How to help a teenager choose a profession if we do not know what the labor market will be like in 3–5 years

Why you should choose not a specific profession, but a direction

Choosing a field of activity, and not a specialty, will allow you to adapt to drastic changes in the labor market.

Jobs that were needed yesterday are no longer relevant today

Over the past hundred years, cab drivers and chimney sweeps have disappeared from our cities. Today threatened salespeople, secretaries, notaries and proofreaders. These professions may become redundant in the coming decades, maybe even years. Artists too beat anxiety: neural networks, which we didn’t even hear about a couple of years ago, create illustrations faster and better.

There are new areas of activity that we did not even think about yesterday

In the middle of the last century, the professions of a TV presenter and videographer arose. Then came the programmers. In the last 20 years - testers, specialists in Internet promotion, creators of online courses.

It is possible that in futurewill the skills of an online therapist, a space tourism manager, and a media cop are in demand. Or maybe there will be other specialties.

We do not know what artificial intelligence will be able to do tomorrow or in five years, what professions will disappear or appear. But we are sure that professionals will be needed who will use robots, neural networks or AI chatbots as tools. And that it is necessary to prepare for the emergence of new professions and the disappearance of the former now.

Therefore, a teenager who thinks about his professional future should choose not a specific specialty, but the direction of development.

How to choose a direction for future work

Treat the choice of a child's field of activity as a project that takes time. It would be great to start implementing it in September, at the same time as the start of the school year, but you can not be tied to dates.

To begin with, it is worth remembering with the child what areas of activity exist, and tell him about the directions that he does not yet know about. Then you can start the analysis.

1. Apply the reverse technique

The first step is to discard those directions that a teenager definitely does not attract. For example, he is sure that he will not go into medicine, will not become a lawyer, will not professionally study foreign languages. He does not want the basis of his work to be constant communication with people - clients or students, but he will be glad to see colleagues and work with them in the same team.

Divide all areas of activity into two groups. Take a sheet of paper with your child or open a file and create two columns. Label the left one “no” - there will be areas that the child is not at all interested in. Label the right column "maybe". Let the teenager fill in the sheet or file himself, and you help him find the missing information about this or that direction, if necessary.

You don't have to complete the page right away. It is worth allocating a week to the list and making entries gradually. You can change solutions and transfer spheres from one column to another.

By the end of the week, there will be a list with several destinations in the “maybe” column.

2. Understand what areas are left and prioritize them

There may be 4-7 directions in the list of priorities. For example, "programming, artificial intelligence, design, comic book creation, chemistry."

Now you need to arrange these areas of activity in descending order - from the most to the least attractive. You can change the selection, add or remove items.

Explain to your teen that this activity should not be treated as homework that will be graded. There are no right or wrong answers here. Only the child himself will determine whether he is satisfied with the result.

3. Gain experience in every area

The task of this stage is to understand in practice how interesting it is for a teenager to master each direction.

Take the first item on the list. For example, "programming". Think of ways your child can practice coding. For example, search the web for free lessons for beginners and write your first programs in JavaScript or Python. If the process seems interesting, sign up for a free course for beginners. At the end of the course, draw conclusions and decide whether to continue studying programming.

Then move on to the next item. And so on to the end of the list.

You can allocate a month to get acquainted with each area. During this time, it will definitely become clear whether the child wants to continue to do the chosen business, or it is better not to waste time on it.

4. Think about whether it is possible to act at the junction of different areas

The combination of different fields of activity and the creation of new professions at their intersection is the trend of today. It is highly likely that it will continue in the future. Therefore, it is worth trying together with a teenager to combine activities that are interesting to him.

For example, he is ready to continue to study chemistry, programming and drawing comics. You can come up with a comic book in which the heroes have to conduct a series of chemical experiments in order to get a super-strong material for the body of a spaceship.

Here's what the author needs to do:

• Come up with a plot for the quest.
• Make an algorithm, at each stage of which the heroes need to cope with a new chemical reaction. If they correctly determine what will happen as a result of the reaction, then they move on to the next level.
• Think about what reactions will be included in the quest.
• Write all reaction equations with answers.
• draw characters.
• Write a simple game program where the correct answer of the player takes him to the next stage, and if the answer is incorrect, he is given the opportunity to make another attempt.
• To design the game, use the portraits of the drawn characters.

Such a project will allow you to apply all the knowledge gained, have an interesting time and understand whether it is worth continuing to develop at the junction of the chosen areas.

5. Decide what skills to develop next and start choosing an educational institution

At this stage, the teenager knows exactly what he is interested in doing. Now you need to determine which skills and in which area he should develop in the first place. For example, he decided that he enjoys writing code, but the most interesting thing is designing game backgrounds and developing characters. So, you can choose an educational institution where they teach the basics of design, and think about how to develop programming skills in parallel.

What to choose - university or college

Today, many employers do not require a university diploma, but look at the professional skills of the applicant. Therefore, when choosing a place of study, it makes sense to rely only on your interests.

When to choose a university

Higher educational institutions provide serious theoretical knowledge. But it will be possible to start working and put this knowledge into practice only after a few years. To get into an institute or university, you need to finish 11 classes. Then you have to study for another 5-6 years. You can become a professional at the age of 23-24.

You should go to college if:

• are interested in fundamental research and have a desire to immerse themselves in theory;
• I want to start with a specific profession that requires higher education, for example, to become a simultaneous interpreter;
• You need a high school diploma to feel more confident.

When to Choose a College

Secondary specialized educational institutions help to get applied professions. You can go to college after the 9th grade and start working in 4-5 years, that is, at 20-21.

You should go to college if:

• want to gain practical skills;
• want to start faster earn;
• I want to start vocational training after the 9th grade and not take the exam.

After college, you can continue your education and enter a university.

What skills are useful for any profession and how to develop them

In a changing world, skills are needed that will allow you to quickly adapt to any situation. There are more than ten types of different soft skills - skills that are needed in any profession. Let's single out two groups that will be useful to a teenager.

Skills to help improve communication

Here are some skills worth developing from school years:

• make contact with strangers;
• keep in touch with friends and colleagues;
• speak with both elders and younger ones respectfully and on an equal footing;
• defend your point of view;
• seek compromise in a difficult situation.

All these skills are acquired only in practice, so the more communication, the better. For example, a teenager can join a discussion club, learn to express their point of view and convince others.

Skills that will help you analyze, plan and develop

These skills are very necessary not only for teenagers, but for all of us. Here are some skills to look out for:

• critically perceive and analyze information;
• understand what emotions you experience and manage them;
• make decisions on your own, and not wait until they are made for you;
• respond calmly to defeat;
• consider any problem as a project and draw up a plan for its implementation;
• adjust plans if necessary.

When you and your child go through all the stages of choosing their professional future, you have already taken an important step in mastering these skills. Explore, make decisions and be ready for new quests that life will suit.