Early Career Focus

For high school student of any age, thinking about a career path can seem daunting. Yet, the sooner you start exploring, the better! Early action will provide you with the opportunity to gather unique experiences, collect content for your university essays, and develop a strong college admissions profile. 

In over 130 in-depth career sessions with Ivy Options clients, I’ve found that most students who can’t decide on their career paths struggle because they have more than one field of interest and are unwilling or hesitant to commit to just one. Based on my two recent Ivy Options webinars, the important takeaway for students is this: the career choice you’re making today will not necessarily determine your future career. You don’t have to look at it as a lifelong commitment. Instead, adopt a career strategy that aligns with your personality and preferences. 

One strategy is to choose a profession like medicine or academia and commit to it wholeheartedly, refining your expertise year after year. This approach fits perfectly for those who aspire to become doctors, veterinarians, spaceship engineers, or university professors. 

The second approach, which has been most popular among my webinar participants, is to opt for a ‘function’ (the role), and exercise that across different industries. A concept that intrigues my students is the idea of ‘industry vs. function’, the two core elements, among many, that shape a career. For instance, you may love computers and become a software engineer at Google. Here, your function is software engineering, and your industry is IT. But let’s say you also love football; if you doubt you’ll become the next Mbappe or Bellingham, being a football player isn’t an option. However, if you’re skilled at coding, you might combine your coding expertise with the dynamic football industry and become a software developer for FIFA or work on an ML system that tracks and analyzes player statistics. By mixing and matching functions and industries, you can create your unique career path.

For students with diverse and constantly shifting interests, there’s a third career strategy:  treat your life as a series of distinctive chapters and build a career based on transferable skills. For example, you might study engineering in college, then join a bank as a solution-oriented financial analyst, then leave the corporate environment for the less predictable yet thrilling role of a restaurant owner, and eventually culminate your career by mentoring other fledgling businesspeople as a coach.

The last two strategies are optimal because they allow you to explore without pressure. This approach is particularly helpful for students who tend to be perfectionists and fear making a mistake in their career choices. As you start moving toward a specific career, you’ll gain more insights about that field and accelerate your understanding of different career paths. 

Click here to watch the full webinars, access our actionable Career Strategy Worksheet, take an exciting personality test, and discover the best tools to explore career paths and jobs.

Ivy Options also offers another career development tool called Strong Interest Inventory. Developed by the Myers-Briggs company, this assessment is designed to help students identify their interests and potential careers. As part of the assessment, the student responds to over 300 interest related questions. They then sign up for a 90-minute individual session with the career counselor, and receive a 14-page detailed report to summarize the outcomes. Reach out to your Ivy Options counselor or email info@ivyoptions.com to learn more. 

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by Anna Manafova, Ivy Options’ Myers-Briggs Certified Career Specialist