May Our Children Have Interesting Careers
According to the RoperASW survey that has been tracking our definition of the good life since 1975, only 26% of Americans say they have an interesting job today, down from 40% in 1975. With as much time as adults spend on the job, how is it that most of us have careers that are not satisfying? How can we turn this around for our children, and perhaps ourselves?
Jill Sanborne, creator of the
MYCOOLCAREER.com
career exploration Web site and Web radio show for teens and twenties, is out to increase the future job satisfaction among our youth.
"What elements create career-love vary by the individual, and widely," says Sanborne. Sanborne has interviewed over 85 people who love their career, "but the two qualities that unite these diverse professionals are that their careers play to their strengths and that they find their careers personally interesting."
These two qualities are also the ones that 60% of graduating high school seniors said, in a 2001 study, they wished someone had helped them determine before graduation. Sanborne says that all too often, how we choose college majors and careers has nothing to do with what kinds of career directions would make us happy, and that knowing our strengths and passions will lead to interesting careers.
Sanborne says the three steps to a "cool" career are 1) career assessment, 2) exploration of career ideas for a reality-check, and 3) the education and training to get "there?"
This week's career guest on
MYCOOLCAREER.com
's Web radio show is John Payne, journalist and the music editor for the
LA Weekly
. Payne talks about his beloved career and offers advice to burgeoning. He says, "Read, read and read quality literature, and love what you do." Payne's career-love is created by an obsession for music, love for reading and a talent for writing. The
LA Weekly
is a large newsweekly in Los Angeles.
MYCOOLCAREER.com
is a career exploration website for teens and 20s with over 40,000 visitors per month.
Sanborne,
MYCOOLCAREER.com
creator, studies careers, the future workplace, teens' dreams and provides solutions to the challenges they face in learning about and preparing for rewarding careers, is a regular talk show guest, and speaks to teens and parent audiences about how teens can prepare now for an awesome future in the new workplace. The site shows teens how to get to their own cool career in three steps. email:
host@mycoolcareer.com
Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com
