Geek Girl, Miss TTT & The Future

I spent a day this week mock interviewing 15 and 16 year old girls for a local school.  I joined businesses, public sector organisations and the Armed Forces interviewing a real cross section of the final year pupils.  Because my recruitment experience is so broad, I got to interview everything from budding vets to astro physicists.  I kid you not.  Anyway, it was a moving and enlightening experience on many levels. I learnt many things that day; I will share with you the following 2;

i)                    I would not go back to being 15 again for a million quid.

ii)                   Despite it being 25 years since I left school, NOTHING has changed as every kid still tries to fit into a category e.g. geek, pretty + popular, jock, rebel, indie + misunderstood.

Two of the young people really stood out for me on the day.  The first one was a typical “geek” type of girl.  She was earnest, keen and bursting full of promise!  I rubbed my hands in glee when I read her CV and covering letter – it was articulate, passionate and full of ambition to become a vet.  She came into the room and took a seat after a gentle handshake.  She was average height, average weight, average hair, neatly dressed (they wore their own clothes for the interview day, it was Come As Your Chosen Profession stylie) and wearing cool specs.  I shall call her for the purpose of this Geek Girl  though that does her emotional intelligence and sheer bloody potential a disservice and implies a lack of social skill that really wasn’t the case.
 

One of the questions I asked Geek Girl was which particular area of veterinary science was she interested in.  She started by explaining she was really interested in big cats and would dearly love to work in a zoo one day; she lit up talking about the challenges of administering help to such beautiful and powerful animals.   Then a strange thing happened…she visibly seemed to shrink in front of me and then went on to say that she would go into domestic animal veterinary science because that would be a much more sensible route to take, she believed that way she would be able to provide a stable income for her future family and as she came from a poor background (sic) she realised that you had to put sacrifice and being sensible before ambition….OMG! She’s 15! When I’d recovered enough from her outpouring to offer a response, I gently suggested that if she followed her dreams and did what she truly believed in then the money would follow.  I don’t think she believed me but maybe I’ve planted a seed that grows in her and counteracts the stifling of her ambitions.

So…onto the 2^nd girl that really interested me that day.  Her covering letter was beautifully written, her CV said that she was academically bright and her hobbies included dancing.  In she came.  She was beautiful in that precocious way that only a terribly trendy teen (TTT) can be.  Let’s call her Miss TTT.  She was engaging, articulate and smiley.  Until I asked her what she was really good at.  Her answer? “Well I can tell you I’m really bad at English”.  I was taken aback, to say the least.  I pointed out to Miss TTT that i) I’d asked what she was good at and ii) the covering letter that accompanied her CV was beautifully written and  asked if she had done it herself.  Cue number 2 girl of the day visibly shrinking in chair before me…Miss TTT nodded.  Was the covering letter her own work I enquired? Again, a silent nod.  I went on to explain to her that I received hundreds of covering letters from employed adults in senior positions every month that couldn’t write such a good covering letter…I meant it too.  She looked as if she was a dieter caught with her hand in the biscuit tin.  I leaned forward, looked around to check no-one else was listening and whispered to her “you know it’s Ok to be pretty and popular AND bright you know?”.  Her mouth dropped open.  She whispered back “How did you know?!”and then out of her mouth tumbled all the fears of rejection from her Pretty Popular Peer group if they found out she was clever, that boys didn’t like Geek Girls and she was scared stiff about going to College and not fitting in there – such a lot of pent up fear!   I explained to her that you didn’t actually have to fit into a category that everyone else wanted to place you and that some of the world’s beautiful people are also very clever.  That it’s OK to shine, it’s OK to step into the limelight every once in a while.  That boys really love girls that can hold a conversation and make them laugh…and if they are as beautiful as her too; well that’s a bonus!  I really wanted to hug her to be honest. 

I love working with our teenagers but I wish that at 15 I’d had an older woman take an interest in who I was and offer a shoulder to cry on, some genuinely useful advice about boys and encourage me to be the most of who I could be.  I would have been an engineer.  Geek Girls Rule!