In this blog we will explore and provide insights in to key career related questions such as: what is a career and how is it different from a job? What can be done to develop young people’s career from early stage of their life? And whether or not parents or guardians have a role to play and if so, what can they do?
Many of our young people going to school or universities don’t have any clear-cut notion as to where they will end up or what they will do after they finish school or college. This is especially true in Africa and other developing countries where career advice or coaching is visually nonexistent or if it does, it is a luxury that only few can afford.
My own experience growing up and studying in high a school and a university in Ethiopia was no different. Although I was one of the best achievers academically, I had no clue as to which subject, I should purse and why. Neither did I actively seek advice, nor was one available to me. My friends were also in the same boat. We were just focusing on scoring good results in all the subjects of study hoping that it will help us land a job after completion, whatever job it is at the end.
Looking back now, I wish I had someone to talk to about my future career, someone to advise me which discipline to focus on and why.
Although the situation is somewhat improved for current generation of high school goers with some guidance and counselling system available in many educational institutions, there is still much to be done in terms of providing tailored career counselling and coaching at all levels from an early stage whether at high schools, universities or colleges.
Experiences and evidences show that career advice should start from the very early ages in children’s life. The question: “what do you want to be when you grow up?” we usually pose to kids at home or in the neighborhood is very important but not enough in itself.
We need to follow these questions with several other follow-up questions such as “why do you want to be so and so? And how do you plan to get there? Etc. Such questions will make them think and think hard and form a clear idea and conviction from the very beginning on the career path they want to follow. Such questions need to be asked throughout the school or university years of the child in question to help him/her refine their thoughts and keep their focus and momentum. They need to be clear about concepts such as career and job? Whether these are one and the same or have differences, and if so, which ones should they focus on.
The goal of career development for young people is to help them return to school, enroll in post-secondary education or career training programs or start a career. Such programs usually provide skills development, work experiences, and youth development activities.
Let’s now go a bit deeper in to the concept of career. But first few definitions are in order:
JOB vs CAREER
What is a job?
A job is something you go to each day, normally to put money in your pocket and meet ends. However, the job may not be something you are passionate about or something you deem fulfilling and true to your values. Here, you tend to live more in the moment and may change to several different jobs over time. It can be full-time or part-time and may be short-term. You might earn an hourly wage or a set paycheck rather than a salary with benefits. You might need to learn certain skills connected with that job, but not all jobs require a specialized skills or advanced training. Clearly, employers expect their employees to perform their individual jobs cut out for them in exchange for regular wages paid to them.
You can also define a job as a short-or long-term contract between an employer and a worker. For instance, a company hires a local contractor to complete an office renovation job. They agree upon payment terms, and the job ends once the project is complete.
What is a career?
Typically, a career is something that takes you into the future-you build up skills and knowledge that take you onto more fulfilling, higher paying and higher status opportunities. You typically stay within the same career over longer periods of time.
In other words, a career is a long-term professional journey you may determine based on your passions. It is the path you embark upon to fulfill your professional goals and ambitions. You may require a certain level of education or training to achieve these goals. Individuals pursuing careers often have set salaries with benefits such as medical, life and disability insurance, retirement plans, pensions and bonuses. They also gain benefits beyond money, such as personal pride, work satisfaction and self-worth. A career might last for your entire life. You could hold numerous jobs under many employers in your chosen industry that you progress through during your career.

How does a job affect your career?
You will likely hold many jobs throughout your career, even if you don’t have a set career path when you first join the workforce.
It may be helpful to consider every position you fill as a step in your life’s work. Your job can affect your career in the following ways.
Jobs make up your career:
A career consists of all the jobs you have worked, regardless of whether they are associated with each other. You could spend decades working a job in the same department at one organization. Alternatively, you could work many seemingly unrelated jobs over your lifetime, such as storekeeper, sales clerk, information technology specialist or as office manager. They all define your career and can connect you with other opportunities you are passionate about. Think of jobs as the short-term duties that can help you achieve your long-term goals.
You learn from each job:
Consider your jobs as learning platforms. every job you take equips you with lessons you can apply to future jobs. You will also gain a variety of skills, knowledge and experiences. For instance, maybe your job as a retail clerk taught you how to handle difficult situations with tact. Your receptionist position may have taught you good communication and rapport building with customers. Other roles might help develop your writing skills, or your ability to handle rejection or teach you the skills to manage changes.
Jobs provide you with networking opportunities:
With each job, you build a network and community of professional contacts. If you maintain a productive and professional relationship with all your colleagues and clients you can provide yourself with the ability to reach out to these connections throughout your career.
Hard work pays off:
Your current job could affect your career in unexpected ways. For this reason, try to go beyond doing the bare minimum. A positive outlook, an eagerness to learn and consistently deliver high-quality work can set you apart, create new opportunities and earn you recommendations and pave ways for future jobs.

How to turn a job in to a career:
– Continue learning and developing
Always aim to enhance your skills and knowledge. If you know what career path you want to pursue, figure out what expertise and experience you need to get there. Once you are aware of the requirements, seek to develop your qualifications whether through practice in your current job or formal training, online courses and education. When trying to determine which skills will benefit your career most, look to successful professionals in that industry. Ask yourself what their strengths, talents or accomplishments are. Reach out to individuals with similar careers, and ask for their advice
– Get a mentor: It is important to have someone to talk to about our career aspirations. These persons can be your parents, your siblings, teachers or professional career coaches.
– Expand your network
Workshops, conferences, seminars and social events can be great places to meet professionals in your field. You can expand your network to have more resources for sharing experiences, learning, gaining advice and gaining job recommendations.
– Apply for internship:
Building experience in your career field, even if it is an internship, can help you advance or break into that sector. For instance, if you are currently working as a civil engineer but want to war as an IT professional, you may enroll in a related educational or certification opportunities and then look for internships that can help you gain IT skills and experience.
WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO TALK TO YOUNGER PEOPLE ABOUT THEIR FUTURE CAREERS?
Unfortunately, only a few lucky people know from an early age what they want to spend their life doing. The rest of us fit somewhere between having some idea and or no idea about it at all.
Thus, most young people can be unclear about their direction in life. It’s often not until their early twenties that they gain a good sense of who they are and what they want to be.
A key career readiness skill is to get kids talking, encouraging them to talk with each other, reach out to others, not just at schools but also wherever they can to engage in deeper career conversations. On the other hand, current school systems, demand that younger people make decisions without providing the necessary guidance and coaching to help them know who they are and what they want to achieve in life. Thus, young people at schools are asked to select subjects, make elective choices and vocational study opportunities. Although there is a wealth of information about possible choices, young people can however feel overwhelmed, unable to decide or lose interest in the whole ‘careers thing.
CAN PAPRENTS OR GUARDIANS HELP SHAPE THE CAREER OF THEIR CHILDREN?
Career advice or coaching is not only for professional career coaches. Parents or guardians have key roles to play in shaping their children’s future career.
They key is to build on the usual questions we often ask kids growing up -what do you want to be when you grow-up and expand on it to help them refine their thoughts without imposing our wishes on them. Experience shows that the below four approaches will help in this process:
1. Start as early as possible:
Studies indicate that the importance of choosing a career path plays on the minds of children from as early as the age of 10 while others has shown that college and university undergraduates don’t determine their career goals until after graduation. What these studies tell us is that although it is important to encourage children to think about their future career choices from school age, such endeavors should continue well beyond school.
2. Context, approach and methodology is key
We live in a world which is much different from when us as parents were growing up. The current communication technology and social media means that today’s working environment is much different compared to few decades back.
It is therefore very important that parents or guardians, career counselors and coaches adapt and employ these technologies and channels. Accordingly, use of mixed and varied ways and not just the usual lecture-style discussion on young people’s future career is important in order to motivate and keep them interested to think thorough their future career in a continuous but incremental way.
3. Exposure makes a difference
Besides the career conversations, that we always need to have with the children, it is important that we also carefully organize visits to different work places from early on so that they have a first-hand experience of working environments and conditions.
Parents or guardians can organize a visit to their own work places or to a nearby industrial parks or public and private offices to provide first-had work place exposure. A small talk or tour by the managers of the work places to be visited goes a long way to implant what work means in children’s mind.
4. Help Children identify their already exiting strength or potential and build on those.
Every child is good or has a potential to be good at something. This quite often shows from the very early age. These can be observed from what the kids spend most of their time on after school or on their spare times, the questions they usually ask about things around them or people of interest to them. For example, you may see kids play with electronic equipment quite often than with other materials. These observations can give a clue as to the strengths and or potential areas of career interest of the child.
In the example above, such a child will most likely become an electronic engineer when s/he grows up. It is therefore, important that we hinge our conversations on these areas of their interest about potential future careers. Asking why they like those subjects and what their best skills are gets them thinking about which workplace they see themselves in one day. A caution here is for parents to be careful not to let their personal prejudices get in the way of their child’s hopes for the future. Our role as parents, guardians or coaches needs to be simply giving the child encouragement and support which will go a long way to helping them make the best career choice possible for themselves.
In general, for parents /guardians or counselors, wanting to help their child find out who they are and what they want to do is a process that depends on many factors. The below strategies are recommended for successful career counselling of children by their parents or guardians.
1. Don’t be control freak. Let the kids make their own choices:
As parents or guardians, we often believe that we know what is best for our children and therefore, prescribe certain directions for their child without the consent or at least conversation with the child in question. Such approaches often prove to be counterproductive. Children appreciate respectful guidance where their say is also heard instead of one directional prescription coming from their parents or guardians who usually impose their own will to achieve their own interest through their children.
2. Ask your child what would they choose if they could be or do anything in the whole world:
It is always good that you as a parent start with what the child thinks about his future career. Your key role at this stage is to just listen. You can perhaps later on offer advises related to the areas of interest the child has shared with you. If the child has said that he wanted to be an actor when he/she grows up, then you can offer advice to perhaps consider studying dramas that seems to be his/her dream. In any event, it is important that you keep on listening as the child continue talking about their current dreams and aspirations. Your role here is to help the child turn their dreams into reality. You can help your child by showing how that works in practice.
3. Be a role model:
Find and draw on your own positive career experience to date. Share the paths you had to travel through to arrive where you are today, the challenges you had to overcome, the influences of other people who had positive impact on your career, any internal or external factors that influenced your career decisions. It is important to talk about what the outcomes have been and how you feel about them now and in your future plans and aspirations. Such candid conversations with the child in question will most certainly provoke thoughts about their own future careers.
4. Encourage your child to reach out to others and seek advice as related to their careers:
Encourage your children to reach out to others for career advice. Talking to others such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, their friends’ parents or other family, friends or people they know in general will give children wider perspective and provide them choices and options when it comes to their future career decisions.
5. Attend events and activities together with your child:
Events or activities could be watching movies together or going to football tournaments, or reading novels. You can discuss the kind of work that the various characters seen in the events exhibit and how the work has impacted their lives, wealth, health, happiness etc. Such discussions will help the children broaden their perspectives on work and its impact on their life.
Ask questions like, ‘Do you think charact x likes his/her job?’ or ‘Do you think character y is good at his/her job?’ You can discuss the benefits or challenges of certain jobs, and consider why people work.
6. Plan and do things together as parents and children:
The joint activities could be anything within the child’s capacity. For example, outdoor activities such as gardening, biking, or playing in the fields, indoor activities such as cooking or cleaning the house, or washing cloths- whatever the activity, the key is to do it together by sharing roles and responsibilities. In the process, you can complement your child on their skills. Use simple but effective remarks such as: ‘You’re very organized’, or ‘I like the way you plan before actually doing it’, or ‘I appreciate your use of time(efficiency), all these are important factors for success in life’. Such conversations with your child highlight the importance of recognizing one’s own strengths.
Below are some selected examples of parent-child activities to help children understand careers (adapted from myfuture.edu.au).
Positive parental influence can boost your child’s confidence when making career choices. The earliest, most powerful, learning about careers is shaped by the adults in a child’s life. Children also respond to career-related images on television and in other media. In daily life, you will find many opportunities to help your young child or teenager prepare for a great future. We’ve identified nine parent-child activities for teenagers, primary school students and preschoolers.
Teenage Activities:
Activity 1: Recording your career story.
You can help your child by taking time out to think about the ways your own career has developed. It can be fun to reminisce, and it will help you understand the events and people that have influenced your career. Having mapped your own career you will appreciate the influences that are shaping your child’s unique journey.
Create a timeline that records the highs and lows of your life, learning and work journeys. The below prompts will help to get you started:
• your first career role-playing game, for example, police officer, nurse, teacher
• a significant school experience such as winning the spelling competition
• a significant family event such as moving house
• your first paid work
• someone whose job or life fascinated you
• your first full-time job and why you chose it
• someone who influenced the career direction you took
• the biggest career change you have made so far.
Reflect on your timeline, and share your dreams and your experience with your child. It will help them understand the ways in which the unexpected and planned events in your life influenced your career.
Your teenager may be inspired to draw their own timeline. They can talk with you about the people and situations that are currently influencing their decisions.
Activity 2: Exploring and developing career awareness through movie watching.
Watch a movie together. Later – perhaps over a meal – discuss the different characters and their work/life roles. Think about what implications these might have for work and lifestyle choices. Discuss aspects of the movie that might relate to your own or your child’s aspirations. You might spark discussion with the following questions:
• Has the movie changed any of your ideas about careers?
• Did it cast certain occupations in a positive light and others in a negative light?
• Was there any activity in the movie that made you say ‘I want to do that!’?
• Observe character traits and discuss which you see as positive and negative. What did you identify with and what did you feel distanced from?
• From the discussion, you might both decide on five character attributes that are most important to you. Consider how they might relate to your and your child’s career aspirations.

Activity 3: Decision-making:
Decision-making is a critical part of career planning. Just like any other skill, it needs time and practice to master. Allow your child to make decisions and understand the flow-on effects that arise from them.
Involve your child in planning large events, such as a family holiday or gathering. Offer them genuine choices and make sure that their views are fully considered. Their confidence will grow as they develop this skill that will one day help them manage their own career.
Primary school student activities:
Encourage your child to think about different occupations as you both do household activities together. Talk about the different roles that you or others have at home, at work and in the community.
Activity 1: Awareness of occupations.
You could build a cardboard neighborhood or a town with houses, shops, garages and recreational spaces. In the process, talk about the different roles that people perform in the following places:
• House
• Market place
• Movie theatre
• University
• School
• Train station
• Airport
• Child care center.
Alternatively, you could explore the many occupations involved in building a city, town, suburb or road. Ask your child to choose one of these roles that they would like to try out when they’re older. Remember to allow your child to dream.
Activity 2: Occupations out and about.
Next time you visit a museum, local park or sport, science or environmental center, talk about the work that people do there. You could discuss the knowledge and skills that people might need to make a piece of art, grow a garden or build a playground.
Activity 3: Alphabet careers.
The alphabet game involves identifying or calling out occupations that starts with each of the English letters, followed by discussions needed by someone having that occupation. This can be done as a pass time during holiday breaks at home or while travelling together. The game could enhance your child’s occupation awareness.
For example, A for accountant, who would need to be:
• good at mathematics
• able to solve problems
• able to think logically.
B for butcher, who would need to be:
• polite and helpful
• good at using sharp knives
• careful and clean.
Pre-schooler activities:
Your child starts to make decisions about work when he or she is very young. So, it’s important to start planting seeds very early. Early childhood is a time when children’s play helps them to learn and grow. By joining in, you can extend their exploration of possible futures.
Activity 1: Dressing up.
Gather together your (and other family members’) old clothes so that your child can play dress-ups. Encourage your child to put on different clothes for different occupational roles. It’s also fun to use the play tools that children often have today.
For example:
• a gardener might use a lawnmower, wheelbarrow, shovels, watering can and a hat
• a teacher might use pens, paper, files, felt markers and a computer
• a shop assistant might work with a cash register and money.
Talk to your child about what a gardener/teacher/shop assistant does, as you join them in play. Through this simple activity, you’re supporting their early career development.
Activity 2: Watching TV shows and reading books.
Watch educational children’s TV shows and read books together to find opportunities to explore occupations.
Activity 3: Talking about likes and dislikes.
To help your child understand what has influenced your life, learning and work choices, you could play a game of ‘I like, you like’. Simply take turns to talk about activities that you really enjoy, for example:
Dad: I like cooking dinner.
Your child: I like planting flowers.
Mum: I like learning to use the computer.
Talk in positive ways about the work that you enjoy doing around the house or elsewhere. Doing so will help your child to develop positive skills about working, learning and living skills and how such skills are valued in the workplace.
7. Help the child to enroll in apprenticeship or internship programs
Once the child has identified a clear area of career interest, it is important that you help them find opportunities to engage in those career areas from the very beginning. Public or private businesses would be happy to have a free hand and take on intern and provide the necessary work experience for a limited period of time. Such engagements might even provide career opportunities within the same area of work in the same company.
8. Community services as a step in the door to future career.
Community services such as work within local charities, or participation in neighborhood sanitation activities or literacy programs, can help the children develop work skills and help them in making their career decisions. Such experience is also counted as work experience and can go in to curriculum vitae of the persons involved.
9. Part-time job to influence career decisions.
Part-time jobs are not just useful for the money but also to gain much valuable experiences that can help in future career decisions. Many career professionals started out as part-time workers in their current day career. As parents, we can encourage our children to seek a part-time job in their area of career interest. We can also help in resume or CV preparations, identifying and sharing job boards with relevant part-time job openings, or even accompany them to work places when they submit their applications to provide moral support if it didn’t work or help them in competing work formalities if they get the job. Once at work there will be highs and lows such as conflict at the work place with the supervisor or coworkers, or even with customers. Again, these experiences should be viewed positively as they can and do influence career decisions but parents or guardians can prepare their children for these in advance.
10. Start to build your career profile
Once a child has gone through the above processes or activities, s/he can start to develop ideas by completing her/his career profile. The career profile generates a personalized list of suggested occupations based on your activity responses. Such profile gives the child a career list to choose from. Please explore the below sites for further information on career development.
References:
– myfuture.edu.au
– educationandemployers.org/career-related-primary/
– https://rootcause.org/publication/youth-career-development/
– indeed.com