A longtime resident of Uxbridge, Ted Barris has written professionally for 40 years - for radio, television, magazines and newspapers. The "Barris Beat" column began in the 1950s when his father Alex wrote for the Globe and Mail. Ted continues the tradition of offering a positive view of his community. He has written 16 non-fiction books of Canadian history and teaches journalism at Centennial College in Toronto.
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Opening career doors
A few weeks ago, a hockey teammate asked a favour. His daughter had the
responsibility of providing someone from the community as a speaker for
her Grade 10 careers class. Would I consider talking to his daughter's class? Since I've been teaching communications students at Centennial College in Toronto for nearly 10 years now, the idea of offering younger people some insight about writing as a career, about the current job market and about how to present oneself at a job interview, seemed quite natural.
“Sure,” I told my friend. And I thought to myself, “Who knows? I might learn something.”
I arrived a few minutes early, so I chatted with some of the Grade 10 students even before their teacher arrived in the classroom. I discovered that a group of them had recently gone to a paintball game facility. They'd had a great time, although they'd found the entire experience a bit more physically taxing than expected. I made a mental note. Next, it was time for the playing of “O Canada” and the morning announcements. Then it was my turn.
My friend's daughter and her careers teacher offered flattering introductions and I
began to talk about the kind of work I've done as a writer, broadcaster and author over the past 35 years and more recently as a journalism professor. I sensed, right away, that I might as well have been lecturing to them about ancient Roman history. It meant very little. I was losing them. “OK,” I said, after a few minutes. “Let's talk about how you get a job.” That seemed to perk them up a bit. And we talked about how to prepare for a job interview. I suggested some of the obvious things, such as being prompt, appearing presentable and being prepared. While I'm sure their teacher had drawn their attention to these golden rules, I sensed a lot of this was news to them. I suggested ways of preparing for that job interview. I suggested one way might be to put oneself in the shoes of the interviewer, you know, the one who asks open-ended questions? “You know what an open-ended question is, right?” I asked. “That's a five-W question, a Who? What? Where? When? Why? question that gets you to talk about yourself. You might consider doing a mock interview in which you test the way you might answer those kinds of questions.”
That got a few of them thinking. But before I gave them a chance to ruminate on that one, I then asked a few of them what jobs they were actually considering. One said she wanted to write editorials. A few of the guys wanted to be sports commentators. And one suggested she wanted to become a firefighter. I applauded her interest and asked if she'd done any research. She wondered what I meant. For example, I asked her if she'd ever considered shadowing a real firefighter at a fire hall for a full day, to find out what it was really like. That seemed to hit home. One student wondered how a high school student without any experience could cope with the challenge of going to a job interview. It was one of the teenagers who'd gone to the paintball facility a few days before. “What's the key to winning at paintball?” I asked and got a quizzical look. “Surviving, right? If you approach a job interview with the same enthusiasm you do a game of paintball, it'll probably help a lot.”
For the better part of an hour, I worked around the classroom, trying to engage as many of the Grade 10 students as I could. Eventually, I came to one boy and asked what he'd considered for a career path. “I don't really know,” he said. “Haven't really thought about it.” I stopped, let the words he'd just uttered sink in, and then pounced. “Wrong answer,” I said. “Even if you haven't got the foggiest idea what you want to do, never let on.” I think I embarrassed him for a second, centring him out that way. Then, I threw him a lifeline. I explained that given the state of the economy and probably the limited number of job interviews out there, he might consider a slightly more positive response to the question, such as, “I'm still working on it.”
That's when I learned something important from my visit to the high school. Sometimes it's not the tangible skills we teach young people that open doors for them. More often it's the attitude we need to instil in them. Maybe it's not the hands and head we need to inspire, but the heart.
