Career Exploration: Helping Teens Discover What’s Possible
One of the most powerful yet often overlooked steps in helping teens decide on future study or career pathways is career exploration. It’s about moving beyond “what I know” and “what I don’t know” into discovering what’s possible. For parents, this means encouraging your teen to get curious, ask questions and step into conversations and experiences that broaden their view of the world of work.
Why Career Exploration Matters
Career exploration is not about finding the “perfect” job right away, it’s about eliminating options that don’t fit and highlighting ones that might. Every conversation, shadowing experience and piece of research adds clarity.
And here’s the truth: even adults often skip this step, making choices based only on assumptions or online information. Helping your teen develop this skill early gives them a huge head start in making informed decisions.
Practical Ways Teens Can Explore Careers
1. Talking With People in the Field
Encourage your teen to ask someone who already works in a role they’re interested in about what their day-to-day job looks like. It could be a friend of the family, a coach or even a neighbour. A simple 20 minute chat can provide more insight than hours of online research.
Tip for parents: Help your teen brainstorm people in your network they could reach out to. Often, your contacts are wider than they realise.
2. Researching “A Day in the Life”
There are countless online videos, articles and blogs that share what it’s really like to work in different careers. Encourage your teen to search “a day in the life of a [job title]” on YouTube or read first-hand stories.
Tip for parents: Watch or read together, then ask your teen what surprised them most.
3. Job Shadowing
Nothing beats spending a day alongside someone at work. Job shadowing gives teens a real sense of the environment, pace and challenges of a role.
Tip for parents: Ask friends, colleagues or even local businesses if your teen can shadow for a day or two. Most people are happy to help a motivated young person.
4. Informational Interviews
This is simply a structured conversation where your teen interviews someone about their career journey. They can ask questions such as:
How did you get started?
What do you enjoy most about your job?
What challenges do you face?
What advice would you give someone starting out?
Tip for parents: Encourage your teen to write down questions beforehand and remind them it’s about learning, not asking for a job.
5. Talking With Friends Who Work
Sometimes the best insights come from peers. If your teen’s friends have part-time jobs, ask them to share what they enjoy, what’s hard and what they’re learning.
Tip for parents: This builds confidence in having work-related conversations in a safe, familiar way.
How Empower Youth Helps
One of the most impactful parts of my Empower Youth programme is that I actively connect teens with people working in industries they’re interested in. Past participants have spoken directly with professionals in healthcare, trades, law, creative industries and more.
The result? They gained first-hand insights that helped them decide with confidence whether a pathway was right for them, or not. In fact, several teens have changed their study plans entirely after these conversations, saving them time, money and stress. Parents often tell me this was the turning point in their child’s decision-making process.
This isn’t something schools typically offer, and it’s one of the ways Empower Youth goes deeper than just classroom career advice.
Final Thoughts
Career exploration is one of the most important steps in helping your teen find their pathway. The more conversations, experiences and reflections they have, the clearer things become. At Empower Youth, we guide teens through this process step by step, helping them build the skills to explore with confidence.
👉 If you’d like more support, join my free online parent masterclass: How to Talk to Your Teen About Career and Study Choices.
