FACE TO FACE COMMUNICATION
(November/December 2004 Issue)

I have a bad case of the phone menus. My mind is crumbling under the onslaught of beeps, prompt options, canned music, voice robots, and "your call is important to us". I am breaking out with a rash because I will never get to talk to a real person on the phone again. I am crying and all they want me to do is press the pound key. I have a question and no real person wants to answer it. It_s getting worse. Used to be I could figure out how to slide past menu options and get a person. Now they have me cornered. Punch your relevant option. That’s all you get. Doesn’t it just make you want to scream?

Our romance with technology is invading our lives. We think that faster is always better. The quality of the communication is regarded as less important than its speed. Personal and business decisions are often made on the fly, without a lot of human contact. People cut deals and barely have time to say hello.

I say this because career counseling is one of the few forms of communication left that emphasizes face-to-face contact. Thank heaven for face-to-face. Eye-to-eye. Non-verbal cues reveal how a person is realllly
feeling. Laughing, crying, grimacing, smiling. It’s a feast of human expression.

But, watch out. Technology has its sights set on career counseling too. A lot of it takes place now on the telephone. I understand that some of what passes for career counseling occurs via the computer. Face-to-face counseling is "labor intensive", as they say. Will the accountants and the techies try to "cost-effective" face-to-face contact out of existence?

Will the invasion of "career counseling" space continue? How does the head of a Career Center justify hours devoted to individual counseling when so many more people can be "reached" via technology?" "Saving time" is used to justify technology. Saving time for what?

If people get their career help via technology, the net result is that they will feel increasingly A L O N E. Sure, they’re getting information, but little or no opportunity to express feelings, which drive all good career decisions. And no way to ask questions. Even more importantly, face-to-face career counseling allows clients to "hear themselves talk". This is vital, because people experience themselves when they talk out loud about their aspirations, drives, and problems.

This phone menu thing is a very bad sign. It means the drive for so-called dollar-cost efficiency is relentless. Phone menus break needs into neat compartments that break people’s spirits when they have to listen to them endlessly while their pressing problems remain unanswered.

I fear that sooner or later someone will try to sort career needs into neat categories that can be responded to quickly and "efficiently". As my colleague Janice Klar suggests, we may be facing the imminent prospect of phone menus and robots providing a "structured" and non-human career counseling process.

Phone menus leave me feeling so helpless. I am the total captive of the automated voice on the phone. I could be suffering in any number of ways and the "voice" drones on. People suffer from career ailments and they are being nudged to believe their help is available through technology. Once again, this deepens their feeling of A L O N E N E S S.

I may be only half right about the intrusion of technology, but isn’t halfway bad enough? Half may mean 100 million of 200 million people are being advised to "go online" and make career choices in isolation. We need more career counselors. People need help. Cutting down on face-to-face career counseling will harm a lot of people. The very next time a phone menu assaults you, stand up and be counted. Vow to keep face-to-face communication alive and well.

Howard Figler, Ph.D., is the author of The Complete Job Search Handbook and The Career Counsleor's Handbook. He can be reached at: hefigler@pacbell.net