Now what's cooler than being cool?

One construct which I'm thinking a bit about at the moment is the idea of being 'cool' and what impact, if any, this has on career thinking and career choices. To me it seems that being cool (whatever exactly this may mean) seems to have an impact on so many of the decisions of young people, I can't believe that it has no impact on career decisions. But I haven't come across much literature which explores this. 

The term cool originated in black culture in the 1920s in the US. It was a word used to define the resistance to conformity which jazz musicians enacted through drugs, alcohol and language (Shapiro, 1999). It meant pro-drug, anti-caring and anti-authority, and represented detachment, hedonism and narcissism (Pountain and Robins, 2000).

It has been adopted by youth culture and now refers to things which are up to date and desirable (Keller & Kalmus, 2009). It's a widely used term and is almost always positive, particularly for teenagers, and it seems that Generation Y set particular store by coolness (Goodman & Dretzin, 2001). Cool can be symbolised by actions, goods and attitudes, although which things symbolise cool will differ from one group to another and from one time to another.

Runyan, Moh and Mosier (2012) explored the concept of cool and worked out that it was made up of two dimensions: hedonic (does it please?) and utilitarian (is it useful?). Hedonic cool is broken down into singular cool (something unusual which highlights independence and individuality), reference cool (something which is clearly linked to a desirable reference group), personal cool (something which really well represents your own self-concept), aesthetic cool (something which is well-designed and attractive). Utilitarian cool is broken into functional cool (does it work?) and quality cool (is it well made?).

So how does this all fit with jobs? Neff, Wissinger and Zukin (2005) wrote an interesting paper which looked at hot industries and cool jobs and described the glamorous pull towards fashion modelling as a career with its beautiful people, high salaries and rock 'n' roll lifestyles. Elstad (2015)  suggests that artistic jobs are cool because they are unique and don't conform to standard rules or logic. This fits with the early definitions of 'cool' as anti-authority, They also suggest that cool jobs have high levels of job satisfaction, through high levels of intrinsic motivation and autonomy. These link to Runyan et al.'s (2012) ideas of singular cool (independence and individuality) and personal cool (something which represents your own self-concept) and I guess aesthetic cool because it's art.

It seems then that there are some jobs which are cool and some which aren't and that this is possibly linked to Runyan et al's five kinds of cool. 

There is also some evidence out there that 'a cool image' does seem to be important to young people making career choices (Young 2003) and Torraco (2004) showed that levels of cool influence the career-related choices that women make - specifically, that girls don't join chess clubs (which can develop the skills which help you to get into STEM careers) because they aren't cool.

So, the literature tells us what cool means; we know that coolness is of enormous importance to young people; and there is a little bit of a empirical evidence that the coolness of an occupation's image has an impact on career choice. But I think this is an area which needs more research!



References


Elstad, B. (2015). Freelancing: Cool jobs or bad jobs?. Nordisk kulturpolitisk tidsskrift, 18(01), 101-124.
Goodman, B., & Dretzin, R. (2001). Frontline: merchants of cool. Public Broadcasting Service, 27.
Keller, M., & Kalmus, V. (2009). What makes me cool? Estonian tweens' interpretative repertoires. Young Consumers, 10(4), 329-341.
Neff, G., Wissinger, E., & Zukin, S. (2005). Entrepreneurial labor among cultural producers:“Cool” jobs in “hot” industries. Social semiotics, 15(3), 307-334.
Pountain, D., & Robins, D. (2001). L'esprit cool: éthique, esthétique, phénomène culturel. Éd. Autrement.
Runyan, R. C., Noh, M., & Mosier, J. (2013). What is cool? Operationalizing the Construct in an Apparel Context. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 17(3), 322-340.
Torraco, L. A. (2004). Chess Club Is Not Cool: An Essay on the Choices Women Make that Preclude Them from Higher Professional Levels. Cardozo Women's LJ, 11, 589.
Shapiro, H. (1999) Waiting for the man
Young, J. (2003). The extent to which information communication technology careers fulfil the career ideals of girls. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 10(2).

Rapport: what is it and how can we build more of it?

The idea of rapport intrigues me. We know it’s an important part of building relationships, and we know that the quality of the relationship is something which has quite an impact (possibly the biggest single impact) on the outcomes of coaching and counselling. We can recognise it when we see it, and can feel when it’s not there. But defining it in detail, and, from my particular interest area, trying to teach it, is much more tricky. One of the reasons that it’s hard to put your finger on is because of its ‘gestalt’ nature – because it is made up of so many different elements, verbal and non-verbal. 

So I’ve done some digging around and this is what I’ve found. 

First, it’s useful to reflect that rapport is something which only exists in relationships. It’s not something that you can have on your own, it’s not a personality trait, although some people may be better than others at developing it in some situations. It emerges through the interaction between two people – when two people ‘click’ and it’s hard to work out where it starts and what comes from me and what comes from you.

Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal (1990) identified three key elements which need to be in place for rapport to emerge. First, they talk about mutual attentiveness. This is when both parties are focused on each other, and the interaction is cohesive. Second, there needs to be some positivity. This happens when both parties feel friendly and caring towards each other. The third element is coordination. I had more trouble understanding what this one means, but it seems to be when the two of you feel in synch, balanced and harmonious. My feeling here is that coordination might be difficult to control, but that we can all think about how attentive we are to the person we are trying to develop rapport with, and that we can all make sure that we communicate the fact that we are pleased to be in a conversation with them.

The paper also examines the non-verbal behaviour which is linked with these rapport building aspects. They found that the following behaviours were more likely to be exhibited when there was good rapport: leaning forward, smiling, nodding, uncrossed arms, direct gaze and posture mirroring. 

The research described here shows correlations not causation: these kinds of behaviours are more likely to be exhibited when there is rapport, but we can’t be sure that more of these behaviours would lead to better rapport. But I think that cultivating an awareness of these attributes could be a useful framework for encouraging us to think about the rapport which we can feel in our new relationships.  

Tickle-Degnen, L., & Rosenthal, R. (1990). The nature of rapport and its nonverbal correlates. Psychological inquiry, 1(4), 285-293.

Occupational information: where is the theory?

As part of my PhD I've been grappling with the question of how we, as a profession, decide on the content of career-related information.

If you are looking to find out about a particular occupation, you can typically find details about job duties, requirements (qualifications and personal qualities), prospects, salary, maybe something about working conditions (travel, typcial hours, locations etc) and how to maximise your chances of getting a job. 

This feels like a terribly sensible list of subheadings. Surely these are important things to know about any job you might be considering? But are they the only things? The most important things? And how have we reached this conclusion?

My interested in this was piqued a few years ago when I was looking at the research on job satisfaction, and found out that salary has more or less no impact whatsoever on how happy you are at work. I wondered then why you can always find the average starting salary for any given occupation, but no-one ever seems to try and put a measure of average job satisfaction. (I still think this would be a good idea).

And as I thought more, it seems to me that there are a host of other criteria which might be useful for people to know about. So how did we come to the consensus that the conventional sub headings are the right ones? I did a bit of digging around in the literature and have come up with a sort-of explanation.

In 2002, the OECD commissioned a report into how to improve occupational information. In this, the author (Tricot) suggested that there were three possible starting points for deciding on the content of career-related information. First you could provide the kind of information which the clients ask for. Second, you could provide the kind of information which you know people use in their career decisions. Finally, you could give the kind of information which is likely to lead to more satisfied workers. 

In practice, it seems that the widely agreed content choices seem to map most closely onto the first approach: the list of questions which our clients want answered. Offer (2000), Bimrose (2006) and the Canadian Career Company (1998) all provide some information about what clients are asking and yes, it does seem that people want to know about routes in, maximinsing the chances of getting a job, qualifications required and progression. So this is great. We want to provide our clients with what they ask for. 

But maybe this isn't enough. We know that clients don't always know what they don't know (Tricot, 2002), they aren't always aware of the barriers they are facing (Julien, 1999), and sometimes they ask questions about things they think they ought to ask about, rather than things they actually want to know (Hawthorne, 1994).

The second idea from the OECD is that information should be based on the things which individuals base their decisions on. We do actually know quite a lot about the work factors which people base their decision on, and a lot of these are not typically covered in career-related information. Whilst these are probably much more tricky to identify and communicate, it would surely be possible to find a way to include something about values, prestige, identity, colleagues and motivations.

And going back to where I started, Tricot's third suggestion is that we base occupational information on the factors which are known to lead to higher levels of job satisfaction. There has been loads of research done in this area, and we have a pretty clear sense of what these factors are: variety, colleagues, working conditions, work load, autonomy and educational opportunities. Again, this may be marginally more challenging data to collect, but surely we could find a way?

So. We know what work factors people base their career decisions on, and we know what work factors lead to job satisfaction. Why aren't we incorporating this data in our occupational information?

One interesting possible explanation comes from Offer and Sampson (1999) who warn that if we don't have a clear theoretical underpinning to the content of occupational information, we will probably just end up using the information which already exists. And I wonder if this is what has happened? The occupational information which is offered reads a bit like an HR pack of recruitment information. It's akin to a job description, a person specification and some information about the selection process. And whilst I can see that this is useful information for potential applicants, it has not been designed with our clients in mind: it's aimed at finding the right person for the job, not the right job for the person. Another common source of career-related information in the UK is the desinations survey which identifies the jobs that graduates are doing six months after leaving University. Again, this is interesting and relevant information, but the main purpose of gathering this data is to assess the quality of universities, so it might not be quite the data that we would gather if we had the needs of our clients in mind.


Have I missed something? Is there some theoretical framework which underpins it all which I haven't found? Or is there some work which needs to be done to improve this important part of our support to clients trying to make good career decisions?

 

Julien, H. (1999). Barriers to adolescents’ information seeking for career decision making.Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50 (1), 38-48. 

Offer, M. (2001)  The discourse of the labour market.  In B. Gothard, P.  Mignot, M. Offer & M. Ruff  (2001). Careers guidance in context. London: Sage, 76 - 92. 

Offer, M., & Sampson Jr, J. P. (1999). Quality in the content and use of information and communications technology in guidance. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 27(4), 501-516.

Tricot, A. (2002). Improving occupational information. A paper prepared for an OECD review of policies for information, guidance and counselling services. Commissioned jointly by the European Commission and the OECD.