Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Ready

Beyond Ready is Horizon Point’s line of resources for students preparing for college and/or career.

Career Change – Is it for you?

Have you been declared “non-essential” during the pandemic? Maybe you’re in a role that is or has been eliminated or just ready to try something new? Where do you begin?

First, a career assessment is a great place to start. My Next Move is a free one that can be completed online or we can help you with an in-depth assessment that examines your personality and desired skills and abilities.

Another great resource for making a career change is the internet. You can search for “in-demand” careers online. ONET is another great tool for researching careers along with salaries and provides career exploration tools.

Regardless of what career you currently have, if you are itching to make a change, examine the following as you begin:

What is missing from what I do now that I want to be able to do on a regular basis? What skills do I need to use on a regular basis to bring satisfaction?

What is it that I do now that I want to continue to be able to do? What skills that I want to continue to use are transferrable to other careers?

What type of environment do I enjoy working in?

What careers match the skills and abilities I want to use and are also in line with my work values? MatchFIT provides a framework for you to learn and understand what your workplace cultural preferences are, how to interpret and apply these preferences to your job search, and how to highlight and build on them for your own personal and professional development.

Research shows that better person-organization fit leads to employees who are more satisfied, engaged, successful, and achieve greater results for their organizations.

Finally, why not do a trial run before jumping into a new career? Job shadowing is a great way to try out a new career (or two) before you make a change. Read 4 Tips for an Awesome Job Shadow or Informational Interview before your first one. 4 Great Benefits of Job Shadowing for Grown-Ups offers more benefits of job shadowing for career changers.

July 21, 2020
Assessing As a Student Intern

Written by: Lucy Orr, student intern with Horizon Point Consulting

My name is Lucy Orr. I am going into my senior year in high school and I am interning with Horizon Point Consulting this summer.

For many high schoolers, summertime means time for a summer job. For several summers, I have wanted a summer job that will give me experience in and exposure to many fields. At this point, I do not know what I want to do in my future career- there are so many options!

Because my junior year was cut short due to the pandemic, I have had time to think about my future in a lot of different ways. Some fields definitely interest me more than others, but I know there are so many that I have not yet explored. Because there are so many great choices in terms of a career, it’s hard to know where to begin looking. The more I thought about my upcoming internship at Horizon Point, the more my excitement grew! While I originally wanted to see how I could help the company, I realized that I would be learning so much from them as well. I have already seen many different jobs that I didn’t even know existed- several of which interest me.

My first personal encounter with the company was through EDGE Student Leadership with the Decatur-Morgan Chamber of Commerce. In several EDGE meetings, members of the Horizon Point Consulting team came to talk with us about various topics: identifying personal strengths and interests, exploring potential career paths, prioritizing daily activities, and understanding interview etiquette. Horizon Point Consulting intrigued me not only because of the range of topics they presented but also because of the unity in their goal to prepare us for success in the workplace and in life. I knew, however, that Horizon Point’s main focus as a company is helping other businesses, not teenagers. I wanted to see what their work looked like on a larger scale… in the “real world.”

Through working with Horizon Point this summer, I hope to gain exposure to the many different aspects of how the company is run. I know I will learn so much just by observing their thoughtful decision making, strategies, and goals. I also hope that, through this job, I can get a better idea of what may interest me in a college major or career. Horizon Point helps a variety of businesses in a variety of ways. Maybe one of these businesses or one of the ways they help them will help me decide what I do or do not want in a future job!

What new interests were you able to explore with your extra time? How will you act on these new interests?

June 23, 2020
Killing the College Misconception
Did you know that Alabama has a “College Application Campaign”? A statewide initiative with the goal of having EVERY high school senior in the state apply to at least one college. I found this out last week thanks to the high school guidance counselor’s weekly email blast. I’ll be honest, as an HR professional, I had to hold myself back from sending her an email outlining the negative impact of such a campaign. I’m still tempted to.

I graduated high school many moons ago, in an era when high schools still had classes like shop, mechanics, and electrical design. I still have a lamp I made in Mr. Roberts’ shop class when I was in sixth grade (and it still works!). My high school had a separate vocational building that housed these classes and the students put their talents together each year to build a prefabricated home on the school grounds that they auctioned off; the proceeds going to charity and to the next year’s project. If students had issues with their cars, all they had to do was drop it by the garage at the school and the mechanics students would take a look at it.

I also graduated high school at a time when the push to attend college was ramping up. Students were told that college was a necessity if they wanted to get a good job. Vocational schools were starting to be looked down upon and going straight into the workforce after high school was deemed disgraceful.

And 20+ years later, we are seeing the impact of that push.
- According to data from the Huffington Post in the 20+ years since I graduated high school, student debt has almost doubled, going from approximately $18,000 up to almost $32,000. All while the median wage has barely budged, going from $39,000 to $43,000. We constantly hear about the rising cost of college and the increasing impact on those graduating these days.
- Based on a 2012 study conducted by EMSI, 53% of skilled workers were 45 or over, with 18.6% being between the ages of 55 and 64. Our skilled workforce is aging out and we’ve known it for years. But we aren’t doing enough to replenish that workforce.
- According to a 2016-17 US Talent Shortage Survey conducted by Manpower Group, the hardest jobs to fill in the US are those in the trade industries.
Our skilled trades are dying out as a result of our education system thumbing its nose at manual labor. Yet we continue to push high school students towards college and away from trade careers. We still trick them into believing that a college education is the only way to be successful, to earn your top salary potential, and to be happy in the career you choose.

My father has owned his own construction company in Virginia for almost 50 years. He is 68 years old and still works five to six days a week, still flips homes on the side, and still enjoys his passion for woodworking on the weekends. He never went to college. Yet he has made a great career out of something he has always been passionate about and he is well known, respected, and sought after for the work he does. Growing up I spent a lot of time helping him and in the process learned to love it too.

Local school systems are starting to see the need to revive vocational courses in education and are focusing on establishing Career Technical schools. But these efforts are not enough if we are continuing to push students to go to college and continuing to turn our noses up at trade careers. Instead, we need to encourage students to take their own path, whether that’s college, a technical school, or going straight into the workforce.

Some schools across the country are starting to do it right, like Connally ISD in Waco, TX or Powhatan High School in Richmond, VA, who both participated in the first National Signing Day sponsored by SkillsUSA and Klein Tools. It was designed to recognize students who are signing letters of intent for job offers, accepting apprenticeships, or attending technical schools after graduation.

And employers aren’t exactly helping either. The majority of jobs posted today require a minimum of a Bachelor’s Degree to even be considered. Yet when I speak with clients, many of them say they don’t care what major that degree is in, just that the candidate has one. What does that say about the requirement? The response I often get is “it shows the candidate has initiative.” But does it really? Or does working hard and advancing in a career show initiative? Does being self-taught, seeking out education through training courses, certifications, or apprenticeships not show initiative? We as employers need to rethink our requirements as well. Does a position truly require a degree? Or do we need to give more consideration to experience over education?

What will happen in the next twenty years if we don’t shift our way of thinking if we don’t encourage students to explore alternatives to college and continue pushing them into thinking that a Bachelor’s Degree is the only way to be successful?
October 31, 2019
Why a Decline in Teens Working is Bad For Them and Bad For Business
The diamond on my ringer finger I can thank in part to a teenager engaging in summer work. My husband worked during the summer every year starting at age fifteen. And although I wasn’t even on his radar at age 15, nor do I think marriage to anyone was at that point in time, his hard work and savings from that hard work led to a lovely diamond on my hand that he paid cash for.

He worked painting schools, mowing grass, driving a forklift at a lumber yard and building tree stands while in high school. His college work experience transitioned from labor-intensive endeavors to work related to his college major and ultimate career goals.

My husband was fortunate that he didn’t have to pay for college. His parents saved for it and paid for it as did some scholarship money. And he was fortunate that he didn’t have to buy his own car. His grandmother did. So, you can say he was fortunate that he had money saved from summer work that didn’t go to pay for things that most kids use summer earnings for. But in my opinion, it wasn’t so much about the money he gained from summer work, it was what he learned from it that created value.

But according to a report by the Brooking Institute, “all school and no work becoming the norm for American teens”:

From 2000 to 2018, the labor force participation rate of 16- to 64-year-olds fell 3.6 percentage points. In previous work, we have shown that declining labor force participation among young people contributed substantially to this decline. In this analysis, we describe how teenagers (16–19-year-olds) have shifted away from working or seeking work and the impact this shift has had on the aggregate labor force participation rate.

The lack of labor participation from teens is contributing to the overall lack of labor supply in the United States. This is a problem at the macro level.

But a bigger problem I see at the micro-level is that teens are spending so much time on school and other endeavors that they aren’t learning the value created from first jobs at an age where that learning is truly more valuable than what can be learned in the classroom or in trying to pursue two more points on an ACT score. And this is actually hurting the macro picture more by affecting the ability of teens to transition into the labor force successfully full-time and contribute in meaningful ways.

This is because work at an early age teaches:
1. The value of a dollar. In a workplace where financial stress is an increasing concern, early work could help students understand earning their own money, saving, and how far their earnings actually go. You never know when you are going to want to buy a diamond. Thank goodness we didn’t start out our marriage strapped with a loan to pay off the ring on my hand.
2. Showing up on time and being present is more than half the battle. My husband often says that his summers were more demanding than his school year. He had to be at football workouts at 5 AM in order to be at work by 7 AM. Having to maintain a full work schedule and juggle other activities is an important learning step and is one in which a lot of teens may be learning too late. And one in which I fear school and sports/extracurricular activities don’t accurately mirror in the real world.
3. An understanding and exposure to different things that can help teens best discern what they want to be when they grow up. My husband learned really quick the value of education (much more than focusing on it directly like a lot of teens do now) sweating in 100+ degree heat building tree stands and working at a lumberyard for minimum wage. When he was older and working in the field he thought he wanted to pursue, it helped to confirm a connection to the work and the types of role(s) and work environments he’d like to pursue. For example, he realized that even though he was good at it, he preferred operations over financial areas of health care administration, and discovered he desired to work in a not-for-profit setting as opposed to a for-profit one.
We’ve got to stop and think for a moment as individuals and as a society, what are the best means to an end? In the end, I think we as parents, teens, teachers, and business leaders want to help young people engage in things that lead to long term success and allow them to define what that success looks like for themselves.
July 23, 2019
Put Your Phone Away: The 1 Best Piece of Advice for Today’s Adults and Teens?
I’ve been asked to speak to a group of high school student leaders this week. I’m always open to almost any topic the organizers want me to cover that I have expertise in. In this case, what started off as a talk about communication skills morphed into talking about building confidence. The adult leader said that she felt as though this was a challenge for most youth of today.

I see this point and also see where there are a variety of factors contributing to it. One factor that I see related to both challenges in communication skills and confidence is the frequency of time that youth (and adults) spend on their phones.

I consider this a note to myself as much as it is advice in general, but the phone has become what I call the marshmallow of our times.

Remember the marshmallow study in the 1970s which showed that children who were able to delay gratification and wait to get two marshmallows instead of one were shown to be more successful by a variety of measures? As stated in this article:

The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures. (You can see the follow-up studies here, here, and here.)

I’m not one to say that any piece of technology is the source of all evil, but when used to an extreme, which is what it has become for many, the modern cell phone has become:
1. A source of instant gratification (the marshmallow) that we can’t seem to put down or delay looking at.
2. It is has become a way to avoid direct communication with people.
3. It has become a way in which youth especially judge their self-worth through social media and other online interactions that aren’t based on reliable or useful sources for building self-worth and confidence.
4. All of which I believe is leading to lower confidence levels (among other negative things) in youth and adults.
5. Which then leads us all to fall victim to not shining our light in the way that positively reflects the talents, abilities, and gifts we have to offer, further thwarting self-confidence.
In the marshmallow study, the same article cites environmental factors that affect a child’s ability to have self-control and delay gratification, namely if they have been in situations where adults don’t follow through on what is promised. This leads children to be conditioned to not believe that the second marshmallow will ever come (maybe their parents are on their phone and that’s why they don’t follow through?).

But the article emphasizes that we can cultivate behavioral patterns that help us delay gratification (put the phone down) and build our own confidence levels:

You and I can do the same thing. We can train our ability to delay gratification, just like we can train our muscles in the gym. And you can do it in the same way as the child and the researcher: by promising something small and then delivering. Over and over again until your brain says, 1) yes, it’s worth it to wait and 2) yes, I have the capability to do this.

Building the muscle of putting down the phone when it isn’t necessary can help build confidence and patience in us all.

Some ideas to do this:
1. Commit to putting up your phone in certain environments, situations, or times of the day. Just like going to the gym at a routine time, find routine situations and times where the phone is off limits. This exercises your self-control and patience.
2. Intentionally engage in face-to-face conversations with your peers and family at regular intervals. Commit as a group to put your phone up during certain times and interactions.
3. Take social media apps off your phone that you find yourself spending too much time on and/or ones that you can tell sabotage your self-confidence. If you find the social media outlet as one in which you are constantly comparing yourself to others or you find yourself putting off doing more important and life-fulfilling things (things that build your gifts and build relationships) because you are constantly on the app, this is a clear sign it is eroding your confidence. Remove it. Use the time you would normally devote to your phone engaging in activities and relationships that help your light to shine. This produces a double boost in self-confidence. It removes that which is diminishing your confidence and focus on activities that build skills and abilities leading to a strong sense of self-worth and fulfillment. This skill-building and confidence can then end up impacting others in a positive way too.
I find it hard when speaking to youth not find a way to incorporate this clip from the movie Coach Carter into my talk. So somehow in talking about cell phones, marshmallows, communication, and confidence, I’ve found myself back in a place where this clip conveys a most important message that we all need a reminder of from time to time.

Please don’t hide your light behind the glow of your phone.
June 25, 2019