El Camino/The Path
It is focused on developing a tool to help young people in the final part of their secondary school studies, a key moment in their lives. It can equally apply to young graduates who find themselves regularly shifting between potential career paths and need help focussing and defining their vision of the future.
Whilst discovering this vision of their future based on our model of Coaching, they can rely on this tool for many things: to help define what they want to achieve going forward in life, what they wish to study, what type of job they would eventually like to have, what their dreams are, but above all – what steps are needed to achieve all of this.
Everyone will have
his personal guide
We think that it is really important to make this idea work as a personal testimony, based on the accounts of friends, family and colleagues, the people that are just about to graduate from school and choose a career, facing uncertainty and doubts about what to do with their lives. What do I want to achieve and what is my dream? Very often, the pressure of these questions can influence one to pursue a career that doesn’t in fact suit their needs or wants, nor in fact their personality.
Our guide focuses on two aspects, the Personal and the Professional. For the first of these, essentially the person identifies what their dreams are and what steps there are to help them achieve these, ultimately then putting them into action, making the personal commitment and thus taking charge of their own lives. Regarding the second aspect, this is designed to prevent users from giving up on a career or changing from one to another or equally stopping studying for a lack of interest or motivation.
In the development of this tool, a lot of research was conducted into the various methodologies of coaching; ultimately it proved evident that the most effective form of coaching regarding a person’s worklife is the ontological because it focuses on developing the BEING.
Background & previous studies
Research was carried out regarding what young people about to graduate are most concerned with, and the results were able to show the specific needs of students at this crucial time in their lives. Our tool intends to satisfy these needs. One of the things that became evident is that they need a person of support, a guide or counsellor that allows them to decide what career to follow, through a variety of activities and questions that explore their tastes, personality and ultimately what they value as important.
The tool is based on 4 steps or stages that the users have to work through.
They are as follows:
The methodology in practice
In the guide we have designed a deductive methodology using our ‘Impact Questions’; through these, young people will be able to self-reflect and explore themselves and ultimately visualise and direct their future with a different perspective. This way they can determine or deduce what they really want based on their beliefs, tastes, aspirations and goals, eventually setting a path to realise it.
A further element of the analysis carried out by the students is based on a formula for the Definition of Activities. This part uses the model for defining profile competencies (MPC) from the company Alfredo Paredes and Associates and is followed by applying the Likert Scale to determine a single career option to choose.
Does the guide
actually help students?
Some testimonies of students that took part in the ‘test’ phase and used our tool are as follows:
- It has helped me to reaffirm the career that I wanted
- It helps you to see the before, the now and the future
- It has helped me to see what I really want to do in university
- In asking things that I had never considered, I realised what I want for my future
- To understand how I see myself in the present and in the future
- To decide what to study
- To confirm what I want and how I’m going to do it
- To see what career I like most
- To clarify what I want to do in the future
- To reaffirm and understand what I want to do going forward
Once the tool is completed and having arrived at a decision of a career option, we recommend that students seek advice from their parents, colleagues and professionals closely related to this career, which will in turn help reassure them of their final choice.
El Camino will be published in Spanish, English and Catalán.