Cognitive Insights: a Career Compass?

Cognitive Insights: a Career Compass?

The search for the ‘perfect’ job is rarely a simple, straight path. It’s often more of a maze, full of twists and dead ends. Parents try their best to support their children during this search, yet making important career decisions often goes hand in hand with doubts, insecurity, and indecisiveness. How can you make this crucial developmental phase easier for your child?

Traditionally, we base career decisions on grades, family and friends’ opinions, and societal expectations. These factors can be helpful, but they often lack the depth needed for a truly fitting choice. Cognitive insights can be much more valuable for this.

What are cognitive insights?

When we mention “cognitive insights” in relation to career development, we actually mean the strength of one’s executive brain functions — the functions that support our actions and thinking. Examples are:

• Planning ability: How well can you set up and follow a step-by-step plan?
• Organizational ability: Can you process information in a structured way and efficiently organize tasks?
• Problem-solving ability: How do you approach new challenges and find creative solutions?
• Working memory: How effectively can you retain and manipulate information to perform a task?
• Cognitive flexibility: How easily can you switch between different tasks or perspectives?

The executive functions are strong predictors for one’s behavior, revealing the areas where someone is naturally inclined to perform with ease and relatively little effort. Identifying natural strengths helps your children in choosing a path where success and satisfaction will come with lower stress, because they will perform tasks that naturally suit them well.

A healthy effort-success balance

When your job matches your natural talents and your strong executive functions, a healthy balance between effort and success will develop. It will feel less like ‘working’ and more like ‘being you’. This alignment helps to prevent stress and burnout, allowing individuals to reach their sweet spots. And society overall will benefit from it, because jobs will be done by those who are naturally the best at them.

Of course, children should not be pigeonholed from an early age on. They should have the freedom to discover, experiment, and explore multiple interests. Precisely in that phase of discovery, early cognitive insights could serve as a valuable compass.

More guidance and less doubts

Imagine your child is uncertain about their studies or career path. Early insights into their cognitive strengths — their dominant executive functions — can offer the needed direction. It can help answer questions like: “What am I really good at?” and “What fits my way of thinking and working best?”. With this understanding, youngsters can make more informed, confident career choices, grounded in who they truly are. It’s an investment in a future in which they not only have a job, but can also follow their passions.

A gamified assessment is a great way to map youngsters’ cognitive profiles. By analyzing how they play, we can identify the situations in which they naturally excel.

In the end, it is about giving your children the right tools to walk their own unique path. By looking beyond just school achievements and focusing on innate talents, we help them find their perfect dream job.