Future Career Outlook
Your student may now be further along in determining a career option, but what is the job outlook for that particular career? Now is a good time for setting goals, researching career opportunities and exploring the return on a college investment.
Why It Matters
- Setting goals is a life skill.
Making and achieving goals happens throughout a lifetime – in school, activities, career, and personal life. It’s very easy to state a goal — “I need to find a different job” — but much more difficult reaching the goal without having a plan in place. Additionally, a defined path with a clear timeline keeps procrastination at bay. - Your student should determine the future career outlook.
If your student is narrowing down the list of career options, it’s also important to determine the likelihood of those careers being available, and where they’ll be available, after high school or college.
What Your Student Can Do Now
- Set SMART goals.
Write them down and keep them readily available with any other materials resulting from career assessments and research.
Specific — Set specific steps or sub-goals.
Measurable — Ask how much or how many to determine if the goal is measurable.
Attainable — The goals must be a challenge, but also achievable.
Relevant — The goal and the end result must be worthwhile to the individual.
Timely — The goal must have a clear timeline to help establish urgency. - Complete a worksheet.
In the article “Goal Setting for Students, Kids, & Teens,” PositivePsychology.com incorporates some goal-setting worksheets for various age levels. Your student may find either the Goal Execution Plan or the SMART Goal Setting worksheet helpful for establishing a goal-focused timeline. - Determine a specific course of study or college major.
One of the biggest decisions when it comes to attending college is deciding on a major. It’s the starting point to researching, visiting and deciding on the school that will offer the best return on your student’s investment. The college selection process is addressed in future articles, but choosing a major is important for use with one of our own career evaluation tools. - Experience our Return on College Investment tool.
Not every career path requires a two- or four-year degree. Sometimes an apprenticeship or certificate program is a more preferred option for students. By using ISL Education Lending’s Return on College Investment tool, your student can determine the appropriate length of education needed for a career path, as well as find numerous jobs that exist within a particular area of interest, such as Agricultural Sciences or Education. Choosing a particular job will display more information about that career, its approximate starting salary, projected future openings, as well as the potential financial return on investment in multiple educational scenarios. Your student will also find out the percentage of college graduates from related majors who are currently working in the career.
What Your Student Can Do Later
- Learn what jobs are available.
When fewer jobs are available, the number of applicants is larger. If the career choice has a lower availability rate, your student will need to be a standout candidate to compete with the others hoping to land only an interview. How will your student’s resume rise to the top of the stack? With more education? Certifications? Experience? Time to start thinking about that as well, but we’ll have more information for you in future emails. - Determine an anticipated lifestyle.
Your student most likely has the ideal future lifestyle in mind, but is it realistic for the future career choice? Many students have some fairly high standards of comfortability and convenience that might not match up to their career’s projected salary. Will that be something your student can manage?
What You Can Do
- Share your own experiences.
Talk with your student about your own goals – how you set and achieved them and also what you learned along the way. What were your successes and setbacks? What kinds of adjustments were made along the way? What motivated you and how did you reward yourself? - Share in your student’s excitement.
Once a career path is determined, celebrate! It is an accomplishment, after all. However, now it’s time to focus on setting some SMART goals. - Talk about your own lifestyle.
Everyone’s household is different, but if you’re comfortable sharing information with your student about your earnings and how it relates to your housing and living costs, it may prove to be a very valuable life lesson. Everything comes with a cost, and by hearing about any sacrifices you’ve had to make to get where you are today, your student might gain a heightened sense of appreciation.
Next Steps
Be sure to complete the survey questions at the end of this article to be entered into the 529 deposit giveaway!
Additional references, handouts and talking points are available in the right sidebar to use at your leisure. They may prove beneficial to reference now or after receiving future emails – we’ll leave it completely up to you. Use our emails like a recipe for a successful outcome — assemble the recommended ingredients and then follow accompanying directions to add flavor and depth.