Some career advice for my seven year old

Careers, work and the world is changing. How can we prepare Generation Alpha?

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Here's my career advice for my seven year old

job application by AI

The career advisor was always a bit of a joke in our girls-only comp in the mid-‘90s. I remember going for one meeting armed with my National Record of Achievement, bulging with certificates and the best examples of my handwritten work. He enquired whether I had thought about my career. The precocious 16-year-old I was back then nonchalantly replied that my only aspiration in life was to be an "educated woman." He looked at me blankly, paused, and then suggested, “Have you thought about becoming a teacher?”

That was the standard answer in 1996. In a predominantly gendered job world, women were expected to be teachers or nurses. If you were exceptionally bright, maybe you could become a lawyer or an accountant.

It was an era where professions were the be-all and end-all. Going to university was the pinnacle of aspiration, and work was about our heads rather than our hands—creating a false divide that ignored half the school population not destined for university. We were entering a knowledge-based economy, and professions requiring degrees and specialist knowledge were where the opportunities were. And yes, this was now true for girls as much as it was for boys. This was the era of This Life and Ally McBeal, of graduate milk rounds dishing out decent starting salaries and corporate-branded tote bags.

By the time I entered the workplace, we were told the professions were, in fact, a soulless trap and that our purpose was to find our passion. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life… have the courage to follow your heart and intuition,” Steve Jobs instructed us. Passion was marketed as all you needed—a myth many of us discovered the hard way as wages stagnated and job stability became elusive.

The exciting, disruptive world of entrepreneurship and tech was pitched as the answer, with workplaces designed not for monotonous, uninspiring work but for constant play. Break-out zones, super-slides, free breakfast bars, gyms, and sleep pods. Like a casino designed to keep out daylight, these offices aimed to keep you there for as long as possible. Then came Covid, the Great Resignation, stagflation, and the inheritocracy—and, well, you know that story.

But what’s next? And when I say “what’s next,” I’m not thinking about myself here but my kids. My son is seven, part of Generation Alpha, those born between 2010 and 2025. It’s years before he will engage with the job market, but he is experiencing an education system that remains knowledge-centric, exam-heavy, and designed to have young people cultivating their CVs from their early teens.

When you broach the subject of Gen Alpha and their future jobs, the common response is that they’ll do things that haven’t been invented yet. Optimists will say AI will create as many jobs as it destroys: out goes influencer marketing manager, in comes AI ethics consultant; out goes drone operator, in comes space tourism operator.

But I’m less interested in what precise job my son will do (his generation is destined to have several). I’m more intrigued by the skills that will keep him agile in a world where humans will constantly be playing catch-up to generative AI. It’s estimated that Gen Z will have five different careers over their lifetime. Perhaps by the time Gen Alpha comes of age, the term “career” will be redundant entirely.

“What do I need to teach my kids?” is a question I’m asked more and more when speaking to audiences. So, I wanted to crystallise my thoughts—not as definitive advice as such but as guiding principles, things I’m considering when it comes to my own kids.

I should stress this comes with three caveats:

1. We can’t expect the education system to teach these skills. Mass education is inevitably about standardisation, and our kids should be moving in the opposite direction in the age of AI.

2. As my book Inheritocracy attests, however I may wish the opposite, the economy is likely to be even more unequal for Gen Alpha than it was for millennials and Gen Z. The Bank of Mum and Dad will continue to define opportunity for the next thirty years, especially in Europe and the UK. Yet, positively, young people have never had more opportunities in terms of access to learning and marketisation. The inheritocracy can be subverted—our kids just need to be savvy as hell.

3. To be clear, this is about jobs and careers, not values or personal development. It’s just how I see the career ladder evolving in their lifetime.

So here is the advice I would give my son, but also Generation Alpha as a whole….

1. Career Paths Are Dead, But the Path to Mastery Has Never Been More Open

1. The erosion of traditional career paths is happening today for two reasons. First, in an age of hyper-individualism, conveyor-belt careers are a hard sell—especially to the kids of professionals who’ve watched their parents stressed, never able to switch off.

   Second, disruptive economics and tech are unsettling traditional business models and job stability. Even in fields like law and medicine, Gen AI will eventually disrupt not just daily tasks but also broader career trajectories. Traditional pathways will stubbornly remain for the next twenty years—change is always slower than we think—but our kids will see something far less prescriptive and far more uncertain.

   But human expertise will be more necessary than ever in the age of AI. The challenge will be learning, sustaining, and monetising that expertise in new ways.

   In his book Understanding the Path to Mastery, surgeon Roger Kneebone outlines the three stages of expertise: apprenticeship, journeyman, and mastery, emphasising the importance of time, practice, and learning from mistakes.

   There’s a fundamental truth in this. Look at everyone you admire who is, in the traditional sense, successful. They’ve had several years of slog. The slog years are rarely advertised, and certainly not glamourised. Even the YouTuber who now commands millions of views probably started filming in their bedroom at 14 and spent ten years slogging it out with no one watching. AI may take over more and more of the basic slog for us, but that only means we’ll need the necessary apprenticeship and constant learning nmore than ever. What we consider and value as ‘subjects’ to be mastered will also change; and less defined by the subjects at school.

   We need to accept that school is not necessarily the main place of learning (and perhaps it never truly was). Moreover, the idea of peaking at 18 or 21 no longer makes sense (as if it ever did). Over the next ten years, we will question the point of loading twenty-somethings with debt for a degree that doesn’t even put them on the profitable road to mastery.

   In this age of the Google generalist, genuine expertise has become monetisable for the few. In the age of generative AI, expertise will become necessary for everyone. But here’s the difference: mastery will never truly be achieved—we’ll need to keep learning and upskilling. This is why it is critical that our kids learn how to learn rather than simply what to learn.

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   2. Solopreneurship Is the Future of Employment

   By the time Generation Alpha enters the workforce, solopreneurship—working independently while marketing and selling your skills—will likely dominate. They’ll move fluidly between being employees, freelancers, and business owners, adapting to project-based work and dynamic career paths.

   Millennials may bemoan the job instability they’ve experienced, but our kids are about to have it much worse. The silver lining? Unlike us, they won’t know any different. My grandfather changed his job every couple of months; my mum worked for the same company her entire life; I had three careers before I was 40. The truth is we are going backwards.

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   3. Sales and Marketing Are as Important as Knowledge

   Arguably, the winners in today’s economy have been those who’ve turned their expertise (and ideally passion) into someone else’s need and built a business, product and platform around it. While there’s a purity in mastering something no one needs, the fragmentation of employment means our kids’ generation will need to become very good at marketing their mastery to the right people in the right way.

   The real winners are those who productise their expertise, teach others, or create a school of fellow masters —whether in plumbing, drone operation, or AI ethics consulting. Entrepreneurial advisor Daniel Priestley makes an excellent point: we should always be seeking to market our expertise to the world, not because we all need to become influencers, but because we need to connect our skills and knowledge to what is now a global, digital audience.

   This doesn’t mean turning our kids into mini-corporate sales-y clones off ‘The Apprentice.’ But they will need to cultivate entrepreneurial skills, ability to sell, flog and negotiate to the highest bidder, to train others, sharing knowledge while monetising their expertise through AI.

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   4. Find Your Niche by Connecting Unconnected Worlds

   In a global, digital world, the secret to modern success is finding your niche. In the future, the easiest way our kids will do this is by bringing together seemingly unrelated fields. The future belongs to those who can do this, who bridge disciplines and connect unconnected worlds. AI thrives on predictability and standardisation, but humans excel at finding weird connections and bringing together different domains.

   For example, if you’re a gamer, find ways to connect with nature. If you’re a historian, explore how history can inform business and society (me!). This cross-fertilisation doesn’t come naturally to AI—it’s one of our greatest human strengths. As much as tech has sought to standardise us, the strength of being human is in our unique stories, experiences, passions, and values.

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   5. Learn How to Learn

   I’ve checked my emails about twenty times whilst writing this article. Concentration is a dying art. But our kids will need to master how to focus, how to concentrate, and not just on stuff they love, but on the really tedious stuff. That is why the distraction economy is so dangerous because it reduces our ability to do this. But the critical thing in all this is that if we learn how to learn and concentrate, you also learn how to critically evaluate what the machine spits out.

   Gen Alpha should avoid the modern tendency to rely on ‘learning aids.’ Let me explain. A friend told me a story about her son, who won the French prize at school last year. He had aced the gamified learning portal—racking up points, climbing leaderboards, and unlocking badges. But when they went on holiday to France that summer, he couldn’t even order a croissant. He froze, unable to string together a sentence.

   It made me realise how gamification can sometimes miss the mark. It rewards speed over depth, memorisation over real understanding. My friend’s son mastered the game of learning French, but not the language itself. It’s a stark reminder that education is best when it has constant real-world application, not just points and prizes.

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   6. Collaboration is connection

   We know the best learning is done together, but we need to realise one fundamental thing that has changed in recent decades. It used to be that wisdom flowed down the age range; now wisdom should flow up and down the age spectrum.

   Moreover in a world of increasing individualism and silo-ing, the ability to collaborate particularly with people who are not like you and you don’t agree with, will become a superpower.

   Collaboration isn’t designated group work…. urgh. It’s about reading people, body language, sometimes listening, sometimes leading, understanding their motivations, coming to an agreement, and building strong networks. Social intelligence will be just as important as technical expertise.

   We are losing the art of human connection just when it is needed more than ever.

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   7. Data Tells, Stories Sell

   The ability to tell a compelling story—whether telling an amusing anecdote, pitching an idea, passion or project —will remain invaluable.

   It’s not just about public speaking; it’s about framing knowledge, experiences, and insights in a way that resonates with people.

   In a sea of facts and figures, it’s stories that help people truly connect.

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   8. Curiosity Is Key

   Asking questions, rather than regurgitating facts and figures will be more valuable and even more valid. It will become the main way we express our individualism and question what the machines tell us.

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   9. Be in Your Body

   As technology moves closer to our bodies—laptops on our lap, phones in our pockets, glasses with augmented reality, and potentially even neural implants—Gen A will have to make more and more of an effort to stay connected to the physical world. Sitting is the new smoking they say, our sedentary lives are killing us and already one in eight children aged between two and 10 in England are obese.

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   10. Finally, Don’t Listen to a Word Your Mother Says…

   The world my son will inherit will look nothing like the one I grew up in. The career advice I received in the 1990s was out of date before I even started my first job. And the advice I’m giving now, shaped by the 2020s, will likely be just as outdated by the 2040s.

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The Reading Room

1. Gen Z are becoming parents and according to the Economist, the trend for overspending on baby stuff is continuing. Could it be because we have disbanded the village, or are more likely to use Google than Grandma? Who knows? But I think we can say that parents have never been so paranoid about doing it wrong and spending so much.

2. Could the answer to the Bank of Mum and Dad be in allowing millennials to raid their state pension early? Andrew Lewin, MP is calling for a scheme whereby under-40s who have a decade of National Insurance contributions are handed £11,500 in exchange for delaying retirement by a year. “For millions of people, your hope of getting on the housing ladder, changing career or even starting a family is increasingly dependent on how much financial support you can rely upon from your parents.’ Agree. The new social divide with BOMAD, will be between those that can retire early and those who can’t.

   Noah Eastwood, Reeves urged to let millennials raid their state pension early, The Telegraph, 27 January 2025

3. Gen Z is experiencing a slump in workplace engagement

   According to Gallup's latest findings, morale among employees under 35-years-old has dropped so much that they are now less engaged than their older colleagues—a trend not seen since 2007. Only 40% of Gen Z feel clear about what is expected of them at work. And in terms of office life, many young workers perceive their workplace as increasingly ‘chaotic and unwelcoming’. This is something I have been seeing a lot in the Gen Z workshops I’ve been delivering. Do take a look at our Generational Blueprint which aims to solve these issues.

   Aki Ito, Gen Z is more fed up with work than ever, Business Insider, 27 January 2025

Podcasts still needed!

Thank you to the overwhelming response to my call last week recommending podcasts I should be a guest on. I still have a few slots in my March calendar so still open to suggestions. If you happen to know of any you think I should be a guest on or have a podcast that is looking for interviewees do get in contact with Christina on my team.

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Thanks for reading and listening,

Eliza