Career advisors for teenagers

[SoSadSoSadSoSad]

My dd, nearly 19, is so lost.

She started a degree that she isn’t enjoying. She will leave this year with a foundation degree.

Are there any careers advisors that anyone has used to really help young people find a path for themselves?

Surely there is a careers department at her university?

She has been. Says they’re not very clued up or helpful.

Our school uses uniform. She may be familiar with other careers websites from her school days. You can set up an account and browse.

Unifrog!

You can find private career advisors.

What might be useful is completing some solo research, maybe with you, into what she enjoys, how she prefer to work, how much she wants to e.g. travel for work vs. live in one place, or whether she prefers a bigger company vs. self-employment.

Help her ask specific questions of the uni career advisors. The first one is: when I complete (and hopefully pass!) my foundation degree, what qualification will I have and can I take some time out to reflect before applying for the next thing.

If she's unsure, it is probably better not to rush to a hasty application for further studies.

What is she studying?

Also as a parent tell her it is very common to not be certain at only 19 and that the main thing is to keep lots of options open.

It is completely natural not to know what you want to do at 19, definitely!

There are a number of things that might help, if her university dept is useless:

https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/

https://www.ucas.com/ (Again, but this time purely to browse every topic and see if anything sparks her interest.)

Also this: https://www.ucas.com/apprenticeships/england

Tell her to go back to the careers service.
Sometimes students want all the answers at once, when actually it could be a process.
If it is a degree offered at a college, are they accredited by a university? If so, she can access the university careers service too.

What is her Foundation degree in? They are usually industry related, so I’m assuming she had an interest in that industry?

Could you look at a book like What Colour is Your Parachute with her? (There may be better options now, this helped me many years ago.) Sometimes it's about knowing yourself better before other people can help. If she's lost then having a coach-type person so it feels less isolated might be helpful, that could be you to start with.

Lord - it must be forty years since I first opened a copy of that, @Sauvignonblanket! 🤨 (Where have the years gone?)

I agree it’s a good place to start, though I don’t know what the latest editions are like.

The National Careers Service is free to access or if you’re willing to pay an independent adviser you can search for a registered professional on the CDI website (professional body for careers advisers)
https://www.thecdi.net/professional-register

It’s a shame that the uni careers dept weren’t helpful. I’d echo PP comment to maybe try again. It is often a process where the student is triaged as there are different types of support available: they need to see somebody for guidance by the sounds of it, but perhaps they were booked in with somebody who does CV checks (for example!)

Hi,

Ive got 4 young adult DCs so have a good amount of personal experience in this area. Im not sure if you found the help you needed but if not i can offer the following support.

This is such a hard situation and more common than people realis. A lot of young people start degrees because it felt like the expected next step rather than a conscious choice, and then find themselves at 19 wondering what they actually want.

The good news is that 19 with a foundation degree and a clear sense of what she doesn't want is actually a reasonable place to be. Knowing what doesn't fit is genuinely useful information.

In terms of what helps, a private careers advisor who specialises in young adults rather than school leavers can be really valuable at this stage. The Career Development Institute (cdi.org.uk) has a directory of qualified advisors you can search by location. Look specifically for someone who works with young adults in transition rather than a school-focused advisor.

The questions worth helping her sit with right now aren't "what job do you want", that's too big and too abstract. More useful starting points are: what has she enjoyed doing even if it wasn't formal work or study, what does she do in her free time when no one's watching, and what kind of environment does she want to be in day to day. The answers to those questions are more revealing than any questionnaire.

I'd also say, the foundation degree isn't wasted. Whatever she does next, she has demonstrated she can work at degree level and she knows something important about herself. That's not nothing.

I hope she finds her way. Feel free to DM me if it would help to talk it through.