For parents and students · Launch League blog
How to Explore Career Options When You Don't Know What You Want
By Nick Gonzalez, founder, U.S. Air Force veteranPublished
The short answer
Start with evidence you already have, not with what you want. List what you kept and what you would cut from every job, team and chore you have done, then pick three careers that fit the pattern and test each one: read about it, talk to someone who does it, and try a piece of the work.
The keep-and-cut review
For every job, team, volunteer shift or big chore you have ever done, write three moments you would keep and three you would cut. Across five or six experiences, the patterns in those lists are better career data than any quiz, because they come from things you actually did.
How to explore career options when you don't know what you want
Not knowing what you want is the normal starting point, not a problem to be ashamed of. The mistake is trying to fix it by thinking harder. Wanting is hard to think your way into. It shows up after you have seen enough real work to react to.
So flip the order. Instead of deciding what you want and then looking for it, gather evidence about what you already like and dislike, use it to pick a few careers worth testing, and let the tests tell you what you want. It is slower than picking a title from a list, and much more likely to hold up.
How to use past jobs to discover your ideal career
This is where the keep-and-cut review comes in. Take every experience you have: a part-time job, a sports team, babysitting, a school club, a volunteer shift, mowing lawns, a group project. For each one, write three specific moments you would keep and three you would cut.
Be specific. “I liked the restaurant job” is useless. “I liked the Friday rush when everything was moving and I knew my station” and “I hated closing alone and counting the drawer” are useful. After five or six experiences, read the lists side by side. You are looking for repeats: working with your hands, being around people, having a clear finish line, being trusted on your own, pressure, quiet. Those repeats describe the kind of work that suits you, and they are often surprising.
When I was moving people into new roles at a 100-plus person company, this is roughly the conversation I had with them. What part of your current job do you look forward to? What would you hand off tomorrow? People's answers told me more about where they would thrive than their résumés did.
Career coaching for indecisive teens: where to start
An indecisive teenager is usually trying to make one big decision. Make it smaller. The goal for the next month is not to choose a career; it is to choose three careers to test. Three is enough to compare and few enough to actually do.
Pick them from the keep-and-cut patterns, and make sure they are different from each other. One that feels safe, one that feels interesting, and one that surprises you is a good mix. A free quiz like our Future Finder can help widen the list if all three ideas look the same.
Career clarity through job exploration: a coach's method
For each of the three careers, run the same three steps, in order. Each one costs a little more effort than the last, so stop early if a career clearly isn't it.
- Read: spend twenty minutes on what the work is really like day to day, what it pays in Ohio and how people get in. Our Ohio job pages cover this for 45 jobs, using federal pay data.
- Talk: find one person who does the job and ask four questions. What is a normal day? What is the worst part? What would you tell a 16-year-old? Would you do it again?
- Try: spend a few hours close to the work. A shadow day, a weekend volunteer shift, a short class, a summer job nearby.
- Record: after each step, write two sentences about what you learned, and whether the career moves up or down your list.
Electrician in OhioRegistered nurse in OhioSoftware developer in OhioHVAC technician in OhioDental hygienist in Ohio
Combining career coaching with internships for real learning
An internship or job shadow is the try step done properly, and it is where coaching earns its keep. The value is not the experience itself; it is what you do before and after. Before: write down what you expect the work to be like. After: compare. The gap between the two is the learning. A coach's job is to make sure that comparison actually happens and that the next step follows from it.
A few practical points for Ohio families. Unpaid internships with for-profit companies are restricted: the U.S. Department of Labor uses a primary beneficiary test, which asks things like whether the internship is tied to education and whether the intern is replacing paid staff. Unpaid volunteering with nonprofits and government agencies is generally allowed. If a teen is being paid, Ohio requires minors of compulsory school age to have an age and schooling certificate, with an exception for 16- and 17-year-olds hired during summer vacation who provide proof of age and parent consent. And the free OhioMeansJobs K-12 system includes a tracker for logging job shadows and internships, which is worth using so the experiences don't blur together.
What to do after the three tests
After testing three careers, one of three things is usually true. One career clearly survived: go deeper on it with a longer experience, such as a College Credit Plus course, a career-tech program or a summer job in the field. Two survived: test the difference between them, by asking someone in each what the worst month of the year looks like. None survived: that is not wasted time. Rerun the keep-and-cut review with the new experiences added and choose three more. Ruling things out is progress.
When exploring isn't the real problem
Sometimes a teenager can't explore because something else is in the way: anxiety, low mood, burnout, or trouble at home. Coaching does not treat any of those, and pushing career experiments on a teen who is struggling usually backfires. Talk to a doctor or a licensed mental health professional first. If your teen is in crisis, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which is free and open 24/7.
If the real problem is that nobody in the family knows people in the fields your teen is curious about, that is exactly what a coach with a network is for. That is what our Future Ready Sprint does for Northeast Ohio families, over six weeks for US$1,295.
Questions
Quick answers
- What if my teen has never had a job?
- Use everything else: sports, chores, school projects, clubs, helping relatives, video game communities they run. The keep-and-cut review works on any experience where they did something and felt something about it. If the list is still thin, a first part-time job or volunteer role becomes the next experiment.
- How long should career exploration take?
- A first round of three careers, read, talked to and tried, fits in about two to three months if someone keeps it moving. It rarely finishes in one round, and that is fine. Most people refine their direction several times.
- Is it okay to explore careers that need a four-year degree and ones that don't at the same time?
- Yes, and it is a good idea. Comparing an apprenticeship-based career with a degree-based one, on the same three steps, shows a teen the trade-offs in time, cost and day-to-day work far better than comparing two similar options.
- How do we find someone to talk to in a career?
- Ask everyone you know who they know. Most adults will say yes to a polite, specific request for fifteen minutes. Have your teen make the ask themselves once you have made the introduction; learning to ask is part of the point.
Next step
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Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division: Fact Sheet #71, internship programs under the FLSA · Ohio Revised Code 4109.02: age and schooling certificates for working minors · Ohio Department of Education and Workforce: OhioMeansJobs K-12 · 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Coaching is not therapy, medical, legal or financial advice.