Deciding on Paths to Take in the future

“So, what are you planning on doing when you’re older?” is by far the most frequently asked question of teenagers today, reigniting the panic based around colleges, universities and careers. What should I do? Do I need to apply to colleges? How can I improve my grades? These are only a few questions which we ask ourselves when thinking of career paths. 

If you know what grades you want, where you want to go and what you want to do when you’re older then you’re already halfway there. For the rest of us however, we’re still torn between dozens of jobs we wouldn’t mind doing, struggling to choose which one we should pick and which path we should head down. This can be daunting, stressful and difficult to do, which is where websites such as the one I’m going to talk about today, Prospects, comes into light. 

Prospects is an online website which can help people currently in school decide the career they could want to do when they’re older via career profiles, quizzes and real life advice from people in different career sectors. If you type ‘Prospects’ into Google, or go to ‘https://www.prospects.ac.uk’ then you can use the most useful feature of the website, the quiz, which takes into account your skills and then suggests over 400 jobs you might be interested in doing. For example, when I took mine, I was recommended a job to do with professions such as healthcare, aviation and law/politics. 

You might’ve already heard of Prospects because many schools and career advisors recommend the site because of how useful it is. This is the reason why I recommend it as well because even though many people know what kind of profession they want to do, many others don’t have a clue and need some kind of place to start. Speaking of careers advisors, you don’t even have to go to websites such as Prospects for help. For example, when my school introduced work experience to my year at the start of this academic year, I spoke to my schools career advisor for help. She helped me gain the confidence to contact possible places I could do my work experience, and I’m now scheduled to work with my area’s Member of Parliament. Career advisors are always welcoming and supportive when you go to speak to them, so I’d definitely recommend them if websites aren’t helping you as much as you’d like them to. 

Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope this has at least helped you get one step further towards the path you want to take in the future.

• Fin ​