CAREERS

By Carol Christen

Each person leaving high school needs a plan: “How I am going to learn to support myself?” Whether you go on to higher education and where you go for that education will be much affected by what you want to study.

Below are some other steps teens can take to begin assembling a career path that will help them achieve financial independence and build a good first career.

1. By what age do your parents expect you to be partly self-supporting? By when do they want you to be fully self-supporting? To be fully self-supporting, you’ll need to earn approximately $16.50 an hour ($35,000 a year).

2. A job finances your life. What kind of a life do you want to have as a young adult?

3. You are not picking a job for life. First careers are often short. On average, you’ll be job hunting about every three years. So remember, you are picking what you are going to do, first, to earn a living when you leave school, at whatever level that turns out to be.

4. Jobs are like clothing, you have to try on quite a few in order to find a couple that fit really well, say, enough to want to wear them 8 hours a day.

5. To learn what a particular job is really like, you need to talk with nine to 15 people. If you take the time to do this, you’ll learn about new jobs you never knew existed, create a network of people who will let you know about job vacancies and develop skills that will help you do well in employment interviews.

6. Although only 20 percent of jobs require a university degree, 75 percent of today’s jobs require some post-high school study. Most formal education is academic and not everyone learns well that way. How do you learn best? If you are going to take on more studies, make sure they fit how you learn.

7. Do the jobs you most want to do happen in places where you would like to live? If not, where are the kinds of jobs that interest you? Do you know what regions, cities, states or countries have those jobs? If you don’t, find out. Knowing job market information from the area where you want to live when you are a young adult will help you create a strategy to get employed quickly. 

8. What are the starting salaries for work that interests you? Most reports about salary use averages. Starting salaries are much lower. If you are going to borrow money to cover educational expenses, don’t borrow more than 66 percent of your likely starting salary, you won’t be able to pay your bills!

9. No one is a success at something they don’t like. What are the most repetitive tasks of the jobs you most want to do? How will you feel about doing those tasks day after day?

10. Talk with the youngest people you can find who are doing the jobs that most interest you. The experience of recent hires can be very different from those who have been doing that job for a while.

11. Learn effective job search techniques. No matter how great your education, training, skills or experience, if you can’t get a job in the field you most want to work in, you won’t have a career in that field.

12. Finding a job you’ll enjoy—one that matches your ambitions, education and interests—is your responsibility. Lots of people can help you, but don’t expect someone to do this for you.

13. Leave room in your life for the unexpected. Sometimes plans or goals must change. Learn to be flexible so you won’t be devastated when life takes an unexpected turn.

© 2007 Carol Christen

Carol Christen has been helping teens and adults find work they enjoy for 30 years.  You can learn more about her and her book What Color Is Your Parachute? For Teens at her website, www.carolchristen.com.

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