Guiding Your Children Toward
Their Career Calling
By Crown Financial Ministries
© Sound Mind Investing | September 2010
The Career Direct® guidance system from Crown Financial Ministries has helped more than 150,000 people find direction for their careers. This article discusses Career Direct's value in helping young adults make the most of their education.
In a tough economy, finding a job straight out of college isn't easy. It's even more difficult for graduates who don't have a clear idea of what they want to do with their education.
For years, Crown Financial Ministries has helped older teens and young adults discover how their unique God-given mix of personality, skills, and interests suggests certain career options. That understanding, in turn, is invaluable when it comes to choosing what kind of education to pursue.
Having a strong sense of career direction can help students avoid costly trial and error. Consider:
- The average annual cost for tuition, fees, room, and board at a four-year public college/university is $15,213 (in-state residents) and $35,636 at a private institution, according to the College Board (these are "sticker" prices, i.e. before subtracting scholarships and grants).
- Many students change majors at least once, adding to overall cost and often extending time needed to graduate.
- Fewer than 40% of college students complete a bachelor's degree within four years — many take up to six years.
- Each extra year in college for a non-working student has an effective cost that combines both college expenses and lost income. This effective cost can easily be $40,000 a year or more.
With these facts in mind, consider these important questions:
- Have you accurately calculated the cost of higher education for your children?
- Do you know your children's strengths and weaknesses? Their skills and abilities? Their interests and values? Is this information being used as a basis for choosing further education?
- Are you sure college is the best direction for your children?
Uncovering answers to these questions will help you be a better steward of the money God has entrusted to you as well as your children's special gifts.
Regrettably, ill-considered education and career choices can have a lifelong impact. Many people end up working for years — sometimes their entire careers — in jobs that don't "match" who they are.
The Career Direct assessment was created nearly 20 years ago because Crown co-founder Larry Burkett had encountered so many people who were unhappy in their jobs. Since then, we've provided assessments to more than 67,000 young people — as well as nearly 83,000 adults.
Because an assessment yields key information about how a particular individual is "wired," the results of an assessment can be a strong motivational tool to use with young people. After all:
1. Students with clear and realistic career goals are more likely to be motivated in their education. In his book, Parents' Most-Asked Questions About Kids and Schools, the late educator Cliff Schimmels pointed out that "motivation is the ability of the learner to see the applied value of the lesson." Involving young people in planning their vocational future helps them see a close connection between education choices and career success.
2. Young people are more likely to be motivated if they can catch a vision of their potential. Jesus was a master at calling people to their potential ("You are the salt of the earth.… You are the light of the world"). Helping your children see their potential is a powerful motivator—especially if that vision is rooted in an objective assessment of their talents, interests, and other factors related to job satisfaction.
An assessment can help your children learn how to go with the grain of their God-given design rather than against it. That knowledge can suggest an education and career path that leads to lasting fulfillment.
FOR ADULTS TOO
In today's economy, it's not just teenagers and young adults who need career direction! If you're among the millions who have lost a job in recent months, or if you seem stuck in a job that's going nowhere, the kind of assessment mentioned above may help you too.
Losing a job — or being underemployed — often leads to a loss of confidence in one's own abilities and potential. Crown's "Career Direct Complete Guidance System" can give you fresh insight into how God has designed you for the workplace. That information may help you focus your job search or yield creative ideas about how to use your skills more effectively in your current job.
A Career Direct assessment takes less than an hour to complete online and the results are available immediately. For full details — and to see sample assessment reports — go to CareerDirectOnline.org. The price of the assessment is $80.00. (Available to U.S. and Canadian residents only.) 
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