Ahh, the very phrase career inspiration brings me back rather sharply to the days of leaving school with just a few rather mixed exam results.   Most of my pals were setting off for jobs in banks or retail outlets – shops as we knew them then.   The lads were destined for police, ambulance or generally anything offering a vehicle to drive!   There was also the element that had favoured engineering and at least four in our cohort took up apprenticeships with big local firms.   We are talking a very long time ago when there was absolutely no problem with finding a job.  The labour shortage following the second world war was still acute so you could walk into almost any organisation and get placed reasonably quickly.   So the idea of being inspired by a career still seems rather a luxury.  It suggests a high element of choice in the matter.   In families of old – seriously old money, it is still often the tradition that the eldest son goes into politics if previous family membes had done so.  The second son would get a commission and follow family members into the military.   The third son generally went into the church, becoming a vicar and taking up their ‘living’ within the family parish.   Now this puts a fantastically old fashioned wash over what actually happens today but often there is an element of these routes still permeating through the landed gentry – oh and by that, there will be at least one family member who goes into farming or land conservation in some way or other.