How to Prepare Your High School Student for Their Career
Being a parent of a high school student is a challenge to say the least.
If it’s not challenging enough for you, try getting them off their video games or YouTube and starting to think about their career. In the words of the Albanian guy from Taken, “Good luck
.”
In all seriousness, high school is when this conversation should happen, so if you want to learn how to prepare your child for their career, you’ve come to the right place.
What You’ll Learn in This Article:
1. Conversation starts to break the ice about the career discussion.
2. How to preparing your high school student for their career
3. Answers to Frequently asked questions about preparing a high school student for their career.
Conversation Starters for Career Talk with Your High School Student
Getting a high schooler to open up about anything takes some skill. Ask a question the wrong way and they could shut down and you’ll have to try again another day. These couple conversation starters could help you bring the topic of careers up without making it seem like an interrogation:
· "What’s a class or project you’ve really enjoyed this year, and what made it interesting for you?"
· "If you could spend a whole day doing something you love—without worrying about school or responsibilities—what would it be?"
· "When you think about your future, what kind of lifestyle do you imagine? What kind of work do you think would support that?"
· "Have you ever met someone with a job that seemed really exciting or interesting to you? What about it stood out?"
Now that you’re able to get the conversation started, let’s look at ways you can help your high school student plan for their future career.
5 Ways to Help Your High School Student Prepare for Their Future Career
As a parent, you have a big responsibility when it comes to preparing your child for their career. Sure, ultimately, they’ll do what they want to do but giving them the tools to help them succeed is the best way to help.
#1: Encourage Career Exploration Early
When I was in high school, my dad would also tell me, “You can do anything, that you want to do.”
He was half-jokingly quoting a line from a song from “Blue’s Clues”, but he was actually serious. My parents wanted me to find something I enjoyed doing.
Since I wasn’t able to get past the idea of playing baseball or basketball professionally, it wasn’t until I was a senior in high school when I started really thinking about other careers, and it didn’t get further than “something in sports”.
I tell tis story because my parents did encourage me to find something I liked, and as a parent, you should do the same with your child. Let them try things and fail. Or, maybe they’ll succeed.
One summer I had 2 kids ring my doorbell. Usually, I don’t answer the door but, on that day, I decided to. It was kids who were no older than sophomores in high school asking if I wanted them to wash my car. I was for some reason impressed because I just assumed most high schoolers were home playing Minecraft, not going door to door trying to wash people’s cars. While it wasn’t a million dollar business, these kids had gumption.
So, how can you encourage your child to explore a career?
1. Have they find a summer job doing something they like?
2. See if they have interest in making or selling something.
Get the ball rolling by talking to them about some of the careers you were interested in when you were in high school and go from there.
#2: Help Them Build Real-World Experience
This may sound harsh, and teachers probably won’t like his sentence, but school is the pretend world. Inside the walls of a school is not real-life. Sure, there are real world socialization situations, and you learn how to interact with people, but it’s far from the real world.
Parents need to help take kids beyond the classroom.
It’s probably tough for you as a parent to take your kid to work if you have a traditional job with a boss, and if you have a job you aren’t a big fan of, you probably aren’t motivated to take them there.
So how can they get real world experience?
1. Help them find someone who’s doing what they want to do: Unless they want to be an astronaut or President of the United States, you probably have connections to someone in your network. Have they connect with that person to learn about what they do?
2. Help them find a part-time job: A part time job will get them into the real world real fast. When I started jumping, I learned pretty quickly how to deal with angry people.
3. Help them create a side hustle: Like the kids who rang my doorbell, having them start a little business can help them learn a ton and maybe have some fun while doing it.
#3 Teach Professional & Life Skills at Home
As parents, this is one that we need to put a focus on.
When I was young (younger than high school age) I was not the biggest fan of talking to adults. My mom always made sure to tell me to say hi to so and so and say thank you and ask them this or that. While it felt like she was being annoying, she was teaching me the importance of having communication skills, which are probably the most important skills you can have.
Your kids aren’t magically going to fall out of the sky as well built humans. They’re going to learn life skills and professional skills at some point from someone, and you should want it to be you rather than some random guy on YouTube, and there are a ton of people on YouTube you don’t want your kids to learn anything from.
So, what skills should you be teaching them?
1. Communication skills
2. Manners
3. Empathy and compassion
4. How to be a Leader
5. How to be humble
These are just a few of the many professional and life skills your child should be learning at home. The good news is you have a lot of years to teach these skills. The bad news is time goes by fast.
#4: Guide Them in Making Smart Academic Choices
You have a huge role in deciding where, when and if your high school student goes to college or a technical school or does anything academically after high school.
There are no one-size fits all answer for helping you decide on what your child should do, so it’s important that you have an open dialogue with your teen to help them make that decision.
This is why it’s a good idea to start them thinking about their career before it’s time to make the college decision, so you’re all comfortable when it comes time to decide.
It’s a good idea to ensure you have some savings for college, but also, don’t act like it’s the end of the world if your high schooler feels strongly about not going to college and wants to take a different path with their life. Your job is to act as a guide, not as a bus driver taking them to the one planned desination.
#5: Help Them to Create A Post Graduation Plan
If you’ve done all the things like talking to your high school students about their career, helping them explore options, talking to them about college and getting them real world experience, coming up with a post-graduation plan should be easy.
The worst thing you can do is wait until your child is a high school graduate to start the conversation. But, then again, if you come up with a timeline of when you want them to come up with a career path and it takes them an extra year or two to decide, there’s no harm in that either.
There is no hour glass that runs out of sand the day after high school graduation and your child turns into a pumpkin> So, if it takes you and your child longer than everyoneelse to come up with a plan, don’t beat yourself up over it.
Life isn’t a race to the finish line, it’s more of a walk through the park with many stops along the way.
Frequently Asked Questions About Career Planning for High School Students
Q: What are the best ways to help my high school student choose a career path?
A: Encourage self-exploration through hobbies, extracurricular activities, and job shadowing. Help them research different careers, take personality and skills assessments, and connect with mentors or professionals in fields of interest.
Q: How can my high schooler gain real-world experience before choosing a career?
A: Suggest internships, part-time jobs, volunteer work, or dual-enrollment programs. Encourage them to participate in career-focused extracurriculars like robotics, debate, or business clubs to develop relevant skills.
Q: What skills should high school students focus on to prepare for the workforce?
A: Critical thinking, communication, time management, and problem-solving are essential. Technical skills, such as coding or financial literacy, can also be valuable. Encourage leadership opportunities and soft skill development through teamwork and networking experiences.
What You Should Do Next
It’s okay if you’ve read this article and you still feel overwhelmed and not really sure about what to do. Sometimes it’s helpful to work with a professional. That’s where Your Career Strategy comes in. Our expert Career Coaches can help guide you and your high schoolers to make the decisions you feel comfortable about.
Click on the link here to make your free call to speak with one of our professionals and get started on the path to success.