Parents Beware: What You Don't Know about Career Planning Can Hurt You. Even Worse, It Can Hurt Your Child.

Too many of my son's high school friends—nice, athletic young men from good, supportive families—started college right after high school but quickly got into trouble, dropped out, and spent the next several years recovering their forward momentum. It was painful to watch and must have been terribly damaging to their self-esteem, not to mention needlessly expensive for their families.

My heart ached for those young men, but I knew they were far from alone. One-third of freshmen in the United States leave college before their sophomore year. Almost fifty percent of college students never graduate. Too many parents are left holding the bill for an aborted "must-have" education, having spent tens of thousands of dollars only to find their children back home, licking their wounds in the basement, less directed than when they graduated from high school.

How did a glittering cultural promise become such a devastating personal punishment?

Part of the problem is that everyone in high school is focused on getting into college. The assumption seems to be that it's the act of going to college itself that provides direction, as though career planning happens by virtue of admission to a four-year liberal arts college.

Except no, it doesn't.

As Career Vision points out, going to college is not the same as planning a career. Colleges, in my experience, are happy to take your money, offer another class as the solution to virtually every problem, and leave the career planning entirely up to your student.

And guess who your student asks for help?

You.

Of all influences, parents have the strongest on their child's career decisions. Expect your child to turn to you instead of to a qualified career development professional, especially early in life, when supposedly short-term career decisions can have far-reaching consequences.

But realistically, how are you supposed to know where he or she should go to school or what to major in? There are around 3,000 common occupations in the world of work, plus another 10,000 less common—and that doesn't count emerging fields. As former Secretary of Education Richard Riley said, "We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't exist yet, using technology that hasn't been invented, in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems."

The workplace is changing so fast that educational policies can't keep up, creating a gaping mismatch between education and employment. "Employers across the globe are struggling to find enough people with the right set of skills for the posts they have available, even as millions of people remain unemployed." You don't want your student to become today's version of a buggy-whip maker in a spanking new automobile economy, especially not after you've paid $150,000 for the privilege.

What's a parent to do?

Read my blog.

My solution for finding direction and connecting education to employment rests on something possessed by every student: Strengths. By that term I mean many things, but especially their unique psychological assets, including Abilities, Interests, and Motivators (AIM). More about that soon. For now, please take my word for it: Your child's strengths and talents translate into her competitive advantage in the workforce.

Because of my background as a vocational psychologist, I was able to assist my son in his transition from high school to college. Making choices based on his strengths, he sailed through college in four years, despite having ADHD and a part-time job. He graduated with the major he'd chosen before entering the university and accepted the best of three job offers in his senior year. Now 25, he is preparing to specialize in an exciting new field that I did not even know existed when he was in high school.

I will share my knowledge in this blog, as a complimentary form of social capital. You'll learn how to identify your student's strengths and use them to guide his or her search for the best-fitting education and employment. Your mentoring can decrease your child's stress and enhance self-worth and salary, all while benefiting the larger world. Check back on the 3rd and 18th of each month for another post about how to identify talent and help connect it to education and workforce opportunities—even for opportunities that don't yet exist.