Hear from real professionals, compare different paths, and find a practical next step.
Khan Academy’s free Career Exploration course helps learners hear from real professionals, compare career paths, and decide what to explore next.
Job titles do not tell the whole story.
A title like “financial analyst,” “UX designer,” or “healthcare administrator” rarely explains what someone does every day, how they entered the field, or what they wish they had known before starting.
Khan Academy’s new Career Exploration course, powered by Advize, helps learners look beyond the title. Through short interviews with working professionals and guided reflection, the free course makes it easier to explore careers, compare options, and consider what might be a good fit.
The course is designed for learners exploring their futures, families starting career conversations, and teachers and counselors supporting career readiness. No one needs to have the future figured out before getting started.
Explore the Career Exploration courseHear what different careers are really like
A career is more than a list of duties. It includes the problems someone solves, the people they work with, the skills they use, and the choices that brought them there.
The course lets learners hear directly from professionals about a variety of topics:
- What a typical workday looks like
- How professionals entered their field
- Which skills matter most
- What they enjoy about the work
- What can be challenging
- What education or training helped them
- What advice they would give someone who is starting out
Advize uses a consistent interview framework across professions, making it easier for learners to compare career paths instead of piecing together completely different information from every source.
How learners, families, and educators can use the Career Exploration course
For learners
Try a three-career challenge:
- Explore a career you think you understand.
- Explore one you have heard of but know little about.
- Explore one you have never considered.
After each interview, write down something that surprised you, something that interested you, and one question you still have.
For families
Watch an interview together and begin with one question:
What surprised you?
That can open the door to conversations about skills, education, work environments, and priorities without asking a learner to make an immediate decision.
For teachers and counselors
Use the course during advisory periods, career-readiness lessons, independent research, reflective writing, or college and training discussions.
Educators can assign one interview, ask students to compare two careers, or let learners choose a path connected to their interests. The course brings more professional voices into the learning experience without requiring a different guest speaker for every field.
Connect school subjects to future work
Career exploration can also help answer a familiar question:
Why am I learning this?
A statistics lesson feels different when a professional explains how data guides real decisions. Writing feels more relevant when learners hear how often people need to explain ideas, collaborate, and persuade others at work.
Math, science, reading, writing, technology, and communication skills appear across many industries. Seeing those connections can help learners understand that the skills they practice in school can travel with them.
The Career Exploration course is part of Khan Academy’s broader collection of new and updated courses for the 2026 back-to-school season.
Start with one interview
Career exploration does not require a five-year plan.
One interview can be a starting point. Learners can notice what interests them, pay attention to what does not, and choose a practical next step. That might mean exploring another profession, researching a class or training path, asking someone about their work, or practicing a skill that appears across several roles.
Families and educators can support that process by creating room for curiosity without expecting an immediate decision.
Khan Academy’s free Career Exploration course, powered by Advize, is available now.
Explore the Career Exploration course
