Careers: what do primary dc want to know?

[Legomania]

Ds1's school have asked for short videos of parents talking about their job for careers week. I'd like to contribute but am not quite sure where to pitch it (ds1, my eldest dc, is only 5 so I don't really know how sophisticated older primary kids are). What would your children be interested in hearing about someone's job?

Hard to say without knowing your job!

Do you have a uniform? If so, wear it for the talk and explain bits if special - e.g a hat, stephoscope, badge, tabbard...

Show any 'props' you use - torch, x-ray pictures, tools, special forms to fill in, etc.

Mainly - keep it visual to keep them interested. Show photos where you can't show the real thing.

I'm a year 1 teacher.

Thank you MrsLJ This is the thing - I do investment marketing... so not much in there visually. I'd have to show them a pie chart or something! The school haven't specified an age range.

But it's a legitimate job, one I am enthusiastic about, and presumably the school would like the children to hear about jobs that they are less likely to have come across. And one of the skills is explaining obscure ideas...

A couple of years ago our focus for careers week was jobs that you weren't aware of. The common ones the children know about (doctor, teacher, firefighter etc). It was really interesting. One parent sourced music for tv (I don't think I had even thought of that when watching a movie), another ( I can't remember the exact title) designed security features for money around the world (like the hologram and water mark stuff). It was very much ks2 focused and a lot of focus on what your passion or talent is and how that might look like as a job (for example art, you could be a clothes designer or prop designer or decorator, work in a museum, etc).

Investment marketing is something I don't know much about so a lot of children definitely wouldn't know about as a career choice. Sounds cheesy but you could definitely inspire a child into a career that weren't aware of!

How much do you earn? What do you have to do to get your job? Funny stories. A journalist came in to talk about her job when I was five. I became a journalist.

I was going to suggest that you tell them about anything gruesome and whether you have a uniform but that won't be you! Have you met anyone 'famous'? Do you work in an interesting building? You could show them charts - especially contrasting good investments as opposed to not so good.

Can you give an example in pocket money terms, with which they might be familiar?

Thanks all, will see what I can come up with!

If you could show them graphs and bar charts etc and explain how you need to use these in your job every day which is why maths is so important, then the teacher will like that.

I would try to make up some slides to show what an investment marketer does (I have no idea what you do!)

Google Job Description. Source for new investors and expansion of portfolios from new and existing clients. Evaluate structure, negotiate, and close new transactions, portfolio restructurings, rescheduling, capital increases, equity sales, etc. Relationship management of existing and new investors.

So a slideshow with a person who has started a company/invented an idea or something, and needs money for something (to grow, market, manufacture), needs help to get money, so you help them. Then explain what you do to help them - go and meet people with money and want to make more, help them make their idea look better etc. Very high level and lots of pictures.

Maybe explain day to day what you job looks like - meeting clients, looking for investors, working on a computer with emails, zoom calls, graphs and data to work out answers to big numeric problems etc.

I think basics about what your day to day job is like - what do you do all day, etc. Some simple examples about businesses etc that you could explain.

And then maybe talking about what you were like as a child at school - what subjects did you enjoy, what skills were you good at, what kind of jobs would those have made you good at, how this fits in.

Maybe what you studied at A-levels or univeristy - older primary children are starting to be aware that you can make choices in your subjects later on, and might want to know what kinds of things.

What are the good and bad things about the job - what do you like about it, who have you met, what has been exciting?