Blog Post: If you love them, don’t give them career advice

  Older workers have a lot on their minds these days. They are looking for ways to cope with strange and awful and unexpected economic situations. The workplace picture seems so bleak. Industries are transforming. Jobs are going away. Emerging jobs are mysteries with new vocabularies. Yesterday’s skills are of little value today. Everything has new technology attached to it. Retirement savings disappeared. Everything is different.

Everybody is playing grownup right now. Leadership all over the planet is making up solutions for problems they haven’t seen before. That goes for leadership in our homes, communities, and organizations. That goes for states and the federal government in the USA . That goes for problems about air and food and water and transportation and war and plague … and work and careers.

Unfortunately, even with all the workplace changes and confusion, older workers freely pass along career advice from bygone days. This has to stop. Career advice comes in two varieties: worthy and crappy. Don’t bog down younger people (or yourself!) with crappy career advice.

Everything changed. In less than one generation, workplaces and occupations have become very different. How old were you when you learned about work and working? Where did you get your information about making career decisions, about what jobs are available, about what skills are needed for today’s jobs? It was probably from someone who learned about work in the 1940s or 1960s, or even 1980s.

So if everything changed, isn’t it about time to update your career and jobs knowledge? Start talking to people about their job ideas and information. Together we can get a better understanding of what is crappy career advice and what is worthy career advice for 2009.