How do young people make career choices and what factors influence them? To gain insight, we spoke to career guidance practitioners and human resource specialists.
Making career choices begins earlier than many people realise. From childhood onwards, we grapple with questions about our future: What kind of people do we want to be? Which subjects should we study? When we get to college, what major should we pursue? Ultimately, the question of career path arises and, in today’s ever-evolving employment landscape, more and more choices are available, making decisions increasingly complex.
Youth Hong Kong took up the issue of the alternative working culture and career planning, with Dr Esther Ho, Chairperson of the Hong Kong Association of Careers Masters and Guidance Masters (HKACMGM), Christina Li, a human resource specialist, and Cheung Chi-wai, a HKFYG social worker with long experience in the field of youth employment.
Life Planning from Secondary School
Esther, who is also the Principal of Carmel Secondary School, was sitting at her office desk when we talked to her. She spread a set of cards in front of her bearing the names of various occupations and described how students play with them, but this was no typical game of cards. The occupations ranged from modern farmer to physiotherapist, banker to social worker and the game helps students understand the career prospects that might confront them. Meanwhile, teachers ask them to share their thoughts on job likes and dislikes, discuss possibilities and make decisions.
“It’s fascinating to see how this younger generation holds such different perspectives on various occupations,” Esther explains. She goes on to talk about the workshops for teachers and the workbooks and board games for students that are provided by HKACMGM. The association supports over 400 member schools in efforts to promote quality initiatives related to life-planning education, career guidance, general student support and holistic development.
| Established in 1959, HKACMGM aims to provide professional support for front-line guidance and career practitioners in Hong Kong secondary schools. Since 2007, the association has also developed assessment tools and curricula tailored to Hong Kong’s education system. These include the “LIFE+” online assessment tool designed in collaboration with the University of Hong Kong and its online career assessment platform, myCareerMap. |
Esther believes it is crucial for secondary students to understand the meaning of a career, as well as their own career interests, before making the final decision about what to major in at university or whether to pursue higher education at all.
In the workbook Career Mapping: A Career Development Tool for Senior Secondary Students, she stresses three important components: self-understanding, career exploration, and career management.
She hopes all the teachers attending the professional development workshop fully understand the content and methodology behind the workbook before guiding students. It is not a rigid academic textbook that teachers can simply read aloud, expecting students to have a eureka moment about their future careers in just one lesson, she points out. “One of our goals is to ensure that students make informed decisions. This means they need to gain a deeper understanding of themselves, including their passions, strengths and weaknesses, preferred learning and working styles, and whether they tend to think more in the abstract than pragmatically,” Esther says.
The hundreds of workshops, now available for all local career practitioners online through their website, numerous toolkits and experiential camps organised by HKACMGM support teachers in career guidance and counselling at a crucial time as young people in Hong Kong are undergoing a fundamental shift in their perspective on careers.
Seeing the Shift
Christina Li, who has been working in human resources for more than 20 years, has noticed the changes taking place and commented on the parallel shift in mindset and attitudes that is evident among a new generation of employees. “Their sense of loyalty has decreased. In the old days, working in a company for 10 years was considered long-term while now, staying in one position for three to five years is already considered long enough,” she says. “They prefer to become slashers, value work-life balance over loyalty, and ask for more flexibility.”
The reasons behind this are mixed. She thinks it is partly because social media gives more exposure to the diversified work culture worldwide. Once the younger generation became aware of the possibility of a healthier working environment than previous generations, they have tended to become more critical and less tolerant of workplaces they don’t like. Another reason is the shift to work-from-home culture in the wake of COVID, as companies and individuals find meetings and work can be done more easily online.
Cheung Chi-wai, a social worker with 20 years of experience in career counselling, has also observed this change. He thinks employees’ mindset has switched from working “to make a living” or 揾食, “looking for food” to looking for meaning, happiness and self-value. The transformation, says Chi-wai, results from mixed social and economic factors.
First, job seekers’ financial status has improved significantly over the past few decades, although the wealth gap between the rich and the poor has widened, and upward mobility has decreased. These societal changes have influenced generations such as millennials and Gen Z, who are looking for more meaningful, passion-driven careers with work-life balance. Furthermore, living during rapid advances in technology and the rise of AI means that career planning usually has a shorter time horizon.
Esther, reflecting on feedback from career counselling sessions, has also observed an intriguing shift in job preferences among high school students, which she believes is closely linked to recent societal and global events.
“More than half of the students express a desire to work in the medical and healthcare field—a percentage we’ve never seen before in these sessions,”
Esther notes. The COVID-19 pandemic not only decreased opportunities to interact with people and the real world but also changed perspectives on jobs. “The global health crisis showed them how quickly jobs can vanish. They witnessed flight attendants being laid off and cuts in tourism-related jobs. This has led them to believe that careers in the medical and healthcare field offer stability, as these roles will always be in demand, regardless of the circumstances.”
Esther presents the “Skill and Style” card, a tool developed by the Hong Kong Association of Careers Masters and Guidance Masters (HKACMGM).
During the formative years when personality and worldview are developing, Esther has noticed that secondary school students can be easily influenced by their surroundings, especially parents, when choosing a career path. Therefore, HKACMGM highlights the crucial role of parents in engaging in the process of career exploration.
“You might think that today’s students are more autonomous and less dependent on their parents’ opinions, but surprisingly, that’s not the case. Many students still place significant weight on their family’s views when choosing a university major and career path. We shouldn’t overlook this crucial influence in their lives; it’s essential to ensure that parents are well-informed about various career options so they can better guide their children,” Esther says.
Facing the Challenge
Speaking of the challenges of career guidance and life planning, Esther is aware of vastly different education and socioeconomic backgrounds. “We may have accumulated many norms and beliefs instilled in us by society as we grew up, and these continue to influence our perspective. They also present challenges during our training, especially when addressing certain deeply rooted Chinese ideas, such as what girls should or shouldn’t do. Although the situation has improved, these influences still carry significant weight.”
She has discovered that many students have a very vague understanding of careers. Even if they understand a job, they interpret it based on their preconceptions. “For example, working in elderly care services isn’t just one specific role but a broad field—it could mean being a social worker, a para-health professional or something else.”
She adds that this generation is heavily exposed to the internet and media, where they see many Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) who look very successful. This makes them think they, too, could be successful in a similar way.
A major challenge in career planning, she says, is that students often want a quick answer: “They ask, ‘What should I choose? Is this choice definitely the right one? Will this path lead me where I want to go?’ But they don’t realise that there’s no absolutely correct answer when it comes to career choices. Life will have many ups and downs, and adjustments will inevitably be needed along the way.”
In a world filled with uncertainty and change, the only constant is the willingness to keep trying, exploring, and learning from failures before discovering what works and what doesn’t. As a social worker, Chi-wai advises that those unsure about their future paths should seek help and keep exploring. “Feeling lost is a good sign. It means you have self-awareness.”
Esther believes the best career intervention is to help students broaden their horizons and expose them to diverse experiences. “They shouldn’t just stick to what they already know or assume. Instead, they should explore things they enjoy most while also engaging with things they might not like. This helps them develop a more well-rounded perspective.”
She adds that in Chinese, the phrase 安身立命 means settle down and get on with it, and most importantly, with a mission or sense of purpose. “At the end of the day, it is important that we help young people achieve this and find life purpose,” she concluded. ■
What does the career counsellor say about personality tests?
Cheung Chi-wai: Personality is something that develops since we were born. But as our life experiences accumulate, our capabilities and attitudes change and evolve through time.
Personality or MBTI tests can be a helpful “stimulation tool” when someone is lost and trying to find where to go. The results reflect one’s personality, such as whether the tester is more introverted or extroverted in communication and team collaboration. However, it serves as a reference only, not judgment. Generally, the tool helps to gain more self-understanding, thus helping in future decision-making. The result is not static and should not be regarded as a guidebook when seeking suitable careers.