What jobs of the future will your teenager seek? Before we explain this, we must first understand that teenagers are definitely a breed of their own. One minute they are into Minecraft the next minute they are into the next ‘big fad’.
One thing I know for sure is that teens are inquisitive and from a young age showcase elements of pretend play, that is pretending to do things or be things from everyday life such as being people from different types of jobs or professions.
-
Jump To
Pretend Play – A Pathway to Career Choices
Often young children engage in pretend play by ‘playing shop’ or as my brother and I often did, pretend to play ‘Judge Judy’ (which was big in our time and could possibly still be).
Getting a table and placing it upright to create a bench, I often played the judge and my brother (the security guard) would assemble soft toys in the pews and choose one unsuspecting soft toy to be at the stands.
I would come up with some insignificant crime like ‘Who ate all the donuts?’ and handing out a ‘GUILTY’ sentence to the soft toy was joyful to my brother who would excitedly take away the soft toy to jail.
I guess what I am coming to is that children often enjoy pretending to be things or own businesses (the classic ‘Lemonade Stand’ comes to mind. In an ever changing world we find that the question that most kids get asked,
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ has changed dramatically from a more ‘traditional’ perspective such as ‘a Fireman, a doctor, a teacher’ to more ‘untraditional’ avenues such as,
‘A famous YouTuber, a video game designer, an App developer, social media manager’ and the list goes on. A lot of these ‘new age jobs’ are something that children can achieve at an earlier age than ‘when they finish school’.
I remember asking my senior students this question to which I was surprised to hear that most students had a YouTube account they were uploading videos to (often gaming tutorials, arts and crafts videos or just personal vlogs) some also mentioned that they have their own businesses making money by creating logos or animations for clients.
There are many examples of teenagers who have started businesses or sell things online such as polymer clay sculptures, keyring’s and stickers. There was a young girl selling passwords or ‘diceware’ inspired passwords which involved rolling a dice to generate a unique number to which she would then mail to clients to use on websites.
Emerging ‘Untraditional’ Jobs Examples
New jobs of the future are emerging and below is a list of ones that didn’t exist 10 years ago that are enticing the youth of today to seek out ‘untraditional’ types of career choices,
-
-
- Social Media Manager (for Facebook, Instagram, Tik,Tok etc)
- Influencer (Social Media)
- Content Manager
- User Experience Manager (UX)
- Digital Performance Specialist
- Drone Operator
- Uber Driver
- YouTuber
- Podcast Producer
- Telemedicine Physician
- Drone Operator
- E-Sports Player (or coach)
- Millennial expert
- Streamer
- Virtual Reality Game Developer
- 3D Printing designer
-
As you can see, these ‘untraditional’ jobs or jobs of the future are becoming more diverse, creative and dependant on technology. A lot of teenagers I knew had more ‘traditional’ jobs when I was going to school would have after school and holiday jobs at Mcdonald’s or KFC.
They enjoyed getting some pocket money to spend to buy a video game or spend at Supre’ but it isn’t something they are generally passionate about (not all teens anyway).
A few of my friends ended up using these after school jobs as inspiration to start or run their own commercial businesses or inspire them to go to get a qualification and never work in hospitality again.
New Jobs, New Courses, Jobs of the Future
Quite a few universities and collages are adapting to these changes and are creating new courses and subjects that involve skills that can be used in these new careers. Below I’ve added a few on offer at the moment,
-
-
- Australian Catholic University – ‘Master of Digital Health’
- Australian Catholic University – ‘Graduate Certificate in Data Analytics’
- Griffith University (subject) – ‘Digital Innovation’
- Sydney Community Collage – ‘User Experience – UX Design Course’
- University of Sydney (Short Courses) – ‘Criminal Behaviour in the Digital Age’
- University of Sydney (Short Courses) – ‘Social Media Marketing Course – Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin’
- University of Sydney (Short Courses) – ‘Google Ads (Adwords) Management
- University of Sydney (Short Courses) – ‘An Introduction to User Experience (UX) Design’
-
How You Can Support Your Child with Their Career Choices
With all these new courses around the best thing we as parents or teachers can do is to help support and guide teenagers in how to achieve what they want out of life. We also need to be willing to be open to the fact that new or ‘untraditional’ professions exist and not to pressure children to do something that they may not want to do or be passionate about.
Some teenagers will be happy with traditional career options such as being a teacher, or a doctor, or a tradie and that is great! Remember, not all teenagers will be enticed with these ‘untraditional’ jobs but may use elements of untraditional jobs to enhance or add to their careers (how many doctors do you now see on YouTube making videos discussing diseases or debunking medical scenes from films and movies).
I once had a Visual Arts student who was one of my best students in my HSC class. He was extremely talented at drawing. I asked him what his plans were after school and whether a career focused on art would be on the cards. He told me his passion was drawing and would love to study Visual Arts at university.
Unfortunately, his parents didn’t agree with what he wanted to do and forcing him to choose a medical career. He told me his older brother was a disappointment to the family when he flunked the HSC the year before and now is putting all these pressures on him to succeed.
As much as we as parents can offer support, we also have to be honest with teenagers and let them know that some of these untraditional jobs can have a few set backs. Only few people succeed as a YouTuber and it isn’t as easy as it sounds.
They also need to be offering something new, different and be knowledgable to stand out and it still takes a lot of dedication and hard work. They definitely need to see this reality from your perspective as sometimes from their eyes and lack of experience, things can seem simple or easy to achieve.
List of Ways You Can Support Your Teenagers Career and Job Choices
Ways you can help support your teenager with their career choices can be,
-
-
- Sitting down with your teenager and discussing their options
- Discuss the setbacks with some jobs and be honest with your teenager
- Writing down a chart or list with your teenagers of their strengths and weaknesses
- Listening to what your teenager has to say and offer support and understanding from your own perspective
- Research with your teenager what the profession entails and challenges that may arise with their career choice
- Looking up courses or study options that may assist them in their career
- Writing down a list of things they enjoy or like to do and jobs that may offer these enjoyments
- Meet or speak with somebody who has that career and profession and ask questions.
-
This is why it is important to have faith and trust in the decisions teenagers have on where they want to take their lives. Forcing them to be someone they don’t want to be will not help them in the long run.
We may not have all the answers, but even helping them have the confidence to start small and not feel let down when things may not go the way they want, especially if they decide early on that they want to start a small business (even selling to family and friends).
Ultimately it can help teach them skills that they can later on use if they want to expand, grow or start something brand new and different in the future.
What do you think about all these new ‘untraditional’ careers that may have not been around when we were going to school?
Does your child study one of these courses or looking at studying or doing one of these professions?
Are there any other careers or jobs of the future I may have not mentioned that are around today that may have not been before? Start the conversation!
Feel free to comment and let me know what you think of these points made in this blog!
Want to read more of our blogs? Check this one out – 10 Surprising Myths of Teaching – An Honest Review by a Teacher