The Marketing of Careers: Corporate Needs vs. Individual Aspirations. A Question of Ambition.
A teenager who doesn’t really think things through, doesn’t know what they want to do, and is in that classic adolescent phase—there’s nothing more easily influenced.
The concept is simple: they need to make a life decision that, no matter what, stresses them out. They don’t want to spend too much time on it, and they certainly don’t want to be bothered with it.
Internships are the perfect tool to cement emotions around a job through experience. Five internships in a year? Oh no, that would actually put them in a mindset of reflection and comparison—and that’s exactly what we want to avoid.
The government knows this well, and so do corporations.
The conversation isn’t about passion, self-discovery, or how to make a meaningful choice.
The message is simple: flip through the giant career catalog and pick one.
The goal? Fill job slots, match students to corporate needs.
And what better way to do that than by introducing them to a single job experience? Because once a teenager sees a profession, their first instinct is:
"Oh, this is cool."
And they won’t look much further—unless they stumble upon another job with a bigger "wow" factor, or someone in authority steers them away, or their grades make the decision for them.
That’s why, on LinkedIn, the government is actively promoting high school internship programs with corporations like Engie, offering exposure to 400 different jobs students supposedly wouldn’t know about—so they can "discover" them.
The real goal? Catch the undecided.
The ones with no concrete plans.
And it works. Just like it did for Big Tobacco.
Remember Joe Camel, the cartoon mascot designed to appeal to kids?
Get them thinking early, and you lock in your influence.
Economic needs outweigh personal aspirations, just like we see in most career guidance programs.
I help those who want to make a deep, thoughtful decision—far from standardized tests and mass-market career placement strategies.
