TOOLKIT FOR
HIGH SCHOOL
STUDENTS
Career transition:
Combine self-knowledge and educational/labour market information to make informed career decisions and to navigate career transitions in today’s ever-changing labour market.
You can demonstrate your ability to navigate career transitions through:
- Understanding and leveraging the influence of family, friends, culture, government policies and regional economic development on your career exploration and choices
- Using a variety of strategies and sources of information to explore options for learning and work
- Identifying possible career paths through research (e.g., print, participation, online)
- Actively pursuing and engaging in work experience (e.g., job shadowing, co-ops, internships, youth apprenticeship, volunteering)
- Embracing opportunities to get, combine or create work (e.g., apprenticeship, part-time, full-time, self-employment, “gigs” and contracts)
- Recognizing what impacts, and is impacted by, seasonal work
- Examining how rural and regional economies can impact career opportunities and decisions
- Creating your own personal marketing strategy (e.g., write targeted resumés and cover letters, interview with confidence)
- Gathering and evaluating detailed information resulting from your career exploration process
- Discussing, sharing and evaluating your career options with others
- Explaining your reasons for choosing a career pathway based on who you are, the opportunities you have explored, and labour market information
- Being resilient and able to maneuver through transitions, always having a Plan B (and C and D…)
Natalie has had lots of ideas about what she wants to do when she graduates – but none seem quite right. As she enters Grade 12, she’s getting more concerned about what’s next. Her friends have a variety of plans, including college, university, apprenticeships, continuing with their summer jobs, starting a business and even planning a gap year. Although Natalie completed career planning activities in school, she recognizes now that she hadn’t taken them seriously. Graduation had always seemed far away; now that it is just a year off, Natalie realizes that she needed to put more effort into preparing for her next steps.
Natalie pulls together all her career “stuff” from previous courses and workshops. She organizes it into information about herself, career trends and jobs that interest her. She asks her family, close friends, teachers and team coaches what they see as her strengths and what kind of work they imagine her doing. She chooses four general areas to further explore and, using contacts, arranges informational interviews and a few job shadowing opportunities. Through her research, Natalie quickly eliminates two options; one doesn’t seem like a good fit and the other is in an industry laying off hundreds of workers. The final two options are more similar than she’d thought; Natalie learns that completing the college diploma for one of those options could count as the first 2 years of the university degree program for the other. She decides to apply for the diploma for now, knowing that she isn’t closing the door to the degree.
