This article is part of iN Education & Zealousness’ Career Exploration Series, created to help students and young adults build greater clarity, confidence, and creativity as they explore education, careers, entrepreneurship, and the many paths in between.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
It sounds like a simple question. We ask it of elementary school students, middle schoolers, teenagers preparing for graduation, college students choosing majors, and even young adults who are still figuring out what comes next.
But what happens when the answer is: I don’t know yet?
For some people, career direction seems to arrive early. They have always wanted to become a nurse, engineer, teacher, entrepreneur, electrician, artist, or scientist. Others may have several interests but no obvious favorite. Some choose a direction only to discover later that the work, education, lifestyle, or environment connected to that career is different from what they imagined.
None of these situations means career exploration has failed.
In fact, not knowing can be the beginning of better questions.
A Career Decision Is Not a Lifetime Contract
Choosing a career can feel unusually permanent when you are young. Pick the wrong major, and you may worry that you have wasted time. Change direction after graduation, and it may feel as though you are starting over.
Real career paths are often less linear.
One useful example comes from the National Center for Education Statistics. In a nationally representative study of students who began postsecondary education during the 2011-12 academic year, about 30% of students in associate’s and bachelor’s degree programs who had declared a major changed that major at least once within three years. About one in ten changed majors more than once. Those numbers describe a particular group of students from an earlier period, so they should not be treated as a current 2026 estimate. They do, however, remind us that reconsidering an academic direction is hardly unheard of.1
A change in direction does not erase everything you learned along the way. Courses, jobs, volunteer experiences, projects, relationships, mistakes, and even the realization that you dislike something can all inform your next decision.
That is why career exploration should not simply ask:
What career am I going to choose?
A better question may be:
What do I need to learn so I can make a better next decision?
Being Unsure and Doing Nothing Are Not the Same Thing
There is an important difference between being undecided and staying disconnected from the exploration process.
Research on career decision-making has examined uncertainty for decades, and researchers recognize career indecision as part of career development rather than simply a personal flaw. An integrative review of 60 peer-reviewed articles, for example, describes career indecision as a significant developmental stage in a person’s career life.2
More recently, a 2025 longitudinal study followed 1,132 adolescents across six measurement periods. Researchers found that increases in environmental career exploration predicted later increases in career knowledge and career decidedness. In other words, learning more about the world of work can help someone become more informed and more certain about possible directions.3
That distinction matters.
You do not necessarily need an answer before you begin exploring. Exploration can help you create the answer.
Replace Pressure With Investigation
Imagine that you think chemical engineering sounds interesting.
You could immediately decide that chemical engineering is your future and begin planning everything around that choice.
Or you could investigate.
What do chemical engineers actually do during an average workday? Do they spend all day in laboratories? What industries employ them? How much mathematics and chemistry are involved? What does the college curriculum look like? What kind of work environments are common? Could you tour a facility, talk with an engineer, or find a related summer experience?
After investigating, you might become more excited about chemical engineering.
You might also discover a related field you had never heard of.
Or you might decide it is not for you.
All three outcomes are useful.
The same thinking works whether you are considering a four-year degree, a skilled trade, certification, an apprenticeship, a military career, public service, entrepreneurship, or something you have not discovered yet.
Career exploration is not only about confirming choices. It is also about eliminating possibilities, discovering alternatives, and challenging assumptions.
Look Beyond the Job Title
A familiar job title tells you surprisingly little about whether you would enjoy the actual work.
Instead of beginning only with “What job sounds good?” begin noticing yourself.
What kinds of problems do you enjoy solving? Do you like working with people, information, machines, ideas, numbers, technology, animals, nature, or your hands? Do you enjoy leading, building, analyzing, organizing, teaching, persuading, repairing, creating, caring for others, or working independently?
Tools can help.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET OnLine allows people to explore occupations through career interests, skills, work activities, and other characteristics, with detailed information covering hundreds of occupations.4
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook and Career Resource Guide can then help you investigate job duties, work environments, education and training, pay, employment projections, and related occupations.5
Self-discovery tools can provide another starting point. iN Education also offers its Ikigai self-discovery assessment to help individuals reflect on the connections among their interests, abilities, possible contributions, and ways of earning a living. We will explore Ikigai more closely later in this series.
The important word is tool.
No assessment should make your career decision for you. A result can give you language, questions, and possibilities to investigate. You still get to explore what those possibilities mean in the real world.
Give Yourself Something to React To
Sometimes people struggle to answer career questions because they have not experienced enough possibilities yet.
You may not know whether you enjoy engineering until you try solving an engineering challenge. You may never consider wastewater operations until you tour a treatment facility and realize how much science, technology, environmental stewardship, skilled labor, and public service are involved. You may not picture yourself as an entrepreneur until you earn your first $50 solving a problem for someone.
This is where small experiences become powerful.
Attend a career event. Interview someone about their job. Tour a workplace. Volunteer. Take a short course. Shadow a professional. Try a club. Help with a family business. Build something. Sell something. Ask someone why they chose their occupation – and what they wish they had known before they started.
You are gathering evidence.
iN Education’s Cinterests career exploration resources use self-discovery and career exploration to help, learners examine strengths, interests, career possibilities, workforce skills, and future planning.
And if you are already in college or beginning your career, exploration does not stop. Zealousness’ article How College Students Can Build a Resilient Career in an Uncertain Job Market offers additional ideas for thinking about adaptability and career preparation.
Clarity. Confidence. Creativity.
Throughout this career exploration series, we will keep returning to three ideas.
Clarity means learning more about yourself and the possibilities around you.
Confidence does not require knowing everything. It can grow as you gather information, gain experience, develop skills, and make decisions based on evidence rather than pressure.
Creativity means being willing to see more than one possible path. Your future might include college, an apprenticeship, entrepreneurship, certifications, employment, graduate education, or a combination of several of them over time.
Career exploration is not a race to become certain before everyone else.
It is a process of becoming more informed about yourself, your opportunities, and the kind of future you may want to build.
You do not have to know everything yet.
But you can start exploring today.
Explore It
Before you choose your next career step, ask yourself three questions:
- What do I already know about myself – my interests, strengths, values, and the environments where I work best?
- What career or industry am I curious enough to investigate, even if I am not ready to choose it?
- What is one small experience I can pursue this month that would give me real information instead of another guess?
Your goal is not to identify your forever career.
Your goal is to make your next decision better informed than your last one.
Coming next in the Career Exploration Series: Start With Clarity: What Do You Actually Know About Yourself? We’ll explore the interests, strengths, values, environments, and experiences that can help you better understand what may – or may not – fit your future.
Sources and Further Reading
1. Leu, Katherine. “Beginning College Students Who Change Their Majors Within 3 Years of Enrollment.” NCES 2018-434. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, December 2017. NCES report
2. Bian, Xinyi. “Career Indecision: An Integrative Review and Research Agenda.” European Journal of Training and Development 47, nos. 1-2 (2023): 166-182. First published online 2021. DOI
3. Haenggli, Madeleine, Andreas Hirschi, and Julian Marciniak. “Navigating Transitions: A Longitudinal Exploration of Career Decision-Making Process Dynamics in Adolescents.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 159 (2025): 104125. DOI
4. U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration. “O*NET OnLine.” O*NET OnLine
5. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Career Resource Guide.” BLS Career Resource Guide
