10th form Choosing a Career

Choosing a career

Every person at the age of 14 to 16 has to make an extremely stressful decision, to choose his or her own career. It`s important to understand the difference between a career and a job. Basically a job is something you do, but don't expect to continue doing forever. A career is what you hope to do for a long time or even for your entire working life. Choosing a career is a difficult and challenging task: the decision once taken will influence your future life.

Choosing a career is a challenging task indeed. It is all about finding the perfect match between your personality, interests, and skills. Modern society, with its hundreds of professions and jobs, presents a vast range of future job opportunities. Industry and business, farming, science and education, medicine, service and arts are just a few professional fields a young person can specialize in. On the other hand, modern society with its crises, unemployment and inflation, makes a poor choice of profession a really bad mistake. You can choose a profession you really like, and face problems when looking for a job or the job can be underpaid. Besides, a young person's parents usually have their own ideas of what career path to choose. Some parents are more democratic and let the child determine his future by himself. Some are oppressive and overprotective and try to force the child to make this or that career choice irrespective of the fact if he likes it or not. In this case, they often try to compensate for their own dreams which have failed and the chances they have missed.

In spite of all the problems mentioned above, the choice has to be made. To make it easier for the young people, there is some professional advice. You should determine if you would like to continue in higher education, or to learn a trade and look for a job. It`s a good idea to try some of these career assessment tests to help with this step. You also have to consider the demand for a particular career in the labour market. Choosing a career where there are limited job opportunities can greatly increase the challenges you will face.