I was clearly clueless about careers in high school. I had a data point of one: my Dad. He held various roles (teller, bank manager, marketing manager and correspondent banker among them) as he climbed the corporate ladder at Barclays Bank for 40+ years. So, my idea of a career mirrored his. I would graduate from college with an engineering degree (that lasted for one semester), graduate and find that employer who I would spend a lifetime with. Let's just say every time I went to visit my Dad he would ask me sarcastically, "What's your next big idea?," knowing that the rhythm of my career was quite a bit different than his. 

To say I have taken a circuitous career path would be quite the understatement. 9 employers later, I have finally found the role that will carry me to retirement (still a long way off). Yet, I also know that my prior experiences have provided me with skills and knowledge that I use every day in my current role. Whether it was the importance of data-driven decisions at Bain, managing a tight budget at Youth and Family Assistance (a non-profit) or marketing a new service and building community at Equilar, I am better from each of these experiences. 

I know that many of you are probably shaking your heads in agreement as many business and finance teachers have come to the classroom after private sector experience and I know that your students benefit from that perspective. But the job market that our students will be entering certainly differs from the one that I entered in the late 1980s. Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that people who they tracked from the age of 18 to 48 held 11.7 jobs. About 27 percent of them were particularly prone to hop, holding 15 jobs or more, while 10 percent held zero to four jobs. Including my summer jobs, I am just about average! Clearly we better prepare our students for this concept. 

With that preamble behind us now, I wanted to share this interactive from Flowing Data, which does a great job of showing how malleable career paths can be.  The interactive is quite simple as students select a current occupation and list an occupation they are interested in moving into and they can see potential paths to get there. 

Hint: Have the students choose an occupation and then go to the main grid which has all the occupations listed and see the paths to get from one occupation to another. In case you were wondering, here's some information on how these paths were generated:

This path comes about because a surveyed person from the CPS [Current Population Survey 2011-16] was a statistician who became an operations research analyst. At some point during the sampled period, an operations research analyst became a manager. And finally, a manager became a head chef. Easy peasy. So in forming these connections, I imagine the occupation switches belong to one person, when of course, I’m looking at a group of people. That means these are imaginary paths rooted in reality.

Model a few examples for your students and then let them go for 10 minutes and have them answer the following questions as they play:

• List at least three career paths that you found interesting and unexpected. 
• Did you come across any paths where the interactive told you there wasn't an example of someone going from one occupation to another? If so, be sure to keep a running list. Why do you think these career switches were so difficult?
• What are two takeaways you had from completing this activity? 

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.