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Some parents incorrectly believe that high schoolers shouldn't yet start exploring careers. That’s wrong because having an tentative career goal can motivate a student to work harder in school, help in choosing a major and college, and because changing career is more difficult than it's often portrayed. It's great if you can choose well the first time. To that end, do encourage the not time-consuming career exploration described here.
Careers likely viable over today's teens' workspan
There are thousands of careers and many new ones will be available when your teens reach adulthood. Here are a few that are likely to burgeon and that many people find rewarding.
Next-generation psychological counseling. Unfortunately, mental health issues are unlikely to decrease soon. Indeed, as people seem to be required to do ever more to have a decent life, the need for counseling will likely increase.
The field of counseling is ripe for reinvention. Cognitive-behavioral therapy. is popular and effective in many cases, but it's far from a cure-all. Future training of counselors and therapists will likely be more eclectic, so the practitioner can, depending on the client, work anywhere along these three continua: support---->confrontation, past trauma---->here-and-now, and decision-making that's emotion-centric--->rationality centric. And that assumes there won't be some breakthrough, all-new methodology. In any event, counseling will likely be an ever more interesting and in-demand profession.
Intermediate health care provider. The U.S. is moving to "covering" everyone with a system that's already overwhelmed (hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by medical errors each year in hospitals alone) and many of the newly covered will pay little. So, an ever-higher percentage of health care will be dispensed not by expensive physicians but by intermediate-care providers such as physician assistant, physical therapy assistant, dental assistant, etc. The good news for career-seekers at least, is that the training is much shorter than, for example, to be a physician or dentist.
Software developers and engineers with expertise in database architecture, artificial intelligence, and machine learning will almost assuredly stay in demand. New applications may include AI-assisted diagnosis and treatment recommendations, better counseling apps, dating site matching, individualized education, and advanced embryo selection to ensure absence of genetically influenced diseases and, if society deems it ethically acceptable, having a predisposition to good reasoning ability and to altruism.
Precision medicine. In your teen's lifetime, major diseases will likely be prevented and/or treated with molecules custom-matched not only to the very specific disease but to the patient's physiology. Your math-centric teen who can picture getting a PhD could help make that happen.
Safer nuclear. Nuclear energy is another career area for those with ability and interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math.). It may well be that meeting climate-change goals will require adding more nuclear to our energy mix. So, there should be careers developing more compact, safer nuclear plants, negotiating the approval process, and running the plants.
Other offshore- and automation-resistant careers: that have high average job satisfaction include haircutter, electrician, and management careers that require subjective judgment and understanding of American cultures.
No matter the career, government jobs may be particularly attractive. Under both conservative and liberal governments, the size of government continues to increase. And the current zeitgeist suggests that will accelerate. And government pay, when including benefits, holidays, and job security are quite an attractive package. So, if your teenager is likely to value security over nimbleness of action and especially if interested in such matters as climate change or helping the poor, s/he should consider a career in government—There's a very wide range, from clerk to executive, accountant to program director. Federal internships are available for high school and college students, and for recent grads. Those internships are pipelines to desirable government careers.
How to explore
Websites such as MyNextMove.org and CareerOneStop.org are great starting places. Also good are compendia of information on a few hundred popular careers such as the government’s authoritative if dry Occupational Outlook Handbook or my friendlier Careers for Dummies. And don't minimize the value of a plain ol’ Google search: It curates countless resources instantly and for free. Search on any careers that intrigue, for example, [“human resources careers.”]
Spending just an hour or two doing the aforementioned should help you select a career that you’ll like and likely will be viable.
Tips
Of course, it’s great when teens are willing and able to explore careers on their. own, but the task is both important and potentially difficult enough that you might want to sit alongside your child. But let your teen sit in the driver’s seat. Only help as much as needed to keep your child from staying stuck. A rule of thumb: If your teen reaches a roadblock, default to saying something like, "See if you can solve it." If after around 30 seconds, there's been no progress, offer a suggestion.
It's tempting to trust online sources less than a personal conversation, in the same way that many college-bound students choose a college more on a campus visit than their online research, even though the visit is colored by the weather, the tour guide, and how pretty the campus is, even though, after the first days, that little affects most college students' success and happiness.
If you do want to and get to talk with a person who's in a career of interest, you might want to ask these questions:
What made you choose this career?
How did you train?
How did you get your first job?
What’s the best and worst thing about the career?
What’s one piece of advice you'd like to offer that we haven’t covered?
Not only can helping your child be helpful, it can be quite a nice opportunity for bonding and having discussions with your teen that are more interesting that, "What did you do in school today?" "Nothin'."
I read this aloud on YouTube.
