How To Help Your Teenager Explore Career Interests Without Pressure

This article was first published in Vocal Media.

As a first-generation college student, the traditional college and career planning process caused me unnecessary stress 20 years ago. I got into this line of work to fix that, but also because I saw that, due to the fear of the unknown, people were making bad decisions about college and career.

I remember being at a conference and someone making a joke that the best time to talk to your kids about college is in the car with the doors locked. That’s a joke, but it’s also a scary truth. This stress is also reflected in the timing of when people reach out to us; more parents are asking me if I’ll talk to their 7th- or 8th-grader about planning for college. While I like to start exploring students’ aptitudes and interests with them in 9th or 10th grade, I keep the focus on kids’ goals and dreams and avoid focusing on college.

Dreaming about what you want to be when you “grow up” should be fun and imaginative; it shouldn’t be a source of stress. When students feel pressured to be practical, realistic, and money-conscious when thinking about their future careers, it sucks all of the fun out of the exercise.

There’s No Such Thing as a Safe Path

A lot of pressure comes from parents, even the best-intentioned ones. As parents, we’ve been knocked down by life’s punches, and we want to do everything in our power to protect our kids from those blows. We think a safe path will protect them, but the reality is there’s no such thing.

In the name of predictability, we rob our kids of the joy of daydreaming and discovering the best path for them. The best thing we can do as parents is introduce our kids to lots of different people doing lots of different things for a living. Show your kids all of the creative ways people can make money. As parents, our biases and lived experiences can sometimes get in the way, too. Your impression of what a lawyer, doctor, teacher, or banker does every day (and how much they earn) may not be accurate or up to date.

Finally, have a financial literacy conversation with your child about college, starting salaries, and cost-of-living differences across locations. Your child may want to make tradeoffs. Living in a place with a lower cost of living may make taking a lower-paying role more feasible. Some higher-paying roles, on the other hand, may necessitate long hours and living in an expensive locale. Students who wish to major in professions that aren’t traditionally aligned with high incomes may want to opt to attend a state university, which often means lower debt levels after graduation.

A Look Under the Hood

First, never ask a young person, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” That’s such a big and intimidating question!

Before I ask any subjective questions, I give all of our students an aptitude assessment to get a non-biased, objective “look under the hood.” This will reveal a student’s natural talents and proclivities, often overlooked by the student. Then, as we unpack their results, I’ll ask them if they can relate these talents to their daily lives. If they cannot, it means they have an unexplored or underused talent, and we can start our conversation there.

After exploring talents, we explore interests. Take note: What we say we like is informed by what we’ve seen or been exposed to so far in life. For a 17-year-old, that is quite limited. Once we have more exposure, our interests are more reliable.

This objective approach of exploring talents and interests takes some pressure off. It opens the door for a conversation where we discuss a young adult’s unique qualities and then explore how those might show up in their career in the future.

Don’t Try to Be the Expert

As a parent, you should be curious and show that you’re learning about careers right alongside your teen. Ask questions when you meet new people, and let your child observe how curious you are about others’ professional lives.

Be honest with your child about what you like and dislike about your own job and what you wish you’d known when you were their age. Don’t assume salary figures for various careers; most people are so wrong about this.

Help your student with introductions to people, part-time jobs, and internships, and then back off and see where they take it.

I’ve always believed in an asset-driven approach to counseling rather than a trend-driven one. Even if there’s a big demand for electricians right now, that doesn’t mean your child will be successful at this profession. If your child is focused on making a good income, it won’t help to simply ask AI to share a list of the highest-paying jobs. If your child’s talents and interests aren’t aligned with the roles, they won’t be one of those high earners.

Success comes when a person’s gifts are aligned with their work. First, you have to identify those gifts, then play matchmaker, aligning your child with the opportunities available today.

We Have a Big, Fat Invitation

What’s so perplexing to me right now is that as AI replaces work that is predictable, conventional, and routine, people seek career paths that are predictable, conventional, and routine.

We have an opportunity to do fun, creative, human work right now as AI tackles the more rote tasks. At this moment, it is perhaps the easiest time to start your own thing, but very few people I talk to are interested in doing that.

AI influencers are warning us to get competent in AI to stay relevant, but real relevance comes from being super clear about your talents and the value you bring, and being relentless about aligning them with the work you do. As parents, the best thing we can do is help our kids get there, introduce them to people, back off, and let them find their flow.

Alex Ellison, Founder and Head Guide, Throughline Guidance

Alex Ellison launched her independent consulting practice in 2013 under the name Dunce, LLC, just to add some levity to what can be a stressful topic: college & career planning. She writes and lectures extensively on the subject of careers and college readiness and has been a featured speaker at SXSW and TEDx. She is the author of Go Your Own Way: 7 Student-Centered Paths to the Best College Experience and the creator of the Go Your Own Way Student Archetype Quiz used in schools and by individuals to jump-start their college search. She is a co-author of Your Hidden Genius. Alex holds a BA from Northwestern University, a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Nevada, Reno, and a certificate in college counseling from UCLA Extension School. She lives in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about her work at

https://throughlineguidance.com/.