Last week I joined my fellow CERIC board members in a planning session that focused on the future of our charity, which is purposed with advancing career development in Canada. We fund and publish research, share learning and build community at our annual Cannexus conference. Our efforts serve career practitioners, who might be community job developers, counsellors or post-secondary advisors. But there is a huge stakeholder group that wields a lot of power in peoples’ career decision making: influencers. Parents, friends, educators, and managers influence what jobs we imagine, what we study, and where we work. Oftentimes these folks deliver advice without understanding the nuances of what goes into building a career that aligns personal potential with community needs. Here are five ways to be a better career influencer.

Break your bias

We often gravitate to people and experiences with which we’re familiar. A lot of professors advise high performing students to enroll in graduate school because it’s what they know. We’re likely to hire people who look and behave like us. In order to be a more objective career influencer it’s important to break our biases. Shift your perspective and re-think how you give advice by taking another person’s point of view (“what would my friend the Solutions Architect say here?” or “what kind of advice would Oprah give in this situation?” or “what would a 10-year-old recommend as a next step?”). Even if the exercise is a bit silly, taking another person’s perspective before giving someone advice will make you more aware of your biases and allow you to provide more open-minded advice.

Learn about the world

How much do you know about the big trends shaping the world of work? Globalization, climate change and automation are three things that anyone giving career advice should try and understand. Precarious work, universal basic income and “the rise of generalism” are three more trends on which you might focus. A cursory scan of labour market information and a deep dive into the CareerWise website will improve your knowledge of how rapidly work is evolving. Understanding the rate of change and the impact that it’s having on job seekers, retirees and career-changers should inform your next conversation about work.

Ask more, tell less

People are more likely to take ownership of an idea – personal goal, school project, career – when they generate their own options and commit to their own plan that brings it to life. When we’re told what to do, we’re less likely to deliver results. The next time someone asks for career advice, rather than giving them ideas or direction right away try to help them figure out what questions they might want to ask, what problems they want to solve, what interests they want to explore, what skills they want to build, what things they want to learn, what value they want to create for the world, and what legacy they want to leave in their community.

After all, these career conversations are about them, not you.

People >>> LinkedIn

The Internet is pretty awesome. Through a platform like LinkedIn job seekers can monitor trends, research companies, find jobs, receive career advice, assess their skills, and build a captivating profile of their talent. Digital learning is, however, a supplement to learning through people. Great career influencers share their network with advice-seekers by setting up information interviews and job shadowing. During my teenage years I painted houses, edited the sports section of a local paper, and crafted artisanal sandwiches at Subway (…”artisanal”…) thanks to referrals and get-a-job-now nudges from my parents. They also supported me in writing scholarship applications, participating in youth leadership conferences, and playing sports, which involved in-person meetings, presentations and phone calls. I was given a lot of great advice and encouraged to learn from experiences, which is why I (almost) always say yes to coffee chats with folks who want to learn about my career journey, organization, industry, or the future of work.

And I always say yes to meetings with students.

Test experiences

Many job seekers and career builders struggle to choose a profession. There are more options for employment than there have ever been before and yet work is filled with uncertainty and precariousness the likes of which we’ve never seen. Great career influencers know how much someone’s work will change in their lifetime and that a career grows from gathering insights from a variety of experiences. Informational interviews, volunteering, promotions, starting a business or side-hustle, going back to school, getting fired/downsized, quitting, and/or changing industries are all examples – some easy and small, some big and scary – of testing our relationship with the world of work. We learn from all of them.

When we bring a mindset of testing and learning to our career conversations everyone gets more comfortable and, ideally, hopeful with the uncertainty that work will always bring.

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This article was originally published on November 20, 2019.