Interview with John Krumboltz
Dunnigan: The first question we wanted to ask you is: Is there anything that you are currently working on that you are real excited about?
Krumboltz: Oh, always. Lots of things that I’m working on that I’m excited about. One of my research projects is what I call “The Virtual Job Experience”.
The idea is to create a simulation of what it would be like to actually work at different kinds of jobs to give people an idea of . . . lots of students are wondering in career counseling what kind of career they might want to try out and they often don’t have any idea of what the people in these kinds of different occupations really do. And so why not use computer simulation to give them a realistic idea of what people in these jobs do. So I’ve developed one prototype on this and have applied for a National Science Foundation grant to create a second one and do some research on it. That’s one idea that I’m really excited about.
Dunnigan: So basically you’re using the idea of simulation but actually applying it to virtual reality, in a way so a person could actually sit down at a computer and experience what the job is like.
Krumboltz: Exactly.
Dunnigan: Wow! Very cool!
Krumboltz: Yea. Yea. So I think it should be a very useful idea.
Dunnigan: Right. Yea. Very much so I would think so.
Krumboltz: Yea, so that’s something that I’m really excited about. Another idea is this notion about what we’ve been calling Planned Happenstance.
Dunnigan: Right. Right.
Krumboltz: Which is the idea that really its not necessary to map out your entire career in advance. That a more important activity is to get involved in actions that are fun at the moment and please you and are exciting to you and do the best you can at them, see where that goes and if you like it, do more of it and if you don’t, try something else and you never know what might happen.
Dunnigan: Right, exactly.
Krumboltz: Actually, in real life this is the way it almost always happens. But we’ve got this notion in our heads that we ought to try to plan our entire career in advance and if we can’t, then we are diagnosed as being indecisive. I think what this notion of Happenstance does is to liberate us from the notion that we have to plan our futures in advance and we can’t do it. I mean . . nobody is smart enough to do it in reality but yet we have the expectation that we should be able to do it.
Dunnigan: And that expectation causes us so much conflict and strife because . . .
Krumboltz: Exactly! An anxiety. That’s right. And why put ourselves through all this suffering?
Dunnigan: Exactly. I totally agree. I remember when I was reading over the work you’ve done, I really liked the Planned Happenstance piece. I think that’s really interesting, cause it just, like you said, it’s very freeing and it really takes into account that you know, things just happen to you.
Krumboltz: That’s right.
Dunnigan: And you have to be willing to accept things as they come.
Krumboltz: Well I wouldn’t quite say it that way.
Dunnigan: Oh OK.
Krumboltz: I’m not saying that you have to accept (chuckle) what happens to you. But I’m saying that what happens to you gives you choices and you can accept what is dished up to you. You can also refuse to accept it and try something else. So its not as if . . . its not accepting fate. In other words, its not that you have a destiny or a fate (chuckle) that you have to accept. But its more that, if you are active you are going to have opportunities to do things and they may not be the opportunities that you thought you were going to have, but you still make choices from among things that are options and you try them out. And you evaluate them and you see how they go.
Dunnigan: Right. This is kind of a question I have from what you are talking about. Do you think that a person should just live for their career or they should always have other things around them?
Krumboltz: I think life is much more than a career. Much more. And I think that career counselors ought to be aware of that. I’ve written one article basically proposing that we make a bigger effort to integrate career and personal counseling because the two are intertwined.
Dunnigan: Oh I completely agree with you.
Krumboltz: Your work affects your personal life. It affects if you’ve got a wife or a husband or a partner. You’ve got somebody else to consider and you can’t make one decision without affecting other aspects of your life. So there’s a relationship part of your life. And then there’s a recreational part of your life. There’s a athletic part of your life. And you have to have a home and a place to sleep and something to eat and interesting friends to have and hobbies.
Dunnigan: Right. People don’t live in a bubble.
Krumboltz: (Laughs). Well, maybe people live in a bubble but it’s a really big bubble.
Dunnigan: Exactly! (Laughs) Awsome. Great. OK and I guess a final thought from you is if you have any ideas of what the future direction . . . I guess we already talked about it a little bit but what kind of the future directions that career counseling should be taking?
Krumboltz: Well, uh . . .
Dunnigan: I know, that’s a big question.
Krumboltz: Well, it is and I think I’ve already mentioned two of the directions. One of them is to integrate more of it with other kinds of counseling. I’ve been proposing, just recently in the last few weeks. I’ve been writing an article in which I’m suggesting maybe we ought to even drop the name of career counseling, because in a sense the name itself implies a very narrow focus and a somewhat broader title would be Transition Counseling.
Dunnigan: OK.
Krumboltz: Because people have all kinds of transitions in their life that they’re trying to negotiate at one time or another. I mean you could say going from home to kindergarten is a big transition for a five year old and the five year old’s parents and sometimes that poses problems. Like school phobia is often a problem at that age. And there’s problems of going from, the traditional one is going from school to work, but that’s not the only transition. There’s also going from work back to school. Because sometimes people get tired of their jobs or they get laid off and they decide that maybe they ought to go back to school, and if so, what ought they to study and that’s another important transition. Then there’s the transition from being single to being married. That’s a big one. And then there’s the transition from being married to being divorced. Or from being married to being widowed. Those are big transitions that people go through. There’s the transition from say being employed to being retired. And then of course there’s always that last transition of being alive to being dead. And people need help with all of these transitions. Not only the people that are going through it, but the people who are with the people who are going through it. So there is no end of work that needs to be done. And the problems involved in all of these transitions is monumental and complex and one of my big complaints about career counseling is that it is, the way that it is usually conceptualized is so . . . simplistic, that it makes it seem as if it’s a really sort of a no brainer affair.
Dunnigan: Right, like a real formula driven type stuff.
Krumboltz: Exactly. I mean, you know, the formula was formulated by Frank Parsons in 1909. Know yourself, know occupations, and then make a match. A three step process that just overly simplifies the whole thing. And I see it as being just so much more complicated, in fact I think career counseling is more complicated than personal counseling because it incorporates both personal counseling AND the world of work.
Dunnigan: Right. Right. Well also I think a lot of times its almost impossible to do one without the other.
Krumboltz: Well, I agree.
Dunnigan: You know, I mean you could have someone coming to you for personal counseling and they’re going to talk about their careers at some point. Someone comes to you for career counseling, they’re almost definitely going to talk about personal issues.
Krumboltz: Absolutely. Its all a part of the one big ball of wax.
Dunnigan: It’s a lot more dynamic than just, you know, a simple A + B = C.
Krumboltz: Exactly. And yet we’ve got people that are still thinking along this line of just do this match and if somebody can’t make the match, well then, diagnose them as indecisive and blame them for not being able to do it. And of course my point of view is that the people that are unable to decide what they want to do with the rest of their life are really sensible people. And I myself am one such person. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life but I’m having fun right now.
Dunnigan: Actually, I was just going to ask you that. How do you feel about your career decision?
Krumboltz: Well I’ve never made one.
Dunnigan: Oh, Really? (Laughs)
Krumboltz: No. No I’ve never made one. You know I’ve tried a lot of different things and I’ve had a lot of fun doing a lot of different things and I’m still having fun doing lots of different things. And I continue to want to have fun doing lots of different things. And if I get tired of doing something, why I’m gonna try doing something else.
Dunnigan: Awsome.
Krumboltz: But I’m not making a commitment as to what kind of work I’m going to do for the rest of my life. I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of opportunities are going to crop up in the future. I don’t know how my interests are going to change. So why should I commit to doing something for the rest of my life when I don’t have the slightest idea what its going to be. And I don’t want to be obligated to fulfill some kind of a promise that on which I might change my mind.
Dunnigan: Right. Great. Well thank you. I really like that. That’s awesome.
Krumboltz: Well, I’m glad you think so.
Dunnigan: Well that’s just a good way to think about it, you know. Why commit yourself to something that there’s a good chance its going to change. Actually its almost guaranteed to change.
Krumboltz: Almost guaranteed. In fact I’ve done some surveys of various people that I’ve talked to and I will often ask a group of people if I’m talking to them you know. A group of adults. You know, how many of you are now working at the job that you thought you chose when you were 18 years old. I get maybe one to two percent of a group of people that will say Yes. And if I pin em down even more specifically like, “Did you know you were going to be working at this particular company, or this particular school district?” They say, “Oh no I didn’t plan on that.” I mean nobody knows exactly what they are going to be doing or where.
Dunnigan: And if we did, what would be the point, it’d be so boring.
Krumboltz: Right! (Laughs) Wouldn’t it be awful? Right I think we should think of life as an adventure. A big gigantic adventure that you don’t know what’s going to happen next and that’s what makes it fun.
Dunnigan: I totally agree with you.
Krumboltz: So this notion of trying to pin down the future is not only impossible but its counterproductive to leading a happy life.
Dunnigan: Wow. Those are words to live by. They really are.
Krumboltz: Feel free to share them with your friends and colleagues.
Dunnigan: I definitely will and I want to thank you again for all of your help with this. This has been very exciting and interesting.
Krumboltz: Well I’m glad we had a chance to talk and I hope your presentation goes very well.
Dunnigan: I think its going to. Its going to be quite exciting and quite interesting for everyone.
Krumboltz: Well good. Send me an email and let me know how it goes.
Dunnigan: I definitely will. I want to thank you very much and I hope you have a really good day.
Krumboltz: All right, thanks a lot Joseph.
