Parents like you play a prominent role in their children’s lives – as well as when it comes to planning for the future. Your career, your attitudes, and your wishes affect your child, as well as the nature and intensity of your support in finding a career path. That’s why we would like to encourage you to start with the topic, to reflect on and consciously determine your role. Here are some tips to help your kid choose the right career.
Identify your child’s strengths together!
A successful career always begins with a view of yourself and your abilities. Knowing what strengths and development potentials, values, drivers, and motivators you have in your luggage provides the basis for choosing the right destination.
For this purpose, you can go into the analysis with your child – and, if necessary, with other family members or friends: First, answer the following questions independently and then compare your assessments with each other. Through the feedback of familiar people, so-called “blind spots” often come to light: These are qualities and talents that your child does not perceive or takes for granted, although great professional strengths rest in them.
Step 1: Properties
What qualities characterize your child? What can it be particularly proud of? Which adjectives would you use to describe your child to others?
Step 2: Skills, strengths, and talents
What is your child particularly good at? What does it get praise and recognition from you or others? What is easy for your child at school and in everyday life? if your kid is good at something, help them upgrade it by enrolling on some super cool courses.
Step 3: Motivators
What do you think drives your child to act in particular? What must be given so that it feels like doing a task? Here you will find a small selection of motivators to give you an idea. Tick those that you think are most pronounced in your child.
Influence/power: search for responsibility, control, and challenges; strong convictions, ambition, and willingness to perform.
Ideal and meaning: striving to do something good, contribute to the common good, and promote social justice and fairness.
Independence: Striving for freedom, autonomy, and the feeling of being “your own master.”
Companionship: harmony, team spirit, and shared commitment; desire to raise energy for a common task.
Competition: Strong desire to win, defend or take revenge; to measure oneself entails top performance.
Inquisitive desire: The desire to learn is in the foreground; the vital need for reading, reflection, thinking, and writing.
Praise: Striving for higher self-esteem through recognition; criticism is feared, and situations in which one could be poorly assessed are avoided.
Significant: Striving for status and prestige – be it social, professional, or monetary; proud to be able to show something.
Role models: Orienting yourself to a mentor increases confidence in one’s performance.
Challenge: It is, above all, complex tasks and new terrain that trigger a unique appeal and willingness to perform.
Experience: Energy is drawn from having mastered a comparable task before.
Order: Motivation through the organization, the creation of lists and plans, as well as the creation of structures.
Movement: Desire for an active lifestyle, always being “in action” or physically active.
Step 4: Values
What does your child follow to behave? Which values are fundamental to your child in life? Examples are knowledge, competence, security, harmony, family, prosperity, prestige, health, fun, spirituality, etc.
Step 5: Interests
What interests does your child have? How does it spend its free time? And what do you think: What interests might your child perhaps develop in the future?
Step 6: Childhood dreams and visions
What career aspiration did your child have in kindergarten or primary school – and why? What do you think your child dreams of today and how he wants to live later?
Target check
Help your child take the right course!
After closely examining your child’s luggage, it is time to find a suitable destination because individual strengths and abilities can only develop in the right environment.
1: Write down spontaneous associations
Read with your child everything you have written down in the first step, and write down your spontaneous associations. Which occupational fields and images match the written strengths, interests, motivators, and visions? Try to proceed as openly and unbiasedly as possible and record everything that comes to mind. It is worthwhile to involve selected friends in this brainstorming process to collect the most comprehensive possible range of ideas.
2: Derive directions
Now it is essential to condense the knowledge gained: Which paths lead to the favorite professions? Where could your child’s requirements best be met? In which training? In which course of study? Then, as support, you can fall back on so-called interest tests, some of which are free of charge on the net.
3: Research options
What exactly do specific training and courses of study include? In which cities or universities are you offering? What are the prospects after graduation? It takes some time, but it is worth combing through the wide range and checking options.
4: Gain practical insights
To find out the best option, it helps to experience it in advance. For this, your child can take advantage of offers such as open days, information evenings, or trial studies and directly interview current trainees or students. Internships are perfect for subjecting your presentation to a practical check. Maybe you or your child has contacts in relevant industries and can get a place in this way.
Implementation
Make plans and get started!
Ready for departure: You have reflected on your child’s strengths, talents, and interests and researched various training and career opportunities that suit your child. With this, you have done crucial preparatory work to get started. Now it’s about your child being accepted at his dream university, getting an apprenticeship or internship with the desired employer, or taking the necessary steps for a gap year.
Create a list and observe deadlines
Your child should keep an overview list with all “providers” to whom he wants to apply. Depending on your child’s path, these can be universities and colleges – state or private, at home or abroad. But it can also be companies and companies that train young people. Or it can be gap-year ideas such as completing a voluntary service. This is an important step that you can suggest to help your kid choose the right career
And now: I wish you the best!
We hope that with this guide, We can help your kid choose the right career with your guidance. Good luck!
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