8 Best Ways to Help Your Teen Choose a Career Path

What does your teen want to do when they graduate from high school or college? This is a question that many parents ask themselves or even others. The answers aren’t really simple to find because one career looks more attractive than the other. And people can add to your confusion by giving their own opinions.

Given this common scenario that every parent and their teen daughter or son faces, the best thing you could do is help your teen choose a career path. And you could actually help them in their efforts to find a right career which would help them lifelong.

Unfortunately, most teens and even their parents are unaware about the exact definition of a career, to a great extent. Therefore, I will first define what’s the meaning of a career and proceed to show you the eight best ways to help your teen choose a career path.

Definition of Career

A career can broadly be defined as a profession that a person follows for a larger part of their life to earn an income, either through jobs or own business.

However, in the broader perspective, a career is also defined as a profession or field in which a person works for a major part of their life and identifies with that industry or sector. Career also includes social status and financial standing of a person, through growth in a specific profession.

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That means, a career is the most important part of a person’s life. It doesn’t only involve a job or business. Instead, it also includes growth in the job or business that brings financial freedom and social status, among other things. A career defines the entire life of a person.

Eight Best Ways to Help Teens Choose a Career

Since teens are very active, you can channelize their energies on helping them choose a right career path. That way, your teen can make the right decisions for their career and life. It’s very important for a teen to select the right career, especially something they love, because a career is lifelong.

Here’re the eight best ways you can help your teen to select the right career path.

Speak to Your Teen

As a matter of fact, speaking to your teen about the career they wish to pursue is the simplest and best way to help them choose a right career path. Your teen would definitely have some idea about the career they want. However, in some cases, parents try to force the teen to follow in their footsteps or find a career that they believe is good for the teenager. When you have an open and free discussion with your teen, you can easily gauge which field of career interests them. Therefore, I would strongly recommend you speak with your teen about their options for a career, without forcing anything.

Identify Innate Skills

All of us are born with some innate skills. These skills come to us naturally. Or we have a strong liking for a particular job or profession since our early years which remains with us even as we grow. That’s again because of inborn or innate skills your teen possesses. It’s a well-known fact that persons that follow a career with their innate skills are highly successful in life as a whole. Therefore, the first thing to do to help your teen choose the right career path is by identifying their innate skills.

Find a Job for Teens

Find a superb job for your teen. Though we’re living in the new normal where jobs at brick-and-mortar businesses are fewer than before, you can always find something  for your teen. A superb online job can help your teen identify the career they wish to pursue lifelong. It’s worth remembering that there’re several rules that come into play when selecting a job for your teen. Therefore, find one where they can work online from home and yet identify the career they wish to enter. 

Attend Career Fairs

Attending career fairs is yet another excellent way to help your teen choose a career path for themselves. You would be aware that career fairs are often conducted at community centers, high schools and colleges. Human Resources officials from various large corporations participate in these career fairs and give details about various prospects to teens. This can help your teen daughter and son to identify what career they wish to follow in life by making the right decision.

Reading Biographies

Encourage your teen daughter or son to read biographies of people they love. These could be anyone from scientists to inventors or even political personalities. All these people did enter a field because they were interested in that specific career. Reading a biography can help the teen identify with some great and eminent persona and enable them to find the right career. For example, the Italian adventurer, Marco Polo, served as my hero while choosing a career that took me across the world.

 Free Online Courses

Nowadays, there’re countless free courses available from any online learning platform. Help your teen to select one they like and enroll for a course of their choice. If your teen finds the free course boring or doesn’t want to continue, then you can clearly know they’re not interested in making a career in that field. You can help them to select another one which they believe would be more interesting. Actually, free online courses give a small glimpse about a profession. They can help your teen identify whether they wish to pursue their profession. And you’ll not be spending any money on enrolling them for a paid course they might not like later.

Encourage Blogging

You might wonder what’s the connection between blogging and helping your child select the right career path. A lot actually. Your teen can create a superb blog on the field or career that attracts them the most. To write blogposts, they would definitely have to do a lot of research about a particular field. That way, they gain more knowledge about the field and can decide to make it their career. Blogging is also a superb way for creating a personal brand as a teen and entering the chosen career.

Find Internships

If your teen is interested in a specific field, the best way to help them gain more knowledge about a career is to find them free or paid internships. However, Federal rules allow only certain jobs to be taken by teens and that too with special permits. If your teen is above working age, you can help them find an internship where they can learn more about the field in which they wish to make a career. Since they will be working alongside professionals in that field, they stand to gain superb insights into that career.

In Conclusion

The best way to help your teen to choose a superb career path is to give them the freedom to select one. Often, parents have their own plans for their teens, which is fair enough. However, your teen might have different ideas or want to follow a different career. In such cases, it’s only fair to help your teen know more about that career and find whether they’re genuinely interested.