Networking — Karen Bremner

Q: What is your current role within your organisation? How long have you been in this role?

A: I run Key Coaching, a private career services company in Brisbane, and have provided ‘career, workplace and whole life coaching’ — as the blurb on my business card says — since 2011.

Big picture, I help people of all ages and stages to understand themselves better, define their own version of success and then develop personally meaningful careers that play to their strengths. In practice, that might involve anything from exploring personality, strengths and values, to providing practical assistance with role research and then self-marketing, via skills-mapping, job search strategy or interview skills coaching.

Q: What are some major achievements or awards in your current role?

A: Without a doubt, the biggest sense of achievement I get is from my clients’ progress. It’s a genuine privilege to be a part of someone’s journey, and there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing someone have that ‘a-ha’ moment in a session — or afterwards, hearing that they got the job or made the change and that they’re really loving what they’re doing now. Very often they then refer their friends, family or colleagues to me, and that’s always the best compliment.

Q: What was the career journey that brought you to this position and work role?

A: I started out studying psychology because I was absolutely fascinated by people — and still am! But after working with children in state care, I realised that human services work wasn’t for me. That’s when I first came across career services, visiting my university’s student career counsellors, which led to postgraduate study in human resources (a much better fit).

I enjoyed the variety and challenge of generalist HR work, learnt all about recruitment and employment issues, and got to experience a diverse range of settings — from corporate, retail and call centre to public hospitals and government departments. This saw me working in the UK and New Zealand. More than 10 years later, I was ready for a new challenge but really unclear on direction. After some time out, I decided to go back and give graphic design a go. Long story short, I realised that while I love being creative I get my motivation from helping people. That’s when I sought out career coaching to explore my options and had my own ‘a-ha’ moment!

Working in careers, I get to use my psychology training, creativity and hands-on HR and employment experience. My time on the career change rollercoaster has definitely given me more personal insight and empathy.

Q: As a child what did you want to do when you grew up?

A: I always had a very active imagination, so I had lots of different ideas! When I was studying Ancient Egypt in primary school, I was obsessed with Tutankhamun and wanted to explore the Valley of the Kings as an archaeologist. By middle school, I’d spent hours making textbooks and tests for my wee sister, so I’d decided I wanted to be a primary school teacher and was helping out at my old kindergarten. By the time I was in high school, I was doing well in art and everyone was telling me I should study graphic design…

Q: What did you do or study upon leaving school?

A: I got As in art, but put so little effort into my portfolio that I didn’t get an offer at art college (looking back, a sure sign my heart wasn’t in it), so I took a working gap year to figure things out. At the end of school, a friend had lent me a book that John Cleese co-wrote with his psychotherapist — and that was me off! I ended up consuming every psychology book I could find for the next year, so when the time came to revisit studies, my choice was a no-brainer. Almost 30 years later, I’m continually learning and it’s something I’m still fascinated by.

Q: Who or what was a major influence on your career choices?

A: Family is often the greatest influence — and my dad was the only reason I took first-year business studies! — but there are so many other people who’ve influenced me. Some of them I’ve known personally, like the clinical psychologist housemate whose stories put me right off studying the clinical side of psychology, or the friend I did my overseas experience with in my late 20s… which eventually led me to emigrate from Scotland to New Zealand, and then Australia.

Others are people I’ve never met and who have no idea how much they’ve influenced me. One that comes to mind is Martha Beck (Oprah’s life coach), whose articles sparked a fascination with coaching for me back in the 90s.

Q: What were some major challenges in your career journey?

A: Most of the challenges I faced along the way are pretty similar to the challenges I see my clients facing now: not knowing what you’re ‘supposed to do’, feeling overwhelmed by choice and uncertainty, and getting stuck in self-doubt. Sometimes the biggest challenges are internal.

Q: What are you currently reading?

A: I always have two or three books on the go — and a collection that keeps growing — because I get my best insights from juggling different authors from different disciplines. At the moment I’m reading We’re All Going to Die by Dr Leah Kaminsky (a ‘joyful book about death’), along with Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari and Mastering the Clinical Conversation: Language as Intervention by Matthieu Villatte, Jennifer L. Villatte and Steven C. Hayes. It doesn’t matter what I’m reading, I can always find connections to career development practice.

Q: What is the most memorable book you have read? Why?

A: As a teenager, I was really inspired by Susan Jeffers’ Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway; it definitely influenced my attitude as to what was possible, and as a result, my life choices. Not quite so relevant to my work maybe, but I also loved Roald Dahl as a kid!

Q: What is the movie you most enjoyed? Why?

A: This is such a cliché but I love The Shawshank Redemption. Great actors, a really emotional story… and such a satisfying come-uppance in the end!

Q: What is your ‘dream job’? When do you plan to achieve this dream?

A: I think I’m pretty close to it now, to be honest; I’m very lucky. For the future, I want to keep learning and challenging myself, which probably means doing some more coaching study.

Q: What is a life dream you still would like to achieve?

A: I’ve been scuba-diving for almost 20 years — it’s how I met my partner — and Micronesia has been on the wish-list for almost as long. I want to dive Chuuk (Truk) and Palau. All of my dreams revolve around travel, really, and it’s a long, long list.

Q: How do you see the career education space changing over the next decade?

A: I think it’s a really exciting time to be working in the careers field, as the whole employment landscape is changing so quickly — and I don’t think anyone knows quite how it’s going to pan out yet.

Clearly, economic, demographic and technological change is going to translate into both challenges and opportunities. The secure and traditional ‘job for life’ may be gone, but in its place we’re going to see completely new roles and areas of growth. In a ‘gig economy’ there are going to be many possibilities for entrepreneurship and self-employment, for being creative and innovative, and for using technology in new ways — for those who are ready!

That’s where I believe career practitioners have a really important role to play. By shifting from the traditional model of helping clients to pick and plan a long-term career path to one more focused on building people’s awareness and capacity, we can help create that readiness… and that is absolutely going to change what skills we need ourselves, as well as the way we work.

If we’re going to help others to develop the skill set (and mindset) to adapt to ongoing change, we need to lead by example — through lifelong learning, developing active networks, being flexible and innovative, and embracing new technologies. All of us in career education need to be ready to step up to that.

Q: What challenges do you predict the education and careers sector to face in the future?

A: On the professional side, there’s the challenge for individual career practitioners to stay up to date and relevant, as well as to promote our services as a profession. This ensures that people recognise the value of seeking assistance at all stages of their life and career. We can make a big difference to people’s lives but we need to get that message out to the broader community!

A related challenge will be demonstrating return on investment, both to individuals and funding agencies. More and more, people want to know what they’re getting for their investment, whether that’s government wanting to see impact for tax-payer dollars spent, students wanting to see the benefit from incurring study debt or clients questioning the value of seeking private advice.

And that brings us to resourcing. We’re already seeing challenges related to funding, and like many sectors, I see ongoing pressure to do more with less — at a time of increasing need. That certainly brings challenges, along with opportunities to build closer links between education, government and industry, so that we can collaborate more efficiently and advocate more effectively.