Can upbringing influence your choice of career?
Victoria Seiketso Sethibe | Thursday February 23, 2017 18:14
The first leg of the fair is to be held in four days’ time from February 27th to March 2nd 2017 in Francistown. Some of the factors that influence career choice are upbringing and strong nterests of an individual.
Dr John Holland categorised occupations into six main codes namely; Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional (RIASEC) careers. Below is a fictitious case of somebody whose profile feeds very well into Realistic code of occupations: Morwaledi* is a 17-year-old, well-built boy currently doing Form Five at a local
secondary school. He comes from a family of six, including his mother, father, three sisters and himself. When he was about five years old, Morwaledi showed great interest in collecting some lost bolts and nuts around the family yard with his father who makes a living out of being a ‘bush mechanic.’ It was during such moments that Morwaledi’s father would drill the importance of safety precautions in the young Morwaledi’s mind. Over the years Morwaledi started learning skills such as repairing, designing and producing mechanisms, welding and panel beating from his industrious father. He derives so much joy from these voluntary chores, and even helps his father at their backyard workshop during the school holidays.
Not only does he love working with his hands but Morwaledi also treats his formal education very seriously. Working closely with his mechanically inclined father has helped him grasp Physics as well as Design and Technology curricula very well. Taking inventory of some items from his father’s workshop from an early age has also helped him to grasp some basic Mathematics concepts early in his life. Morwaledi is also making an effective effort to leverage his performance in other subjects to get the overall points required for him to enroll for mechanical engineering, a career he is aspiring to follow. Morwaledi is clearly a pre-dominantly realistic person and the chances of him doing well in mechanical engineering are very high, considering the way he has been raised.
What does it take to be pre-dominantly realistic?
The word pre-dominantly is used to show that Morwaledi and other similar people may score very high on one code such as realistic, but that does not mean they would score zero on all the other codes.
What makes people like Morwaledi pre-dominantly realistic is their distinctive preference for hands-on activities over situations that require them to talk, write and interact actively with other people. Having good motor coordination and physical strength helps realistic people to accomplish physically demanding activities. Realistic people also generally prefer to work outdoors rather than indoors and some of their hobbies may include farming, playing sport and gardening. One of the ways of identifying realistic people is also through their ability to fix build or repair things. Much younger children can show their realistic or Mechanical inclination by their tendency to disassemble things around the house, with the aim of reassembling them later. It is important to note that mechanical inclination in this context does not mean realistic people are limited to mechanical engineering.
There are a wide range of careers that fall under the realistic code, such as landscaping or piloting. It is also crucial to attend the upcoming career fairs in order to further reflect on your strengths, limitations, interests and also explore different careers on offer, before finally making an informed decision on which career to choose. Who knows, even Morwaledi might find other occupations he is more suited to than mechanical engineering, still within the Realistic career code. To learn more about other career codes, be sure to read the upcoming series of this column.
*Not their real names