-Irish Farmers Journal 06-10-2012
Help your child find the right path
By Mary Phelan
With career guidance hours being slashed in many schools due to cuts in last December's
budget, students and parents alike are having to take more responsibility in the process that
surrounds choosing a career.
Described as "A Survival Guide for Parents of Students Making a Career Choice", Sorted! is
written by two experienced guidance counsellors Andrée Harpur and Mary Quirke, and
guides readers through the whole CAO process step by step.
One chapter is totally dedicated to all the possible deadlines Leaving Cert students will ever
need to worry about while there is also a comprehensive chapter dedicated to students with
disabilities.
Sorted! also explores options outside the CAO such as PLC courses, becoming an apprentice
and how to assist your child in finding those much coveted part-time jobs.
Bob Dylan said: "A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night,
and in between he does what he wants to do" - and it really sums up the tone of the book.
The chapters describe the tools students can use to determine what it is exactly that they
love. This centres around interest inventories, aptitude tests and personality profiles.
When working in a career that interests and motivates us, there is also a greater chance that
we will be more successful and happy. An interest inventory measures natural interest in
different areas and such an assessment can be conducted on any of these websites:
www.qualifax.ie, www.careersportal.ie and www.careersdirections.ie. Interest inventories
should not be considered in isolation however.
It may be useful for your child to complete a personality profile, particularly if you heed the
book's advice to "value all the personality traits your child may have - a trait that drives you
bonkers may be a unique selling point for a successful career".
A personality profile measures a person's preferred way of thinking, feeling and behaving. It
asks a list of questions about how students would normally react in certain situations. The
response is then compared to the response of their norm group, ie people of the same age,
gender and educational standard.
There are many types of profiles, ranging from very poor to extremely sensitive and it is
crucial that the personality profile results are interpreted by someone qualified to do so.
An aptitude test measures ability in different areas, namely verbal reasoning, numerical
reasoning, abstract reasoning, perceptual speed and accuracy, mechanical reasoning, spatial
relations, spelling and language usage.
Aptitude results will tell you how your child ranks in each of the eight skill areas when
compared to students of their own age, gender, educational standard and nationality.
Sorted! goes on to outline the eight different types of intelligence. People can be wordsmart, number-smart, picture -smart, body-smart, music-smart, people-smart, self-smart
and nature-smart. The easiest way to track your child's intelligence is to observe what they
get "lost" in.
Career hints
For example, they might tell you they're “just popping" into the shops for five minutes only
to emerge hours later; this hints that a career in fashion or retail may be for them.
Similarly, children who spend hours tearing apart and rebuilding Lego and Meccano models
may be perfectly suited to a career in engineering.
Although aimed at parents, it's more than a good idea for students to read the book too, not
least because of the Learning Styles chapter which describes the five common ways of
learning.
A visual learner is interested in a learning style in which ideas, concepts, data and other
information are associated with images and visual techniques.
A verbal or holistic learner on the other hand is attracted to words and how they work.
Talking, writing or sharing ideas may be their main ways of working and they will choose
their words and phrases with care.
One the most valuable pieces of advice within this book is: "Going to college is as much
about socialising and making friends as it is about attaining a qualification".
Singing from our hymn sheet indeed; this book will most certainly be a reference point on
Country Living's desk. Sorted! is priced at €15 and is available from www.orpenpress.com.