There are many factors that influence career decision making for young people. These include personal interests, abilities and skills, values, education and prior experiences, as well as external influences from family, peers, community, culture, media and job availability. Planning for one's career should begin as early as possible by exploring interests, developing skills, and considering how these various influences may impact career choices and pathways. It is important to research specific careers and jobs to understand what they are really like.

1. My Working Life
Year 11 Work Studies

2. Factors affecting career
decision making
Planning your career and how you will achieve what you
want to do should begin as early as possible. As you grow
and take on new experiences, through school, socially
through family and friends and eventually through working
you develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to
become job ready. The combination of skills you have, the
development of new skills and planning of pathways to
success are important for you as a future employee and
possible self employed person.

3. Factors affecting
career decision
making include:
Interests
Abilities
Values
Education and
training
Prior experiences
Gender
Peer influence
Family expectationsCulture and religion
Media images
Job availability
Job
accessibility/location
Conditions of
employment
Future prospects
Remuneration (Pay)

4. Interests
Your interests in life will often determine the type of work
you do. If you are not interested in cars, for example, you
are not likely to want to work as an automotive mechanic.
So it is important to be able to think about your choices in
life and have a good understanding of the sorts of things
you like doing.
Activity
Make a list of the interests you have!

5. Abilities / Skills
When you become good at doing things (using your hands, a
computer, cooking, etc.) you develop a skill. Another word for
‘skill’ is ‘competency’. So being good at something means that
you have developed a skill or competency and that you have the
ability and the knowledge to do something well. The skills you
have and those you develop over time are important in the type
of employment that you will be suited to and likely to succeed
in.
Activity
List some skills that you have or have acquired (possibly
through previous work experiences).

6. Values
A lot of an individual’s career planning will involve their
personal values and goals. Personal values and goals come
from a number of major influences in our lives.
Activities
List some of the things that you value.

7. Community Influences
As a member of the community, individuals are influenced
by the people around them. Often we have come in
contact with someone we admire or we have seen in our
day-to-day activities throughout the community. This
could be a police officer or an ambulance driver, someone
famous or someone who has done something special e.g. a
hero! The community is full of people who have succeeded
in some particular field or has performed a successful
service to the community. This may be related to success
in terms of financial success or generally helping within
the community.

8. Family Influences
Family is probably the greatest influence we have in our
lives. Our personal values and goals are set by our initial
time with our family. Families are generally supportive
and guide their children to follow their dreams. Most
families also suggest that children follow careers in which
they show strength. Often our extended family members
have a significant influence on our decisions as they may
be in other fields of work or have members who have just
entered the workforce and able to offer advice.

9. Peers
Our peers are probably our biggest influence. We don’t
want to be seen to be different from others our own age.
We tend to have similar interests to our peers and this can
influence our career decisions.

10. Gender
Family and friends helps to develop confidence and
encourage children to venture into unknown
territory, such as males going into hairdressing or early
childhood teaching, and females becoming automotive
mechanics or engineers, if we find encouragement from
friends and family. Family networks are usually quite
traditional in their view of the world and will tend to
encourage or discourage ideas that seem to be outside of
the socially accepted realm.

11. Other influences
Many other significant influences about career decision
making come from sources such as our friends, TV, the
movies and our sporting activities. The range of influences
is huge and how they affect a person will also vary. The
development of TV shows like CSI (Crime Scene
Investigation), MasterChef, renovation shows, etc. has had
a profound effect upon the number of people who wanted
to enter into jobs in these particular fields. The number
of people choosing to study subjects at school and tertiary
education institutions (such as university and TAFE) has
also increased.

12. Under these various influences we all make choices about
what we value and what goals we wish to achieve in our
lives. As well as taking all these elements into
consideration we need to research the types of careers
and jobs of interest to find out what these jobs and
associated industries are really like.
Factors to consider include job prospects, education and
training, conditions of employment, promotional pathways
and location.