What do you want to do when you grow up?
It’s a paralyzing question for kids. Heck, it’s a horrifying query for college grads too. With today’s job specialization in both skills and industries, getting close to a career that might make you happy is a big challenge.
Fortunately, a new book from DK Publishing will help get your tweens and teens thinking about what job paths they’re interested in following–and how to get there. The book, Careers: The Graphic Guide to Finding the Perfect Job for You, covers more than 400 jobs and is laid out in a very easy to navigate manner.
The first pages of Careers encourage kids to think about their hobbies and interests, while considering things like grades, internships, and desired financial situation. Next, a series of questions quietly allows kids to develop an inventory about themselves that catalogs motivations, interests, skills, and more.
The next couple of pages deal with actions more applicable to people ready to enter the job market–how to get a job–but it’s valuable information for even younger kids to be thinking about as they prepare themselves for careers. The book is broken into fifteen major categories, from social service and teaching to finance, law, and politics. Each section is collected in a group of color-coded pages that contain around ten jobs per category.
Each job contains a summary of what the position typically entails, along with salary info, the industries where that job can be found, and related careers. The inventory that your young reader developed can be compared to that job’s profile of interests, qualifications, and a few more categories. Finally, for each job there is a career path that shows how you might get to that position and where else it can lead you. A skills guide rounds out each page, suggesting what skill set will be best served in that job. At the back of the book, a glossary provides definition for some specific career lingo.
As a parent, I really liked this book. I wish I’d had a similar resource when I was younger to have a better idea of the options that were available to me. Getting a kid pointed in the right direction toward a career that is both meaningful and fulfilling is invaluable. Careers does a great job of laying out those opportunities.
I gave the book to my kids, aged thirteen and firmly in possession of the all-encompassing teenage knowledge base. However, they humored their dad and read the first few pages to get a feel for the book, then dug deeper, in search of careers that might interest them. To a kid, they liked the book a lot and enjoyed thinking about the job they might have when they’re able to finally escape our home. Apparently I’ll be working until I’m at least 165 years old to afford it too, because I’ve got a budding doctor/game developer, another doctor, and a geneticist/astrophysicist. Think I can crowdfund their educations?
Careers: The Graphic Guide to Finding the Perfect Job for You is available now.
Disclosure: GeekDad received a sample of this book for review purposes.
