The Snowball of Vocational Inexperience

A person with few friends with whom to practice social interactions is at a disadvantage in the workplace. It is harder for him or her than for most people to get along with co-workers and to respond properly to supervisors.

This deficit in experience (and opportunities for learning skills) can lead to such a person’s being susceptible to being terminated—laid-off or even fired—from his or her first job.

Such a spotty employment history often snowballs into the person’s having misunderstandings in his or her next job (once secured,) due to:

·         A relative lack of knowledge of job skills needed in the industry or profession; and,

·         A relative lack of knowledge of the culture of the particular (new) employer’s. This is because the characteristics of a typical worksite are likely similar within an industry or profession.

So on his or her next job, it is even more likely (than on the prior job) that it will be difficult for the person to be promoted to a better position. And his or her being terminated from a subsequent job is likewise even more likely.

Some aspects of almost every job involve promotion (sales or marketing.) This activity is feasible only to the extent that the employee has “people skills.” And such are hard to learn for the first time on the job itself, without a firm foundation in earlier life.

The lack of many friends in adolescence and early adulthood, which can be the situation for many people diagnosed with serious mental illness, can snowball into later vocational inexperience.