Background

Choosing the right career path is probably one of the most important choices a person makes. Knowing what different careers options there are and what skills, training and qualifications are needed can be sometimes quite difficult. The first hurdle is to be creative when thinking of possible career options. If you ask people to name some professions they will probably come up with things like dentist, lawyer, gardener or electrician. We rarely think of other professions as potential careers. Have you ever considered becoming an animal breeder, an art therapist, a video game tester or an ethical hacker? Probably not. But these are professions that you may want to consider and that are profitable.

The second hurdle is knowing how to get there. What skills, qualifications and work experience you need to become an ethical hacker, or an animal breeder? Some professions such as dentist, electrician or lawyer have very clear career paths as they need approved qualifications. But others are very difficult to navigate. How do you become an animal breeder or an ethical hacker? What skills and qualifications do you need? There are no ethical hacker courses out there.

So the best way to start the process of deciding on a potential career is by looking at yourself, or the person you support. Identifying preferences, strengths and personal values and attributes can make the decision of choosing a career much easier. In this portal you will find different sections to guide you, or the person you support, through this process.

Why is this relevant?

Most children are often asked what they want to be when they grow up. However, when it comes to children on the Autism Spectrum, this is not always the case. Parents, teachers and professionals sometimes are so focused in supporting the current needs of the child that they forget to think about the future. But at some point, what this child may want to be when they grow up really needs to be considered. Many young adults, and carers sometimes, start thinking about work towards the tail-end of education. However, preparing to work is a very long process that needs to start as early as possible to ensure that the appropriate training, skills and experience are in place by the time job searching begins. The last thing you want is to come out of education without any work experience or not having thought about what you may want to do next.

Research shows that ideally this process should start at 10-14 years of age. Starting early means that there is enough time to explore different options, testing some of them by shadowing or work experience, getting the right qualifications, and so on. The process can be quite light-touch initially, simple things like discussing what the child may want to be when they grow up, and build up slowly from there. What is important is that the expectation, and aspiration, that the child will become professionally successful at some point is planted.

But if you, or the person you support, haven’t started yet there is no need to panic. It is never too late to start this process. Many successful people took up their careers later in life such as Ronald Reagan, Colonel Saunders (KFC) or the founder of the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, Jonah Peretti. In fact, one of the issues that autistic people worry about when starting this process is making the wrong choice. So it is important to remember that if at any point it turns out that the career path was not the right one for you, or the person you support, it is never late to change careers. And most probably, any skills and experience acquired on the way will still be useful.

Research shows that consulting a career advisor, really helps during this process as they may suggest potential careers that you may have not thought about, and provide information about career paths, qualifications needed , etc. If you do not have access to a career advisor, there are numerous resources online (see below).

Practical tips

• Aim high. With planning you, or the person you support, will have sufficient time to get the right qualifications and experience to achieve your dream job.
• Explore job adverts and job descriptions for potentially interesting careers. Sometimes people do not take into account all aspects of a job. For instance, they may like the idea of becoming a support worker, but do not take into account that they will need to deal with a lot of bureaucratic paperwork. Reading job descriptions can, not only help in finding about skills, qualifications and experience needed but also what the day-to-day job may entail.
• Speak to people doing the types of jobs you are considering. One of the best ways to know what a job entails is asking someone that is already doing it. A good way of getting a feel of what a job entails is shadowing someone doing the job for a day.
• Find out what is important to you. What are your values? The same job (i.e., admin support) may be provided in different organisations so you need to work out what your values, or those of the person you support, are so you can start narrowing the type of organisations you would like to work for.
• Create a folder where you write down the results of your research. Doing research about different types of careers/jobs can become confusing, and it is easy to lose track of what you have learned during your research. Make sure you write down all the relevant information you find along the way.
• Create a profile as soon as possible with your strengths, preferences, any work/volunteering experience, your values, and potential training needs and update it on a regular basis. You can use this later on to build your CV.

One important aspect of choosing a career is to understand what broad type of career you or the person you support may enjoy. According to a model developed by Holland, careers can be classified into six main categories:

• Artistic careers involve creative activities such as art, drama, crafts, dance, writing and/or musical activities. There is a wide range of careers within this category such as singing or playing an instrument, writing for magazines or newspaper, acting in plays or painting.
• Conventional careers involve primarily clerical jobs such as administrator, post office clerk, accountant, or librarian. They all involve handling data and working with numbers or records and systems.
• Enterprising careers are those involving sales, freelancing, starting a new business, marketing or managing a business.
• Investigative careers involve searching for information, computers, or solving technical problems and are likely to appeal those who value science.
• Realistic careers are those careers which require the need for practical skills. There is a wide range of possible careers within this category such as working on a farm, building kitchens, making repairs or working with computers.
• Social careers involve working with other people or offering help and support. That is, careers such as teaching, caring for children, nursing, social work, providing advice for young people, counselling or giving information.

Although these are very broad categories, which do not identify individual jobs, they may help you, or the person you support, in narrowing down the choices. However, as mentioned earlier there are many other factors that feed into the decision of a career path (i.e., personal strengths and values).

Questions to think about

Some questions you may want to ask the person you support or yourself to get started:

• What are you interested in? What do you like doing best? What are your hobbies? Which jobs or careers would fit with these hobbies or interests?
• What are you really good at? Are there any jobs in which these skills are crucial?
• How would you like to spend most of your days? What would you do? Is there a job that would allow you to do it, or that would come close to it?
• Imagine your perfect work place, what does this place look like? What can you say about how workers relate to each other in this perfect place?

Additional information and links

• Request an assessment of your Individual Employability Profile here.
• Temple Grandin: Choosing the right job

Acknowledgements

This article was co-written with Dr Julie Udell, Placement and Employability Lead at the Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth.

You may want to read after

• Identifying strengths, preferences and training needs
• Which are your work values?