Have your parents/ wider family influenced your career ambitions?

Like are you going to follow in your parents' footsteps or have they advised you on careers? Or were you left on your own?

Personally, I've been doing some research on careers recently but it's been a bit harder to find a direction since none of my parents or relatives went to uni or work in a 'professional' white-collar job.

I was just wondering whether this is the case with anyone else or whether you guys were helped/influenced by your parents and your family in making a career decision...

Reply 1

ericcarlson1

No. My parents both work in blue collar jobs and don't know much about careers other than medicine, law and engineering. None of those really interested me so I looked into finance more and found a career I want to get into.

Reply 2

jelly1000

Original post by desaf1

My parents are both in professional careers but I worked out what I wanted to do on my own (totally different to what they want to do). I just went on the Prospects careers website, looked at what suggestions it made for someone with the degree I was going to be studying and then googled the job options for more info.

Reply 3

Rum Ham

I was left on my own to decide and they support me fully in my academic and career choices. I studied biology at uni which my papa was very pleased at as he studied science and done some lecturing in the field too but never pushed me into it. I'm unsure exactly what career I want to do but working with animals is my first choice.

My mum before becoming a full time carer to my stepdad was a funeral director and embalmer and I certainly didn't fancy going down that career path :laugh:

bit too morbid and dreary for my tastes but she loved it and wants to go back to it part time in the future if possible.

Reply 4

username738914

Well, I've always been in an upper middle class family, so it was always expected that I'd go into a job requiring a degree.

My dad was a petroleum engineer (he has since passed) and my mom was an HR Manager (she's doing a PhD now). Having been in the whole 'international school, oil and gas expat' bubble sort of distorts your view on what is normal and it was only when I had to move to a scottish state school when I realised there was such a thing as 'working class' and blue collar etc work. Within the oil and gas expat community, most of the parents were engineers or in commercial roles of some sort so the kids sort of got pushed into that direction (engineering).

Everyone in my new school who worked hard at academics and didn't take the apprenticeship route were either enticed by engineering/oil and gas (I live in Aberdeen, all the careers fairs we had were about O&G careers) or went for Medicine. I, on the other hand, discovered the whole world of 'the City' mainly by meeting a few finance types when I was in London on holiday as a kid + funnily enough watching Wall Street aha. Then I also really got into technology when I went to MIT for a business startup programme.

So, I guess, had I not discovered the whole finance, consulting, law and tech world I probably would have just studied engineering like pretty much all of my friends - both from international school and from the state school.

The rest of my wider family are all doctors, nurses, med students, doctors in training and life science professors on my mom's side and teachers, architects, engineers on my dad's side.

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