How To Help Your High School Student Choose A Career Path Without Feeling Boxed In

Choosing a path for post-graduation life is often one of the most challenging experiences a student goes through in high school, but why?

I recently read “How to Be Everything,” a book that deals with the myth that people have one true calling in life. It got me thinking about how much high school students struggle to make career decisions, and why that is.

I wanted to create a guide for parents, one that addressed why students struggle so much and how you can help your student. It’s a question that’s been around for years, and my hope is that we at True Compass can help you make this a less stressful process for your student.

Why do students feel stuck?

We typically see students start stressing about career choices around age 15. This is about the time they start considering whether or not to take AP classes, and it’s when they’ll take the ACT. It’s also when people start asking students what they want to do, and they realize they don’t know the answer.

One of the biggest issues we see students facing is having too many options. They tend to freeze because they have so many interests and ideas but no clue where to start. Teens end up overwhelmed thinking about all the classes and experiences they’ve liked, and they’re unsure how to choose their path.

While students struggle to sort through all of their interests and passions, they also start paying attention to the pressures around them, like:

• Peers who seem to have their lives figured out and have known what they’re going to do since they were 5

  
  

• Educators who give students career exploration exercises and inadvertently encourage them to only consider those options

  
  

• Parents who push their students onto a path they may not be ready for yet, like getting an early associate’s degree or sticking with the very first degree choice

Even though the intent is to help students, they may feel like they’re put into a box. They may even feel like there’s something wrong with them for not having a specialty when the people around them do. They end up lacking confidence because they don’t know what they want to do with their futures.

Your student’s career path is not a one-time choice

Careers are not a one and done choice, but that’s often how it feels to young people.

Sometimes students freeze because they feel like they need to pick one thing, but they’re afraid to limit themselves. They’re worried that by choosing one option, they’re saying no to other choices for the rest of their lives.

Even when students start weeding out options, many find they don’t want to specialize in one area. Or they’re afraid to get a degree in art or history and say no to all other things. The system feels like it’s set up to choose one major and one career, even though that’s not necessarily true. Students end up frustrated when it feels like they’re making a decision that’s going to affect the next 50 years of their life.

What they don’t realize is that they can keep their options open.

How can you help your student?

Teens usually turn to their parents for help, so you have great potential as a resource for your student through this process. One of the best things you can do to help is asking them questions that make them really think about their options.

Students need to spend more time thinking beyond what they like to do and the subject matter they’re interested in. They need to think about what careers they’d enjoy day-to-day. Sometimes we don’t have enough experience to know what some jobs look like, but just because your student likes psychology isn’t enough reason to get a degree in it.

Really think about careers. Ask your student what they can do with a degree in psychology. When they look at those jobs, are they as interesting as the learning? The same goes for other subjects. Your student may love a lot of subjects and might not want to stop learning about them, but they can love those subjects and keep learning their whole life.

You also want to encourage your student to look beyond the most obvious career choices. Often, students who enjoy math and science aren't necessarily drawn to a specific profession—they enjoy solving problems, analyzing information, and figuring out how things work. While engineering or medicine may seem like the natural path, they might discover they enjoy fields such as data analytics, cybersecurity, operations research, finance, or software development even more.

Sometimes an interest inventory can help. By looking at the activities and subjects that naturally capture your student's attention, you can begin to identify common themes and explore careers that align with those interests. The online quizzes will suggest careers, but I would encourage you to use the results as a conversation starter. Ask questions such as, "What stands out to you?" or "Why do you think that showed up?" These discussions often reveal valuable insights about what motivates your student, what they enjoy learning about, and the types of work they may find most meaningful.

If your student was looking at a history degree, they’d probably start by looking at jobs they could get with that. They might find that there aren’t a lot of jobs out there, but you can work together to investigate what liking history says about your student.

You can also ask your student if they love an interest enough to only do that, or if they want to do it for other people.

Ultimately, if a career option isn’t lighting a fire under your student, that’s a clue that it may not be the right choice.

How True Compass helps

I want students to come to us to help them, and I want them to not feel bad about having a lot of interests. I want students to feel more confident about the path they take and know they’re capable of pivoting if they decide to change. I want students to understand how they’re wired so they can think past the next step and determine what may be fulfilling.

A free consultation with True Compass is the best way for you to ask questions and see if our team is the right next step for helping your student.

A few exercises we like to use at True Compass to guide conversations with students:

• Aptitude Assessment: The most valuable tool we use is an aptitude assessment that  measures a student's natural strengths and abilities. Unlike interests, which can change over time, aptitudes provide insight into how a student naturally learns, solves problems, and processes information. The results often reveal strengths students didn't know they had and open the door to career possibilities they may never have considered.

  
  

• Challenge cards: These cards ask about problems in the world that students care about, rather than what they like to do.

• Visualizing the future: We have students choose about three career options and imagine what their day-to-day life would look like.

  
  

• Real-world experience: We encourage students to get real experience in multiple areas through job shadowing, volunteering, specialized classes, and talking to people in the field.

We use these tools to help students understand the type of work that energizes them, narrow down their interests and think of careers. Then, we encourage them to talk with their college counselor about the most flexible major in that area.

We want students to know they have a variety of options. There’s not just one career, and it’s OK to pivot. Most of us do at some point.

Final thoughts

High school students struggle a lot when it comes to deciding what they want their future to look like. With the right help, they don’t have to.

Our three key takeaways are:

• #1: Students struggle because they feel like once they make a choice, they have to stick to it, but there are too many options to choose from.

• #2: You can help your student make a confident decision by asking them thoughtful questions or calling on our team to help guide your teen.

• #3: There is no one right answer. Most people change direction at least once in their life, so your student is not making an end-all decision in high school.

Starting these conversations with your student now will help them feel more prepared when the time comes to make their choice. If you have knowledge of the common problems and solutions students face, you can be a great resource for your student when they start considering their choices. And when your teen has had the chance to really understand what they want to do, they will feel more confident as they go into the world.

For more advice and opportunities to help your teen, check out our other blogs. To schedule a free consultation or explore the services we offer, go to truecompassllc.com.