How can your child be career smart? Indeed, what does career smart mean?

According to Jan Smart, from the Foundation of Young Australians, we need to rethink what it means to be smart.

There is rapid change in the world of work and we cannot assume that a job that our child takes now will necessarily exist in 10 years time. Indeed, in the New Work Mindset report, published in November 2016, an “analysis of 2.7 million job ads the report found that across seven job clusters the likelihood of surviving automation varies dramatically”.

Take comfort, parents, in the fact that smart careers counselling and coaching does exist with professional careers coaches who help your son or daughter to be career creative, career explorers, career managers. We teach them the skills to be resourceful, adaptive, resilient and ultimately therefore career wise.

The clarity they will gain from being supported by an independent, impartial and highly experienced career practitioner is invaluable, because it will make them stand apart in job and course applications. They need to know how to:

• Access and use networks effectively
• Independently research the options that are of interest to them in terms of courses
• Navigate the application process, using VTAC, other Australian State sorting houses, UCAS in the UK and Courselink for USA applications
• Be the successful job applicant by creating the best marketing materials that will sell their skills and attributes to the recruiter
• Keep abreast of industry and economic changes such that they can be reflexive and respond according to trends
• Be career entrepreneurs

If you want your child to be career smart, you need to start talking to a qualified career practitioner when your son or daughter is around 16 years of age, or sooner. So in year 9 or 10, the careers coach can:

• build a rapport with your child
• use a narrative approach to learn your child’s story
• utilise and/or clarify already used tools and instruments, such as Morrisby Online, Strong Interest Inventory, or Careers Fast Track, to ease out some useful knowledge about your child’s preferences and attributes
• walk the path with your son/daughter for a while, so that they feel supported at key steps along the way
• be available, by text, Facetime, Skype, one-on-one meetings, as required, to help if they get stuck

Your child needs to be career smart to have a long and successful career life. This means more than just learning a profession, as he/she is likely to have multiple careers over time. To be career smart there needs to be some clarity as to what is happening in the world of work, and to be flexible and even a bit brave in light of rapid change.

How can your child be career smart? By talking to Karen your Career Coach to discuss the support on offer. Call 0419 390 994, or see the various platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, which both provide a bit more detail.