We spend years preparing children for exams: schools, tutors, subjects, results. Then the certificates arrive, and we tell them, ‘Go and get a job.’
To my mind, if you are fortunate enough to have a careers department, its advice can still feel as thin as it did twenty-five years ago. My gut told me that then; becoming an astronaut, it turned out, was not my calling.
There remains a universe-sized hole between education and the workforce. The missing piece is the how: the instruction manual for entering work, let alone navigating forty years of it. Parents and schools know the market for exam tutors and resources. Why is support for entering work so sparse, and so often treated as a luxury? When a capable young person struggles to get started, I wonder who has shown them how this world works.
I picture the young person at the kitchen table: degree in hand, laptop open, job titles everywhere, and no idea what any would feel like on an ordinary Tuesday. Beyond the screen wait algorithms, assessments, and recorded interviews. They compete before anyone has shown them how.
Careers shape more than income: the people you meet, where you live, your health, and the person you become. I want the career to support the life, not the other way around. ‘Follow your passion’ has never convinced me. A sustainable career may begin with a subject that keeps pulling you back. Art, robots, Cristiano Ronaldo, or Greta Thunberg: the clue is what has always sparked your curiosity. Keep learning, and you may become genuinely good.
Everybody asks which jobs AI will replace. I wish we would ask different questions. How good are your relationship skills? Can you listen and have an actual conversation? Do you recognise the difference between adaptability and flexibility? Are you hungry for micro-learning? What about your critical thinking, judgement, empathy, and cultural awareness? Are you worldly? Whether your answer is ‘very good’ or ‘OK’, I would encourage you to keep building those skills. Education could give more room to bigger-picture thinking, ideas generation, and the confidence to learn through mistakes. A good listener holds a golden ticket.That gap led me to create Bespoke Future House and write The House Career Bible, the missing instruction manual for early-career job hunters. I call the method headhunting turned upside down. A headhunter agrees the brief, maps the market, builds a Longlist and Shortlist, approaches people, and tests the evidence. The book gives that process to first-, second-, and third-job hunters, told to start at the end. I have used it with clients. Every client who has completed the method with me has secured a role. That is a record, not a promise about how long a search will take.
Perhaps the parental conversation needs to change. We ask, ‘What job do you want?’ before many young people have enough experience to know. I would begin with, ‘What sort of life are you trying to build?’ That opens up a better conversation.
September, 2026
