It takes a lot of time and effort to discover who God designed you to be, your strengths and interests, which careers would be a good fit, and what the best path may be toward achieving your goals.  Waiting to start this process can delay progress toward a future career and income.  We set these resources up so that your teen can move through them at their own pace as it is convenient for them.  Many students wait until after high school to choose a major, but that is why nearly 80% of students change their major and almost half of students take 6 years to graduate with a 4 year degree.  Remember what Benjamin Franklin said:  “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”  Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.  Your teen will thank you in the future.  If you think about it, determining their future career really is more important than almost any subject that they are currently studying; finding a career that is a good fit will have a much greater impact on their long term happiness than learning chemistry, classic literature or history.

Watching on-line videos or reading a book is a good start to learning about jobs, but it is not enough to empower your teen to choose a career path that will lead to long-term satisfaction. Even though a profession sounds interesting, it may not align with your teen’s strengths or lifestyle goals, or they may find out they don’t enjoy the work environment. For example, many teens want to become a professional athlete because the pros make a lot of money and it sounds really fun. However, not everyone has a realistic shot at making it in professional sports. However, they may have other skill sets and interests that allow them to work within the professional sports world – just maybe not as an athlete. We’ve done a lot of research, organized it into a step-by-step road map, and provided assessments that connect your teens interests, lifestyle goals, strengths and work culture preferences to careers. Quick on-line videos about various careers do not provide a clear understanding of what those careers are really like. They also fail to help your teen understand that key factors that lead to career satisfaction are different for each individual and affect life choices and the required salary. That’s one of the major reasons we developed these resources. We wanted to make a complete set of career resources that are practical and really help teens understand all the aspects of choosing a career, including whether or not that career will still be viable in 10, 15, or 20 years.

It’s a well-known fact that college is costing more these days and taking longer to complete; one reason for this is because many students get to college and realize that the major they chose was not right for them, and then waste time and money trying to figure out a better fit.  80% of students change their majors at least once and nearly half of students take 6 years to finish a 4 year degree.  Now, during high school, is a great time to figure this out – before your teen is paying 100’s of dollars a credit hour to take classes that may not align to their final career.  In addition to discussing a multitude of career options, we help teens understand the key qualities employers are looking for, how to make themselves more valuable to employers, what to look for in a good company and a good boss, and how to become a great leader. Real life examples show students the practical application of these concepts.  We also help students learn how plan for the future so that they choose do not choose a career that will become obsolete as technology evolves.  Don’t just pick something that sounds interesting – there’s a lot more to consider when choosing a career!

If you stop and think about it, teens spend more time learning about classic literature, history, chemistry, physics and algebra 2 than they do thinking about the career they want spend their lives doing.  This is obviously a mistake considering the impact that career choice will have on their long term happiness (much more than stoichiometry, trigonometry or factoring a quadratic equation)!  Finding a career that is a good fit requires more than just identifying strengths and interests.  There are many other factors to consider which can impact happiness and success in life.  With thousands of job possibilities, it is important to determine what is important to you and learn more about your options.  Taking the time to plan well can help ensure sustained satisfaction in your career.  H4RL’s career resources walk teens through this process step by step.

This is one of those instances of not seeing the forest through the trees.  What is the point of all of the classes your teen is taking?  It’s to help them get a good education and to eventually lead to a great career where they can be happy and successful.  We focus so much on the classes that we forget to step back and realize that we really should identify the career first and then plan the classes to help them get there.  College absolutely is important for many, many careers, but for some it is not the correct path.  The point of all of your teen’s hard work (and yours!) is to help them to be happy and successful in life.  Identifying a career that fits them is really far more important than taking chemistry, physics, or algebra 2 (and that is coming from an engineer)!  Walking through the steps of self-discover and career exploration and finding a good match is essential for planning a great future.  It’s all waiting for your teen right now, set up so you can complete this course at your own pace!  We have organized the resources so that you can use them at your own pace as time allows, such as during lunch time or when you have so time in the evening.  Remember what Ben Franklin said:  “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”  That statement is absolutely true about planning for a career.  The more you put into the process, the more  you’ll get out of it!