Career exploration through work experience, expos and online research
Your young person can make their career exploration enjoyable if they use these tools.
What's on this page?
Exploring career options has never been easier. Support your young person to find their potential future by helping them get work experience, attend career expos and look for career information online.
Help them get work experience
Work experience is a great way for your young person to learn what’s involved in a job and it may even lead to them choosing a career path.
Help them find work experience opportunities by:
- checking if they can work shadow you for a day
- contacting their school to get them into the Gateway or Work Inspiration programmes
- asking friends or family members if they know of work experience opportunities
- searching Volunteering New Zealand’s website.
Help them make the most of career expos
Career expos bring together universities, training providers, ITOs, polytechnics, Defence Forces and sometimes employers. Your young person will usually visit career expos with their school.
Suggest your young person gets prepared for an expo visit by making a list of questions to ask training providers and employers using our expo planner.
At the expo they should speak to people working in the industry they are interested in and take notes.
Help them explore career ideas online
There is a treasure of career resources online. Explore these resources together:
- use our career planning tools such as CareerQuest, Skill Matcher and Subject Matcher
- discover over 400 jobs in our jobs database
- get inspired by watching our Māia videos and Oompher TV
- browse job vacancy and recruitment websites
- get ideas from your favourite online channels and websites.
Find out more
Sign up to the Careers Insight e-newsletter for parents
Updated 23 Jan 2019