5 Ways Career Exploration Can Help Young People Find Their Dream Jobs

Young people are curious and excited to explore the world of work! Finding your pathway can be daunting but with support there are incredible avenues available, and you can explore them to find your best fit. Some may ask: what is the best way to support a learner in this position? The answer might be: Encourage them to begin career exploration process early!

Career exploration allows young adults to learn more about and partake in professional roles. These experiences can be many things such as an internship, a job shadow, a full- or part-time job, online research, or career conversations with professionals in a field of interest.  

Here at the Maine Career Exploration Program, we help connect young Mainers with employers to engage in experiences designed to provide real-world experiences that can serve to inspire and motivate learners to start their post-secondary journeys and job search processes off strong. 

Here are five ways career exploration can help your young person find their dream job: 

The best part of career exploration is figuring out which activities are the most exciting—it could be an occupation that a young person has never even considered. Exploration can help young adults uncover new passions that drive them toward their dream roles.  

One of the greatest benefits of career exploration is finding out the “pros” and “cons” of a specific type of work. A young employee can learn more about what they like, and as importantly, not like about various aspects of a potential career path. Through learning more about a variety of positions, a learner will be able to better define their ideal work environment.   

Career exploration may have shown a young adult that they love public-facing work and the career they thought they wanted would have them working alone far too much for them to be happy. They now have a chance and the time to pivot and explore a different pathway and set new career goals. 

Career exploration requires those just starting out in their careers to reach out to and connect with professionals in their field of interest. As they complete experiences, learners will start to gather a network of people who may eventually provide references, open doors to new opportunities, or point them in directions they wouldn’t have considered otherwise. This web of connections may prove invaluable when it comes to defining and achieving a dream role.  

In the career exploration process, every step develops a learner’s sets of skills, which can be used to bolster their resumes and narrow down their dream positions. Even when a young person explores a career path they learn that is not for them, the experience will have given them new, potentially desirable skills to put towards a different job.