Many school-going children will, at some point in their lives, be offered the opportunity to spend time job shadowing a person working in the real world. It is an exciting prospect, but for many, it is very hard to know what to choose. In fact, the idea of job shadowing should probably not be limited to a visit to a single workplace, rather children should be afforded the opportunity to visit four or five different places so they can get a look at several different set-ups. It is quite unfair really to expect that a school-going child will be able to pick the one career that they are going to follow the first time out. But the truth is that most kids only get one chance to do a job shadow. With this in mind there needs to be a degree of research done prior to the visit. So, to help, here are a few careers that you might want to consider, and which would be interesting to shadow for a couple of days.
Programmers
If you have an aptitude for coding and you have an understanding of some computer languages, then this is definitely something to look at. You may even have developed some programmes or apps yourself in your spare time. But just because you enjoy this as a hobby, doesn’t mean that it will make a good career – it would be very handy to see how things function on a day-to-day basis with a coding studio or a company that does mobile app development Sydney has several of these to pick from. The reality of committing code and working to a strict schedule as part of a team might be something that you relish, but on the other hand you might quickly discover that this type of environment takes all the joy out of coding for you. If coding is something that your children might be interested in, there are lots of websites such as Whitehatjr.com that offer coding classes for kids to help them learn fundamentals of coding–logic, structure, sequence and algorithmic thinking–to generate creative outcomes eg animations and apps.
Use your body
For those people who have physical aptitudes, there is nothing wrong with picking a career that is physically orientated. Don’t use careers week to discover if you have the aptitude or not, ideally you have an inkling already that you are a great dancer or swimmer. Let’s say that the latter is a strength for you, that you are on the swim team and love water polo. It doesn’t seem like a massive jump to look at something like commercial diving as a career. The point is, don’t just look at your marks and the subjects where you perform well when thinking about the potential job shadow, there are plenty of other areas to look at as well, and many times those can yield amazing career opportunities.
Television is not reality
What you see on television is not how careers are in reality. So, if you think that medicine is all Grey’s Anatomy or that being a lawyer is Law and Order SVU, then you are very wrong. The same applies to police work which is also plenty of slogs and not nearly as much 21 Jump Street as you might imagine. The point is if you think a career might be what you see on television, use the opportunity to job shadow to see what it is really like.
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