|
-
At Pearmund Cellars and its siblings, you can learn all about the wine business, from harvesting to bottling.
Aspiring baker Matt Jaffe (right) gives his VocationVacation dream job a try as mentor Tim Healea instructs.
'Vocationer' Kieran Falconer test-drives his dream job |
BY CATHY JETT
People are always telling Chris Pearmund that they'd love to have his job.
"I must hear that three or four times a day," said the managing partner and executive winemaker of Pearmund Cellars in Broad Run.
Customers sip some of his award-winning viognier, spend a relaxing afternoon at the winery, and start daydreaming that this is the life for them, he said.
Now, thanks to an innovative new program, they can experience that life for real--without committing to it.
Pearmund recently enrolled his winery and its two siblings in VocationVacations, a 5-year-old tourism business that lets people test-drive careers in everything from running a restaurant to captaining a catamaran, even becoming an actor, antiques dealer or animal therapist.
"I had seen what they were doing, and thought it was very cool," Pearmund said. "It's very much what we're about. We're very much on the educational side of things."
He applied to become a mentor several months ago and was accepted. What participants do at Pearmund Cellars and the nearby Winery at La Grange and Vint Hill Craft Winery will depend on the time of year and what career they're interested in pursuing in the industry.
"There's more to running a winery and making wine than the product itself," said Pearmund. "We'll teach them a bit of everything, including wine production, management and economics as well as the mechanics of the industry."
Getting the chance to sample a different career while on vacation is something VocationVacation founder Brian Kurth began daydreaming about 10 years ago during his long commute to his job with a dot.com startup in Chicago. Bored and staring at taillights, he wondered what it would be like to become a dog trainer, a marketer for a winery or to work in the tourism industry for a few days.
"I thought that, obviously, there was some company doing this," he said. "This was in the days before Google. I did some research, and found there wasn't really anything."
Kurth ended up arranging his own internship as a dog trainer, but found he was spending more time cleaning up after his charges than training them.
That, he decided, wasn't the life for him. But he did realize there was potential in arranging similar "vocationing" trips for others, and the idea for VocationVacations was born. It just took the loss of his job, a six-month road trip across the United States and parts of Canada and a move to Portland, Ore., to persuade him to pursue it.
Kurth launched VocationVacation and its companion Web site, VocationVaca tion.com, in 2004. It soon caught on with Gen Xers who were discovering the career they'd prepared for in college wasn't all they'd hoped it would be, and burned-out baby boomers in search of a career change. Lately, he's seen more people who are worried about hanging on to their jobs and want to explore their options before they're laid off.
These days they have their choice of about 150 mentors, from The Gault School of Archaeological Research in Austin, Texas, which provides two days of one-on-one mentorship for Indiana Jones wannabes for $1,049; to Lori McAlister of New York City, who'll show them the ins and outs of being a yoga instructor in two days for $1,149.
"For adults, two or three days really are an indicator," Kurth said. "People ask me, 'How can I decide if I want to be a "fill-in-the-blank," but it's a baby step. If they decide they want to pursue a vocation, then they need to ask themselves, 'Do I need to go back to school? Get a part-time job in this field?'"
A Philadelphia woman who was a successful claims adjuster, for example, sold her house and used the money to go to college after she took a VocationVacation to see what it would be like to be a television producer.
"The first day after she got back to the hotel room, she told me she loved it so much that she burst into tears," Kurth said. "She said, 'It was a lost opportunity. I'm 40 and I dropped out of college after my dad died to work in the family business.'"
Since then, the woman has graduated from the Art Institute of Philadelphia and now works for PBS, he said.
She is among thousands who have taken VocationVacations, according to Kurth, who won't give the exact number for competitive reasons. He's turned his experiences and theirs into a book, "Test-Drive Your Dream Job," gives talks about using vacations to find dream jobs, and provides career coaching when he isn't seeking out more mentors. His big push now is the metro Washington area, where he recently signed up Cathal Armstrong, owner and chef of Restaurant Eve in Alexandria.
"I'm just getting the message out that there's more to life, people," Kurth said. "You don't have to make that long commute. You can make a change."
Cathy Jett: 540/374-5407
Email: cjett@freelancestar.com
