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Do you feel as if you had good career advice growing up?

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my parents have done well for themselves but their knowledge is rather outdated. let's not get into school career advisors lol, i never even bothered to consult any of those, even on the off chance that they'd say something useful it wouldn't be anything i couldn't find on the internet. nearly everything i knew before i started uni was from research online, there's tons of great resources both on this site and elsewhere for many career choices.

Reply 41

username2269391

lol before I went to university the only only career advice I got was from films and TV shows...

and when I was in secondary school my teacher said "Don't be a teacher, it sucks"

Reply 42

nexttime

School careers advisors are so over-generalised. There's no way one person can know enough about building apprenticeships, psychology degrees, investment banking, medical and nursing careers, PGCE.... and about 2000 others things, enough to give informed advice to an individual.

Sites like this are far better tbh.

Reply 43

username738914

Original post by justinawe

Scary thought, without the internet I wouldn't know anything about careers and would probably have drank the engineering kool-aid my family was giving me

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 44

justinawe

Original post by Princepieman

Scary thought, without the internet I wouldn't know anything about careers and would probably have drank the engineering kool-aid my family was giving me

Posted from TSR Mobile

yeah for real, if i had listened to what people in my life had to say, i would have been lead to believe that a maths degree is only useful if you want to be a teacher or academic. probably would have gone down the accountant route like my dad wanted.

Reply 45

DaisyPop32

No!! My parents tried but my dad has always worked for himself and my mum works in retail, she helped me get my first job. Just supported me in whatever I wanted, but didnt know much. School was awful!! If you didnt want to be a hairdresser/teacher/something else popular for kids they had no idea what to tell you. Nobody told me that business included HR!! Including College. Wasnt until an interview somebody said 'you'd be really good at this' that I even knew about it! So that random interview woman gave me the best career advice of my life

Reply 46

cheesymeat

I think career advice I have been given has been varied but mostly ill advised. This story is quite abnormal but it is my story that worked for me. When I was 16 it was not even a question that I go to do my A Levels it was just a question of which ones. I hated them as I was going through a lot of mental health issues at the time and I was really shy. I mean unable to look people in the eye. I didn't want to apply to uni as I coundnt even think of going away from home. I remember having gap year planning meetings when I was pretty sure I didn't want to have a gap year but the only option that was presented to me was gap year then uni or uni! It was so limited! It was the same when I went to college to do a diploma after sixth form when it was up to me to apply to uni just because I had the grades to do so! I have now worked full time for a few years and I have now decided to go to uni in my own time to progress upwards in my sector. This involved no career advice from professionals but a lot of talking with friends and family!*

Reply 47

Anonymous012345

Looking through this thread it seems the career advice is pretty much non existent, which echoes my experience.
Out of curiosity, in retrospect, what information do you wish you had? For example would career talks from local businesses help?
I was indecisive throughout school and some direction would have helped me

Reply 48

iLikeCupcakes

I think my best careers advice came during university - a lot of support and information, but I couldn't help feeling resentful that this advice came a bit too late.

For schools I think getting people who work in certain fields to come in and talk to students would be interesting. (One person from a different industry each week is bound to spark someones interest). It would also provide more relevant up-to-date information; it is easier to ask someone who has actually had experience within a certain industry than someone who was hired for general careers advice.

But maybe because PSHE/Citizenship classes aren't graded for GCSEs I feel like teachers don't really care about this side of development/learning.

Reply 49

username1539513

Original post by scrawlx101

And who has given you the best advice?

Not really, the careers advisor at secondary was useless. Probably the best advice I've had so far is my own mother warning me not to go into teaching