From the day you graduate you have to have a plan for your career. It seems difficult if all you are looking for right now is a job. But if you don’t have some kind of plan, it is easy to get off track.

We all know someone that may have graduated with a degree in a specific field, only to wind up doing something completely different. It is easy to be scanned in accepting the first job offer. But where will it lead?

If you are walking out the doors of a fine institution in a cap and gown hoping to be an art director, you will be very unpleasantly surprised. Regardless of how talented you are, you will have to pay your dues like everyone else. If you are in a current job and have aspirations to run the programs or start your own firm, you need to have a strategy as well.

If your desire is to be a creative genius, accept that first job only if there is some creative aspect to it. Even if it is miserable, you need some experience. Stay about a year, then think about your next move. Take all the creative tasks you did on that job and put them on your profile to get the next job and the next one and the next one.

You have to be smart in picking locations. Ask yourself, is this opportunity to build a block to where I want to go? Will there be recognizable company names on my resume? Am I showing continuing progress in my creative profession? The role of production, as an assistant designer role, designer role, senior designer role – they all build toward your ultimate goal.

Finally, don’t hesitate to find a mentor and ask what steps they took to get where they are. You’ll be surprised. Usually it involves a string of bad jobs and then the door opens and everything changes. Envision where you want to be and mark it with a flag. Then plan the road trip to get there.

Teens have to decide on the career that they want to pursue and their college major, not necessarily in that order. Deciding upon a college major is a difficult task by itself and takes time. Similarly, deciding upon a career path is a process that should start when the teen is still in high school and continue as that person moves into college. The reason being that career choices are fluid and young people are bound to discover new things about themselves, their likes and dislikes and skills as they go along though studies.

Selecting the right career is never an easy matter. Career planning is a process that involves several steps, particularly when it is for a teen. Both universities and business organizations have designed programs for teenagers to assist them in identifying suitable options and making a right choice of career. Such guidance can be obtained by making a payment from a university, by a student as well as any member of the public. The guide can include a questionnaire and information about several careers. The questionnaire helps the person to narrow the choices based on several criteria. A program that has been designed well could also throw light on several career choices that the person may not have known about, effectively broadening his or her horizon. Also, as young people are not clear about the growth path of different careers, they also gain clarity on this issue.

Career counselors and teenage counselors have always said that young people and college students must select a career based on their own interest and skills, not due to pressure of family or peers or some image that may have of a particular career. Thus the so called ‘best’ careers may not always be the right choice. Career planning for teens is a process that will try to dissuade them from such a career unless it suits the individual for reasons mentioned earlier. So many websites and magazines may list hottest jobs, best jobs for collegiates and those with highest salary and perks. However, this is not the right way to decide upon a career and hot jobs should not become an automatic choice for a teen or a young job seeker.

The process of career planning for teens exists to make sure that they select the career path and college program that is best for them as an
individual. A lot of young believe, quite wrongly, that they will be stuck with the career choice that they make now, through out their life. Nothing could be more different. People change their career at several stages during their life. So, a career that is chosen now due to a college major or a training program can be changed later. However, career planning for teens goes a long way in ensuring that there is not much heart burn later.