Photo: Stock.Xchng

The way people are employed and are employable has fundamentally altered in the last two decade, especially in the last 10 years. The old theory of go to school, get good grades, go to college, then grad school and you’re guaranteed a great job doesn’t hold water any more. There’s much more to remaining competitive in the global economy, and parents can have a great deal of influence over how your children tackle the world when they grow up.

Below are some tips on how to do child career planning properly.

Give a child the right focal point

The good education equals a fruitful career argument is tired, and even children know this. So when children ask for justifications for why they need to go to school and why getting good grades is important, focus their minds on the payoff. An example of this would be a child asking why they should learn physics or maths. Saying ‘Good grades will get you into Oxford’ is far less effective than ‘Good physicists, which you can be, are the guys who build spaceships.’ Suddenly the value of working hard becomes apparent.

Help your child explore hobbies they love

The current and past crop of technology leaders like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and the like have become brilliant at what they do because their folks let them explore their interests at a very young age. You need to do the same thing for your child. If they have an almost obsessive love for Lego and how blocks built together stay in place, see if engineering might be their future by buying appropriate toys and books.

Let your young one give you signals for where to start off with child career planning. If video gaming interests them beyond the desire to play but inclusive of the desire to understand, invest in programming for children material. The same thing with music, and so forth.

The point is parents should be mindful to not stifle their children’s heart’s desires, even if they seem like fickle hobbies or distressing obsessions.

Cultivate creativity and entrepreneurship

The byproducts of allowing children to experiment is it cultivates the creativity every child naturally has, while also encouraging them to be entrepreneurial souls. And, in this rapidly changing world, where skills that were once invaluable are dispensable through a tiny bit of innovation, it’s the entrepreneurial souls who will be able to conquer the world.

Contemporary career planning is nothing like it was in the past. People no longer spend their whole lives doing one field of work in one industry at one company for their entire working lives.

Everything is in fluctuating, and as a parent, the best kind of career planning plans for this flux, as unintuitive as that seems. Your children deserve to be ready for the uncertainty of the future, by not learning the ways of the past.

Tags: career, education