Career success in 2026 looks a lot different than it did for many generations before. Even recent college graduates are having a hard time in today’s job market finding work. However, according to an expert venture capitalist here are top ways parents can prepare their children for career success.
Per education tech firm Cengage’s graduate employability report, the company states that under a third (30%) of 2025 college graduates, and less than half (41%) of 2024 college graduates, have found full-time employment related to their education. Those numbers are not only staggering, but alarming as well.
Parents.com sat down with Alexa von Tobel, the founder and managing partner of Inspired Capital, to find out her top suggestions for fellow parents in regards to how they can prepare their kids for their future careers.
Encourage a Love of Learning
Learning is one of the two indicators of future success.
“A genuine curiosity about how things work ends up increasing kids’ speed of learning, because the more interested you are and the more you’re paying attention to something, the faster you adopt it, and most likely, the better that you do,” she tells the outlet.
In other words, if they are interested in a particular subject or career path, encourage them to learn more. If it ends up becoming a passion, support their exploration.
“I have a principle that I think still applies, which is, what is your child excellent at, and what do they love to do?” von Tobel explains. “And when you combine those two things in your career, as early as you can, you compound success.”
Teach them Executive Function Skills
As per the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, “Executive functioning skills are a set of cognitive processes managed by the brain’s frontal lobe that act as an ‘air traffic control system’ for daily life. These essential skills enable individuals to set goals, plan, initiate tasks, manage time, focus attention, regulate emotions, and adapt to change, continuing to develop well into adulthood.”
“Executive functioning is not just the skill set of getting things done. It’s knowing how to plan, how to execute, how to organize, which is an incredibly important trait that comes to some people very naturally,” von Tobel explains. “But regardless of how it comes to your child, executive function is a sort of muscle that we can all train and get better at.”
Ensuring that children are well-versed in executive function skills is essential to their success.
Prioritize Human-Centered Jobs
As technology advances, the number of human-centered jobs are on the decline. If you focus on jobs gearing your child to show interest in human-centered jobs, those are less likely to be animated and replaced by technology.
Von Tobel sites jobs within the legal sector, restaurant industry, construction, etc. as jobs that are human-centered.
Value the Workplace
Remote opportunities are wonderful for a variety of reasons; however, von Tobel recommends that parents encourage their children to value the workplace.
“I want my children to have all of their jobs right out of school and all of their internships, to be in-person with people more senior than them and who they have opportunities to learn from,” she says. “Quietly watching what other people are doing to get things done is a great way to learn how to succeed in any industry.”
Don’t Neglect Emotional Intelligence
According to Mental Health America, “Emotional Intelligence (EI or EQ) is the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and use your own emotions, as well as perceive and influence the emotions of others. It involves self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills to communicate effectively, manage stress, and build strong relationships.”
Ensuring that your child has strong EI will make them highly desirable in the job market and also have a positive effect on their education at a young age.
“So effectively, what’s happened with AI is that IQ has become free,” says von Tobel. “Real 150 IQ has become free at our fingertips, and that gives a really powerful opportunity to people with strong EQ skills, with social skills, communication skills, to be able to actually do a lot more than maybe they could in the past.”
