What is Career Coaching?

The world we live in today is a tumultuous and scary place, and we have young people entering the adult world with very little help in making informed decisions. The majority of advice coming to young people is based on a 1980’s style decision-making tree, where hard work equals success and making the correct strategic choice lead to people getting the reward that they deserve. 

Unfortunately, that world no longer exists. We live in a world where designing the next piece of game-changing software or developing a product that becomes the next must have item, is much more likely to lead to success than working hard (to a certain degree). Viewed alternatively, traditional paths to success are no longer as clear cut as they used to be a generation or two ago. We have Engineering graduates who struggle to find work, we have qualified doctors who failed to achieve placement within their given profession because they don’t tick all the necessary boxes.

What career coaching sets out to achieve is equip young people with the skills to make informed decisions and work towards developing skills in areas that are not only multi-faceted, but also complimentary, that will set them up for a long and successful working life. 

• Is this process easy? 

  • No

• Is it really necessary? 

  • You can take a look around the working world today and match up people with the degree that they studied, but you won’t find a very high correlation.

• Why is this the case?

  • Schools and universities are set up to create students that will become lifelong learners and not practical workers.

  • Practically, universities are set up to fulfill degree quotas and are not interested in providing jobs to their students. It simply does not fall within their remit. 

  • Additionally, employers are often not in a position to take a long-term view and train potential workers with the skills that they would like to have. 

    • This leads to a lack of correlation between the skills that graduates have and what the working world is looking for.

What am I looking to achieve at Campfire Coaching?

I’m hoping to equip a next generation of young people with the ability to:

• Identify skills needed in a working environment of their choice, while they still have time to learn those skills.

• Approach businesses ahead of time, build a relationship with them and create a symbiotic relationship that leads to successful young people and businesses that thrive because they do not lose time, money and expertise to training new hires.

What is youth development and career coaching not?

• A vehicle to force your child to do what you want them to do.

• A one-size-fits-all approach that is the same for everyone. With Campfire Coaching, each person or group will have an individualized approach highlighting their skills, abilities and areas of improvement

• The only place for answers. We leverage all tools available to us, which includes but is not limited to: psychometric testing, aptitude testing, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, the Enneagram, even delving into Love Languages and related tools, all in an effort to better understand your child, what they are good at and how they leverage that to be successful.

We encourage children and parents to explore a wide array of options and upskill themselves, because knowledge is power.