Career exploration needs a map

A young person sits down with the school’s career advisor. They’re asked what they might like to do after school.

Silence. A shoulder shrug. “I don’t know.”

The advisor tries another way in. “What are you interested in?”

The young person might be tempted to truthfully answer “video games” or “surfing” or “drawing”, because, well, that’s what they’re interested in.

These might sound unhelpful, but when you think about it, their responses to the question aren’t that unreasonable.

How can a young person tell us what kinds of work interests them when they know so little about what’s out there?

Knowing enough to recognise an interest

A young person might respond to the request with a job title or two. But we know from recent research that, when asked about the jobs they saw themselves doing at age 30, many young people named a relatively small group of occupations, for example, doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers and engineers.¹ Or a young person might recognise plenty of job titles but know very little about what people actually do in those jobs. The activities involved, the environments they work in and what might make the work interesting are often much less familiar.

That’s not to mention the vast array of occupations that young people don’t see in their own worlds. How will they ever find out about them?

Young people also differ in how much they know about occupations. Some have encountered many kinds of work through family, community activities or personal experiences. Others have had fewer opportunities.² Even a substantial collection of career information requires young people to find a way into it and understand how the different possibilities relate.

And as the National Careers Institute’s secondary-school research found, young people tended to be more open to learning about industries they already knew something about.² So if young people mainly explore familiar areas, other possibilities can remain outside their consideration.

So, we can see that “What are you interested in?” asks more than it first appears to. Young people are asked to connect what they know about themselves with a working world they may know very little about.

That’s quite a lot tucked into one little question.

The challenge for advisors

Research into quality career education recommends a student-centred approach, with guidance tailored to the young person’s individual needs, interests, and circumstances.³

But it can be difficult to draw out an answer about work interests when the young person hasn’t encountered enough of the world of work to identify where their interests might lie. Just asking more questions may leave them feeling they ought to know the answer when they simple don’t know where to start.

Plus, as parents, we can’t assume young people are even having conversations to help them find their direction, either. In 2022, 71% of Australian 15-year-olds reported having spoken with a career advisor at their school either once or not at all.⁴ For those in remote areas, there’s another challenge with only 41% of students attending a school where a dedicated career educator was employed.⁴

And career advisors and teachers tell us they have limited time and resources to deliver career education, struggling to provide quality guidance and individual support alongside their other responsibilities. For teachers, this often means fitting career support around a full teaching curriculum.^{2, 5}

These pressures can make one-to-one guidance challenging. A young person may arrive confused or unsure, while the advisor’s trying to understand what they know, what interests them and where to begin. With limited time together, having something concrete to discuss becomes especially valuable.

Young people are working to a timetable too. Subject choices and course applications have to be made, regardless of how confident they are in the decision. They can feel pressure to choose a pathway while still knowing little about the possibilities it could lead to.^{1, 2}

Where a pathway proves a poor fit, changing direction can mean time and money spent on study or training that remains unfinished, along with a loss of confidence and momentum.

And for some young people, struggling to find a direction may bring a risk of disengaging from education, training or work altogether.

None of these outcomes are what we want from career education and guidance.

Learning about work and themselves

The Australian Blueprint for Career Development recognises that learning about the world of work is part of career education. Alongside understanding themselves, young people need opportunities to explore work roles and possibilities, learn how to use career information and develop the knowledge to make decisions about their next steps.⁶

OK, that sounds like a good plan. But when the world of work can be a maze, how can we walk a young person through the many thousands of possibilities, without overwhelming them?

An organising framework can provide the solution, offering a foundation for that exploration in a way that simplifies the complexity. It describeshow different kinds of work can be grouped together, how they relate to other kinds of work, and where they sit in the wider picture of all work areas. In other words, we create a map of the world of work.

This map needs to be built around the nature of the work itself, rather than the job titles used to describe some roles. This makes the underlying work activities in different types of work visible, helping young people better understand the connections between various work areas.

Recognising these different work activities helps them identify which types interest them and which do not, and those they simply hadn’t considered before. They can then explore occupations that involve the activities they find interesting, making that exploration more focused rather than taking a scatter-gun approach.

Finally, young people need information presented in an accessible, engaging and understandable way. An ability to easily consider the work activities and environments, and whether they are of interest to them.

Exploring with the Work Sync Map

Work Sync provides this organising framework in the Work Sync Map. Informed by vocational-interest research⁷ the map describes how we can understand different types of work at two levels.

At the first (or broader) level are eight Work Themes: Health Science, Creative Expression, Technology, People, Organisation, Influence, Nature and Things. Each theme has work activities in common, for example, in the ‘Things’ work theme, activities are related to mechanical, hands-on, and physical activities.

In the Work Sync map, we add another layer of understanding describing a further three Work Domains for each work theme. For example, the Organisation work theme includes the work domains Workplace Administration, Finance and Accounting, and Personal Service – areas of work that have common thread ‘organising’ but are slightly different in what (or who) is being organised: information, numbers, or people.

Together that gives us a map with 24 work domains. But having a great map isn't enough. It may make the landscape more visible, but choosing a pathway to follow only comes from understanding what might offer in terms of day-to-day activities. We still need to make it easy for young people – or people of any age – to consider what the people who work in a particular work domain do, and whether that work is of interest to them.

In fact, we don’t even need them to understand the full map yet – we just need to make it easy for them to see the signs on the road.

Allowing interest and uncertainty to emerge

In Work Sync, we do this in our Discovery Journey – a guided series of short, engaging videos showing the work activities involved in each of the 24 work domains.

After each video, the young person simply considers whether the work activities shown interest them. They answer a simple question: “Does this work interest you?” They select a tick if they’re interested, a cross if they’re not, or a question mark if they’re unsure.

Each response stands on its own. Being interested in writing and media doesn’t require them to consider yet if they prefer it over teaching or medical science - that can come later. They can express interest in several areas, find others unappealing and remain uncertain about work they’re still trying to understand. Work Sync invites a young person to explore all their options before being required to make a choice.

The question mark earns its place too. “I’m not sure yet” gives us something to work with. An area may be unfamiliar, some activities may appeal more than others, or the young person may need further information or experience. Each gives them something to investigate.

Beginning the guidance conversation with something concrete

The responses come together in a Work Interest Summary. Young people can see how their reactions relate to the framework and use its language to describe the kinds of work that appeal to them.

The young person in our opening example could arrive with something more specific to discuss. They might have discovered an interest in writing and media, recognised that teaching also appeals, and marked another area as uncertain. They’ll also have indicated what they are not interested in – which can be another powerful aspect to explore.

For educators working with limited time, the Map provides a consistent, shared framework for guidance. Young people who complete the video series have explored all the same domains, while their individual responses highlight different interests and uncertainties to discuss.

Work Sync’s Wayfinder then connects their interests with occupations they can explore. An advisor can help them examine those possibilities in light of their strengths, circumstances and opportunities, and consider relevant subjects, training or work experience.

Making career exploration meaningful

Career exploration should help young people make sense of the world of work, bringing information and guidance together so they can begin to see possibilities for themselves. That means helping them connect what they are learning about different kinds of work with what they are discovering about themselves.

Work Sync is designed to make that connection easier. Its organising framework and guided exploration give young people a way to look into the world of work, while their responses provide a shared starting point for individual guidance. Further conversations and experiences can then build on what they have discovered, helping them investigate possibilities and make more informed choices.

When exploration starts with Work Sync, career conversations can begin differently. Asked “What are you interested in?”, young people have something meaningful to draw on – and a shared language for what talking about comes next.

Walking into the future – map in hand.