A new skill may not be quick and easy
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-02-02 06:46:07 - Graham EllisI'm all for encouraging people to progess their careers, to move forward from jobs that they find boring and repetitive into something that's less of a drudge and more fun to them. Indeed, at Well House Consultants we're in the business of equipping people with new skills, and long may it continue.
But I'm finding something vaguely disturbing about the current TV advert from LearnDirect featuring "Julie" who has been flippin Burgers for a job who seems to sail into a desk / computer job ("In IT" are the terms they use) in a plush office within a few seconds and all because she contacted Learndirect. Why do I find the advert disturbing?
Because I think it's building up false hopes in people. Some people, good for them, do find learning new skills easy and may walk, like Julie, out of a mobile burger van one month and into a skilled job the next. For others, there's a lot of hard graft and study involved. There's also a proportion of people who, even though they might aspire to an IT job, will find themselves as trying to turn from round to square pegs to fit into the high tech world when in reallity they are much better suited to other fields of work.
Yes, I know that an advert's limited in the message it can get across in 30 seconds and may present a biased view; I've just go a nagging feeling that the advert I'm describing here is more concerned to recruit more people to the learndirect scheme that to do what's best for each of those individuals.