This text is part of the special booklet Trades, professions and careers
As the labor market becomes more complex, it is more and more difficult to orient oneself early.
Choose a job. A difficult, even agonizing task for many teenagers. From the age of 16, secondary school students must choose between a scientific or a social orientation. Then comes the time to choose a program from among the hundreds of courses offered in CEGEPs, based on its grades, skills and qualifications, but above all, depending on the career you want to undertake. Should you have already made your career choice at 16 or 17?
Absolutely not, replies guidance counselor Marie-Noëlle De Sève. In a post on the website of the firm BrissonLegris, she explains that we must at all costs get rid of the pressure to choose what we are going to do “for the rest of our days”.
“Knowing the vocational development of the adolescent and young adult, the current reality of the labor market as well as the contribution of chance, it is very unlikely, if not impossible, that things will unfold exactly and precisely as we had planned. So why decide on all the details right away? she writes.
Learning to know each other
Guidance counselor Sandy Vignola, from the same firm, agrees. “As a teenager, we are just beginning to get to know each other. My advice to young people is to keep exploring. You may have more pronounced interests than others, but it is rare to have a very precise idea of what you want to do at that age,” she explains.
Continuing to explore in a CEGEP program, also getting out of school and doing extracurricular activities are all good ideas, according to Ms.me Vignola. “It is by experimenting with new things that we get to know each other. This sometimes requires stepping out of your comfort zone,” she adds.
Guidance counselor Marie-Maxime Mélançon, of the CERC private clinic, agrees. “Adolescents are in the process of discovering who they are, what they want and don’t want to become,” she explains. While it’s hard to make a choice in adolescence, it’s a good time to start asking yourself questions: “So far, in the life I’ve lived, what have I I liked it, what stood out? Or the opposite: what doesn’t interest me at all and which requires a special effort from me to motivate myself? And outside of school, what are my strengths? Who am I outside of school? she illustrates
Mme Mélançon stresses that teenagers must remember that they are in full evolution and that their interests in their life today are called to evolve. This is why she has a reservation about the interest and personality tests that are often given to young people to help them make a career choice.
“These tests are like a very static photo over time. If we repeat the same test five years later, the results may vary,” she says. They are used by counselors as a starting point for discussion with young people. “It’s a good starting tool, especially for young people who have more difficulty communicating and introspecting,” says the counsellor.
The same goes for personality tests. “The personality will fluctuate for a few more years, to crystallize around the age of 25. We must therefore take these tests with a certain perspective, ”adds Mr.me Vignola.
The changing job market
It is all the more difficult to form a fixed idea about one’s choice of career as a teenager as the job market is constantly changing. “There are so many different jobs today that even for us it’s impossible to know them all. And many jobs that will be offered in five years do not even exist yet! exclaims M.me Melancon.
In the context of major labor shortages that we are experiencing, some young people could be tempted to leave school to go and work full time. According to Marie-Maxime Mélançon, it may sometimes be necessary for some students to gain concrete experience in the job market in order to get to know themselves better and then return to school. But keep in mind that it is difficult to go back to school once you start working full time.
Sandy Vignola adds that education remains highly valued in our society. She reminds us that the labor market could still surprise us. “We don’t know how long this shortage will last. At some point, employers may have the bigger end of the stick and, at that point, candidates with more training will stand out from the rest,” she summarizes.
Finally, the two advisers insist on the fact that we have the right to be wrong. “We have the right to change our minds. You can go back, go back to school, change programs, redo prerequisite courses later,” illustrates M.me Vignola. After all, life is full of chance. You can’t control everything.
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the To have to, pertaining to marketing. The drafting of To have to did not take part.