How to Discover Careers by Exploring Job Families

When a student I’m working with throws out the name of a job of interest like “actuary” I know it’s typically because they have a family member or close friend who is one. How do I know this? High school students often only know what they’ve been exposed to.

Teacher – check

Nurse – check

Video Game Designer – check

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

In my experience career coaching teens and young adults, it’s a mistake to only stick with what you know and wise to broaden your horizons before doing something as important as choosing a college major. Often a wrong choice can limit or eliminate future options – I offered a free webinar on this previously…check out the recording here. So is better to make informed choices.

How to Find Unknow Occupations

The US Department of Labor classifies 562 jobs into 23 job families. This is known as the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System.

Inside my Launch Career Clarity course, in module 3 after they receive their job match list, I teach them how to discover careers and do deep-dive research on the careers before how to curate experiences to check for alignment with their personality.

Here’s a snippet of one of our lessons inside launch which will demonstrate how to use the SOC to discover careers your student likely did not even know existed!