In the movie The Sting, Paul Newman and Robert Redford hit on the foolproof money making exercise of placing bets on horse races after they had run. Just imagine the possibilities! You are a winner. Satisfaction guaranteed. Every single time.

If you can pull off that sting you have a perfectly predictable money-making enterprise; your winnings equals your stake multiplied by the odds. All the other factors that matter in horse races such as the condition of the track, the form of the horses and jockeys, the weather etc are completely irrelevant.

If we knew the results ahead of time, it’d be easy to pick the perfect career. But backing a winner with no experience is almost impossible.Credit: Jenny Evans

Which brings me to making career decisions. The desire to “pick a winner” among the competing field of occupations is understandable. You probably want to pick an occupation that is going to give you job satisfaction.

In no small part, career counselling assists in this process. However, because our career race has not run, we do not have the luxury of picking a guaranteed winner. And this is where things can become problematic.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote here that career counsellors should resist falling into the trap of........

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