Dislike exercise showed, I liked dealing with people. That was a strength! However, I was a sophomore in college and had never been in a position of authority over a group of people to achieve a goal. This was a definite weakness. Knowing my weakness, my opportunity was to get involved in a campus organization in a leadership role. My threat was that I would need to get elected to the opportunities I wanted and other students would be competing for the same spots.

The second example is the fourth one down: I like to be challenged. That was a strength. I still love proving people wrong when they say ‘it can’t be done.’ However, while I was a sophomore in college, I had never used a day planner. My time and stress management skills needed a lot of work. Again, a weakness. I challenged myself to see how much I could take on while maintaining a full-time course load (opportunity). My threat was burning out and failing courses if I took on too much. See how this works?

Because I got focused on a career area I really liked prior to entering college that I discovered I was good at and aspired to be better at it,  I took advantage of many opportunities to build my skill set while in school by balancing my formal and informal learning to get the most of my education dollars spent.  I had three great job offers from three great companies on graduation day. That is a great spot for any student to be in! To help your students be in that spot, please download the templates for the Like/Dislike and SWOT exercises from my website at www.johnjell.com in the “Student Resources” section. While you are there, please feel free to check out my graduating resume. If one of your students can beat it, I would be glad to take mine off and put theirs up!

© 2009 John R. Jell

At 22 years old, John R. Jell was the youngest Sales Manager hired by the Coca Cola Company in Canada. Today, John works for Nestlé, where he leads North American beverage national account marketing for their billion dollar Foodservice division.  He is the author of From School to a Career and So…You Want a Great Job When You Graduate.  To learn more about John, please go to www.johnjell.com.