What we can learn from Berufsparcours®: A career exploration program for German middle schoolers

We’re not even a full week into 2020 and already major issues are starting to emerge: Australia is burning, we’re on the brink of war with Iran, the list goes on. In such circumstances, it’s so easy to feel helpless and let our minds go off in a negative spiral of anxiety and shame.

It got me thinking how I’ve spent much of my 2019: thinking, reading, and writing about problems. The problems of toxic startup culture, the economic stifling that student debt has wrought, the gap between university education and employer needs, general career discontent and challenges of making career transitions, the fact that really only the 1% in the U.S. is safe from medical bankruptcy, etc.

While there are so many things I can’t change, I’ve decided to re-orient a bit. Wouldn’t it be more uplifting to spend my time thinking not about problems, but about inventive ways these problems are being solved? Ways that are exciting, encouraging, innovative, and action oriented?

While it may not actually affect anything besides my own personal well-being, I thought it might be inspiring to share stories of solutions rather than problems.

So I got to thinking: what solutions have I learned about that were particularly exciting?

The first one that came to mind felt like an obvious place to start: Berufsparcours®. (I’ve linked to the site, but it’s entirely in German.)

One of the primary challenges that’s taken up a core of my brainspace this past decade is how we select and navigate our careers. I firmly believe that education doesn’t teach us to truly understand our strengths and interests and see where those can be applied in the market (which is certainly a challenging task as so many of today’s jobs didn’t exist 10 years ago and it’s likely that jobs emerging in the next few years don’t yet exist either).

I also think that there are insufficient opportunities for career exploration. We’re funneled into one or two majors and trying out a variety of classes can be prohibitively expensive and time consuming, not to mention students really only have 3 summers to explore internships (if they’re able to intern at all).

As an aspiring career shifter in graduate school, I became progressively more curious about how we decide on our career directions. If only there was some sort of “career circus” in existence. An opportunity for a few months or a year to really learn about careers and roles and to dive in and try them all out in a truly hands-on way.

Wouldn’t that overcome our own self-limiting beliefs? Wouldn’t that open us up to what’s actually out there? Wouldn’t that be more useful to us in the long run than, say, algebra?

While completing a practical consulting project back in graduate school on Ashoka — a fellowship program for social entrepreneurs — I found a sample manifestation of what I had been longing for: Berufsparcours®.

Roughly translating to “Professional Circuit” in English, Berufsparcours® organizes day-long, hands-on, vocational career exploration fairs for German middle schoolers. The organization also designs modules alongside employers to implement at career fairs or as part of recruiting processes.

Berufsparcours® founder, Karin Ressel, started the program in 1994 to address the skills gap in Germany. Youth unemployment was high and employers struggled with a shortage of skilled workers. Similar to challenges faced by a growing number of companies here in the U.S., companies found themselves spending millions of dollars handling applications that had little indication as to whether the applicant had the necessary skills for the job.

The questions were clear: How can students test their aptitude and interest early to have a clearer sense of their options and desired career direction? How can employers ensure applicants had the necessary skills and aptitudes prior to hiring so as to maximize recruitment and retention?

To address these challenges, Ressel knew that her solution must involve all stakeholders: students, schools, educational institutions, companies, and governmental agencies. Oh the joys and benefits of collaboration!

Here’s how that manifested:

Imagine you’re a student (between 8th and 10th grade). On a given day, you enter your school’s gymnasium to find individual learning stations where you can test out up to 20 technical professions, from mechanic to policeman to secretary, via hands-on learning modules.

A teacher at each station is trained to facilitate the modules and keep an eye out for aptitude, while you’re also discovering what feels exciting and fun for you. As a result, you learn about a myriad of potential apprenticeship programs you weren’t previously familiar with, and feel confidence and excitement about the possibilities and outcomes of your potential career path.

Or imagine you’re a company recruiter. You’re tired of sifting through resumes without any indication as to whether the candidates you’re reviewing have the actual skills to perform the jobs you’re hiring for. As a solution, you work directly with Berufsparcours® representatives to develop modules that mimic and test the skills that candidates will need on the job. You’re then aided in integrating these modules into local job fairs and recruitment processes, which boosts hands-on interaction between recruiters and applicants.

To date, Berufsparcours® has administered modules to over 50,000 young people and worked alongside 3,800 companies, but what’s really exciting is how the program has evolved.

In addition to the school and company tours, Berufsparcours® runs competitions where student-run companies develop modules and distribution strategies (If that’s not hands-on and super meta, I don’t know what is.) And as of a few years ago, Ressel was working to establish “profession centers,” where kids can go and experience professions and discover their strengths.

Indeed, wouldn’t it be neat if we had something similar here in the U.S.? Especially if it also integrated roles beyond technical professions?

(Perhaps something like this already exists. If you know something similar — I’d love if you’d reach out and let me know!)

So, what can we learn from Berufsparcours®?

• Facilitating opportunities for hands-on career exploration is necessary and should be enacted early.
• Developing ways to overcome assumptions and self-limiting beliefs is essential. (Berufsparcours® is especially focused on getting girls interested in technical professions via smaller equipment and different project goals (i.e. build a frame instead of a car)).
• Creating career exploration modules must involve all relevant stakeholders (schools, employers, government agencies*) (*government agencies are helpful re: employment and labor market data and funding opportunities)
• Facilitating opportunities for students to build the solution themselves creates an incredible learning opportunity (i.e. competitions).

While such a “career exploration circus” sounds ideal, it’s true that there’s only so much an individual module can show you about a potential career path.

I’m specifically curious to learn about other approaches to helping people determine their strengths and learn about how and where they can be applied in the labor market.

Indeed, we’re all aware that work is changing fast. Automation is growing. Tech is booming. How might we orient students (and workers) to what’s really out there (without the ensuing overwhelm of a google search)?

I’d love to connect with anyone interested in exploring that question with me.

Cheers to solutions!