Things to Consider
- Keep in mind your youth/young adult’s interests and talents while helping them choose a job or career path
- Explore interesting occupations by having your youth/young adult talk with others about their jobs and professions
- Internships are great ways for young adults/youth to get introduced to careers
Tools and Resources
- Information about careers and career education in Kansas
- Information about careers from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics
- National web site on different careers
- Information about careers in life sciences - Bio Works U
- Information about careers in medicine and health
- JobTIPS is a free program designed to help individuals with autism spectrum disorder and other learning differences explore career interests, seek and obtain employment, and successfully maintain employment. JobTIPS addresses the social and behavioral differences that might make identifying, obtaining, and keeping a job more difficult for you. It is also useful for educators and family members as well.
Career Aptitude
One of the most pleasurable ways of discovering your young adult’s career aptitude is simply spending time with them, observing what they do best and what they enjoy most. You want to help them follow their interests in finding a job and planning a career and that means going places with them, exploring your town and county as you learn what engages your child. Everybody is good at something, and it’s up to us as parents, teachers and counselors to figure out what that is for our children, even if they are young adults.
Having a mentor is also a good way to introduce an older teen or young adult to the world around them, to help them engage in community activities and to learn about careers. If your son or daughter likes to draw, hire an artist to take them places, to see the many ways that artists work in the community. Then help your young adult research jobs involving artistic skills and work step-by-step toward achieving one of those jobs.
Interest Inventories
There are plenty of career interest inventories out there to help your young adult learn more about how their interests and skills translate into careers and jobs. These are also useful tools in teaching them about the variety of jobs in the economy to broaden their thinking on all the different jobs they might do. The KansasWorks web site, offers these profilers as well as tools to help map out the kind of education your young adult will need for specific jobs.