The world is full of job opportunities and many that we aren’t even aware of. The educational system helps you get the grades you want, but they don’t guide you in what career you want to take. With the lack of career advisors in the UK, many teens aren’t sure what career path they want to take, and it can become difficult later on.
What if I told you there was a free website called Start, which can provide you with every piece of information you need based on your profile and can guide you in what job you want to take in the future? With approximately 1600 job profiles and the site being compatible with all devices, this could help teens and give them the information they need.
All you need to do is register for free and enter your details (be honest). When you sign up, you will receive a confirmation email and then you’re ready to go. It will ask what school/college you’re studying it and will also ask for your address later on. This is purely for generating your CV if you wish to create one.
Firstly, Start suggests that you enter the ‘About Me’ information first:
- My Skills
- My Qualities
- My Interests
- My Work Preferences
You can edit these details later on, but it makes you evaluate yourself and pick out what your best skills/traits are. If you have an idea of what field of work you want to look into then you can go straight to ‘Explore Jobs’ and find knowledge based on what’s out there, what you want to do and what qualifications you need for your selected job.
On the ‘About Me’ section, you will find it brings up many different skills that you have to rate, from fair, good to strong and you can even add a comment. If you rate about 50% of these to start off with and a minimum of 5 interests, then you can start searching and refine your details later on. If you’re a little stuck on how to navigate then you can start their tour and Start even has a dyslexic mode on the website so is suitable for any learning difficulty.
When you’ve finished editing your profile, you can go on Explore > Job Sectors and find there’s a list of career categories, from Government to Retail to Pharmaceuticals, every job you can imagine is listed, and you’ll be surprised at the results. Many jobs I hadn’t even heard of! My son, Jake is in year 9 and at the moment, and is very interested in Law, so we selected that, and it tells you about all the jobs within that sector. When clicking on Lawyer, it explained everything about the job and if it’s right for him as you can see below.
Salary, related jobs and even availability in the UK were listed. I was so impressed with how much detail was provided and Jake walked away feeling confident and it made him question what he really wanted to do in the future. Everything is based on your skills provided at the start which is a real time saver and Start is easy to navigate once you get settled in properly. If your child/teen is unsure what career path they want to take then this could get them out of the stressful zone and finally give them answers.
Moving away from the jobs, if your teen wants to study further education or perhaps an apprenticeship then Start is your saviour for that. It’s tough finding out about these things during school, and there’s never enough time in the day to ask questions.
You can either select a course you want to follow or enter your postcode and find an apprenticeship near you which is such a time saver as I understand that apprenticeships are hard to find. If your teen is thinking about University, then this is an ideal way to get organised and find a little research out all in once place.
As a teaching assistant, I know how the educational system works quite well and when my eldest son, Lewis, was at school, information was a lot harder to get hold of. I love how Start works, and I think it can help many parents and teens from the comfort of their home. Schools are limited on how much information they can give out to you and I’ve found that many sixth forms and colleges can be biased because they want their students to study there. It’s perfect that you can go on an unbiased website, and I hope a lot more schools use it in the future.
If you want to visit Start it’s a real game changer and Jake found out some useful points, so a definite honest recommendation in my opinion!
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