Guiding Your 22-Year-Old Son Towards Direction
Does your 22-year-old son seem not to be having any direction in life? Or his lack of direction has been holding him back? Are you beginning to get worried about his career prospects and general well-being? If this is you, you are in the right place. This article discusses what you need to do should your son lack direction.
What To Do When Your 22-Year-Old Son Has No Direction
Hire A Professional Coach
Hiring an experienced career coach specializing in graduate careers will help your son find direction and discover his career path. Most likely, up until now, your child has never received personalized career advice to help him make informed decisions regarding his career.
And even if he went to the careers center at the university, the guidance he may have received there would probably have been generic and surface level.
Bill gates said, “everyone needs a coach,” and so is your son. There are various ways a graduate coach can help your son. For instance, the coach can assist your child to:
- Work out which career is right for them based on their passion and interests.
- Produce a graduate CV based on his achievements.
- Identify the employability skills he has gained through work experience or extracurricular activities.
- Regain their self-esteem and confidence.
- Work on their professional and personal development.
Tap Into Your Network
Most likely, you have professional contacts with various people you’ve met across your life career. And it may be time to reach out to them and see if any of them can offer your child some referral or experience. This will be a better place to start.
Or, if that’s not possible, you can ask different members of your network working in varying industries to chat with your son. Doing so will help your son find direction and inspiration in their career. Remember, the perspectives of these members are different, and what exactly your child needs to find direction.
Encourage Your Son To Gain Work Experience
Suppose your son left college with a string of good A-levels and graduated with a reasonable degree classification from a reputable university. In that case, you may think he’s set up to get a good graduate job.
However, having a degree alone is not enough. And even if your child has a solid academic profile, that does not mean they’ll automatically get a job. It will also not differentiate them from the thousands of similar applicants with the exact minimum academic requirements.
When your son realizes this when graduating, it can leave him disoriented. He may feel he’s put in lots of hard work throughout the school, which has amounted to nothing since they can’t find a job. After all, great emphasis is always placed on passing exams and obtaining good grades during school. But in real work, greater emphasis is put on how much value one can add to the workplace.
Graduate employers are always seeking out graduates with varying work experiences. They want graduates who can articulate and demonstrate their employability skills. So, although past performance predicts future success, if your son’s CV does not show what he’s capable of in the workplace, he’ll likely struggle to find a graduate job.
Work Experience And Finding Direction
When you encourage your son to gain work experience, you are greatly helping him achieve direction in his career. Doing so will also boost his employability, enhance his CV, help him work out what they like or dislike, and make informed decisions based on their skills and interests.
There are different types of work experience your son can benefit from. For instance:
- Placements
- Shadowing
- Volunteering
- Internships and virtual internships
Encourage Him To Pursue Different Activities
It’s difficult to bridge the gap between education and employment, and many graduates struggle with this. It may take some graduates months and years to find a good graduate job that they enjoy.
So, encourage your son to keep himself busy when searching for jobs. And to also take various online courses and virtual internships when applying for jobs. Pursuing different activities will help your son establish balance in his life.
Be Positive And Patient
Try to stay positive when trying to help your son find direction in life. It may be difficult seeing your son has no direction, especially when comparing him with his age mates, who seem to be doing much better.
Don’t pressure your son to be like his peers. People are different, and everyone will have their time. So, be patient as you and your son work together to assist in finding direction in life.
Be Helpful
Try to assist your son set reasonable short-term goals for his future to help him see that he can accomplish things when he tries. You want to see your kid be a big success, but you cannot live his life. And bringing available jobs to his attention or sending him links to resources may help.
There may be job outreaches or vocational centers that could help him or a career he hasn’t thought of that they offer an educational program for. These centers help match people with training and jobs to learn valuable lifelong trades or skills. This can be something for your son to work with while deciding what to do with his life.
You can also look for career promotions or job fairs. If your child can talk to some business owners and see what they are doing daily, they may find something they are really into. Job fairs bring together many local employers looking for new employees to showcase their companies and find new talent. This might be an invitation he needs to start a career path.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, all parents realize that their child is not going to live the life they want them to. If your 22-year-old son has no direction, he is still looking for his passion. The bad news is that he will find it in your basement. So, encourage him to get out there and have new and different experiences.