• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Career Writing Prompts

The job you want, one working day of it, a job nobody has yet, and what to ask a visitor.

Career Writing Prompts

Show all 60
  1. Write about the worker whose job is to teach robots good manners.First line: Lesson one is always the same: wait until the person has finished talking.
  2. When I grow up, I want to work outdoors, indoors or on the move. Choose one and explain.Angle: think about weather, noise and how long you like to sit still.
  3. When I grow up, I want my work to make something. Write about what will exist because of you.Angle: a bridge, a loaf, a song, a mended bike. Describe it finished.

Next step Draw an invention for the jobWrite about people who help

All 60 prompts

When I grow up 15

  • Describe what you will wear to work when you grow up, from shoes to hat. Angle: say what each thing is for. Pockets count.
  • Imagine you are grown up and a child asks what you do all day. Write your answer. First line: Mostly I fix things that nobody knew were broken.
  • List five things you like doing, and beside each one write a job that uses it. Angle: then pick one pair and write five sentences about it.
  • What will you still like doing when you grow up, whatever your job turns out to be? Angle: something you do now: drawing, running, taking things apart. Say where it fits.
  • When I grow up, I do not want to be... Pick a job that is not for you and say why, kindly. Angle: somebody loves that job. Say what they must like that you would not.
  • When I grow up, I want a job where I help... Finish it with who or what, and how. Angle: people, animals, plants, machines, buildings. Pick one and give an example.
  • When I grow up, I want my work to make something. Write about what will exist because of you. Angle: a bridge, a loaf, a song, a mended bike. Describe it finished.
  • When I grow up, I want to be as good at something as a grown-up I know. Write what they do well. Angle: no name needed. Describe them doing it, step by step.
  • When I grow up, I want to be... Finish the sentence and give three reasons. Angle: one reason about what you like, one about what you are good at, one about who it helps.
  • When I grow up, I want to work outdoors, indoors or on the move. Choose one and explain. Angle: think about weather, noise and how long you like to sit still.
  • When I grow up, the first thing I will do at work each morning is... Finish it and keep going. First line: I will unlock the door before anyone else gets there.
  • Write a diary page for one working day when you are thirty. First line: Up before the alarm again, and glad of it.
  • Write a poem that begins When I grow up and has a different job in every line. Angle: six lines. The last line is the job you would really pick.
  • Write about a job you wanted when you were smaller, and why you changed your mind. Angle: say what you liked about it then, and what you know now.
  • Write about two jobs you cannot choose between. Angle: a paragraph for each, then one about a way to do a little of both.

A day in a job 15

  • Describe a farmer's day in the busiest week of the year. Angle: choose planting or picking. Begin with the sky, because the farmer does.
  • Follow a chef through the busiest hour of the night. First line: Six orders came in at once, and every one of them wanted the same pan.
  • Follow a pilot through one working day, from the first check to the last switch. Angle: nothing goes wrong. The interesting part is how careful everyone is.
  • Ride with a train driver from the first station to the last, and write the day. Angle: what the driver sees that the passengers never do.
  • Tell about a scientist's day on which the experiment does not work. Angle: what they change, what they write down and why they come back tomorrow.
  • Tell the day of a job as the tool that does it. Angle: a hammer, a whisk, a paintbrush, a keyboard. First line: She picks me up before her coffee.
  • Write a day in a job that most people could not explain. Angle: say what the worker is called, what they do first and what they take home.
  • Write a day in a job where the worker's voice does the work. Angle: a radio host, a tour guide, an auctioneer, a coach. What happens when the voice gets tired?
  • Write a job as a timetable: every hour of one working day gets one line. Angle: choose any job. Put a star by the hour that is hardest.
  • Write a veterinarian's morning: three animals come in before lunch. Angle: one is easy, one is nervous and one is not what the owner said it was.
  • Write an hour of a teacher's day when the children are not in the room. Angle: what gets marked, moved, planned and eaten.
  • Write one job's day twice: a good day and a day when everything goes sideways. Angle: same worker, same place, same first hour. Change one small thing.
  • Write someone's first day in a new job, from the wrong door to the right desk. Angle: three things nobody told the new person, and who finally did.
  • Write the day of an artist who has to finish a picture by five o'clock. Angle: note the time at the start of each paragraph. Something spills at three.
  • Write the day of someone who builds houses, on the day the roof goes on. Angle: start on the ground and end at the top. Say what the weather is doing.

A job that does not exist yet 15

  • A city under the sea needs a new kind of worker. Write the notice that goes up on the wall. Angle: what the work is, what to bring and who to ask for.
  • A new job has been invented and you are the first to do it. Write what you say at dinner that night. First line: Well, nobody could tell me what to do, because nobody had done it.
  • Invent a job for someone who loves both animals and numbers. Angle: name it, then describe one task that needs both.
  • Invent a job that can only be done at night. Angle: who needs it done, and what would be wrong by morning if nobody did it.
  • Invent a job that does not exist yet and write the sign for its door. Angle: the name of the job, what the worker does and the opening hours.
  • Invent a job that fixes one small problem you noticed this week. Angle: lost mittens, tangled headphones, a long lunch line. Give the job a title.
  • Invent a job that needs two workers who are good at opposite things. Angle: one is fast and one is careful, or one talks and one listens. Write them at work.
  • Invent a job whose whole purpose is to make someone laugh once a day. Angle: where the worker goes, how they know it worked and what they try when it does not.
  • Make up a job for an animal you know, and write its first day at work. Angle: start from what it is good at already. A cat could test chairs.
  • Take a job that exists today and write how it might be done in a hundred years. Angle: keep the reason for the job the same. Change the tools.
  • Write a career day speech given by a visitor from the future. First line: My job did not have a name when I was your age.
  • Write a job description for a weather painter, a shadow mender or a puddle inspector. Angle: pick one. Say what tools they carry and what a bad day looks like.
  • Write about the first worker on the Moon whose job is not astronaut. Angle: a gardener, a plumber, a librarian. What is harder there, and what is easier?
  • Write about the worker whose job is to teach robots good manners. First line: Lesson one is always the same: wait until the person has finished talking.
  • Write the list of tools for a job nobody has thought of yet, and let the reader guess the job. Angle: five tools. Put the oddest one last and the answer underneath.

Questions for a career day visitor 15

  • After career day, write a thank-you note to a visitor that names one thing you learned. Angle: three sentences. The second begins I did not know that.
  • Compare two career day visitors. Angle: one thing their jobs share, and one thing only one of them does.
  • Give a career day talk on paper about a job you know well, as if you were the visitor. Angle: a job in your family or on your street. Bring one thing to hold up.
  • Report on a career day visitor: the job, what they brought and the best thing they said. Angle: put their best sentence in quotation marks.
  • Write a career day question about a mistake: what went wrong at work once, and what the visitor did next. Angle: ask it politely. It is usually the best story of the visit.
  • Write a career day question for a visitor who works with their hands and one for a visitor who works at a screen. Angle: ask each what they would miss if they swapped.
  • Write a question for a career day visitor about what they liked doing at your age. Angle: then ask whether any of it is in their job now.
  • Write an introduction for a career day visitor, to be read aloud before they speak. Angle: who they are, what they do and one thing the class hopes to find out.
  • Write one question for a career day visitor about the first ten minutes of their working day. Angle: then guess the answer in a sentence, and see how close you were.
  • Write the career day question you would most like to ask and are a bit shy to. Angle: write it three ways and pick the kindest one.
  • Write the questions you would ask a career day visitor whose job you had never heard of. Angle: begin with What is it called, and end with Can we see it done?
  • Write the sign for the classroom door on career day, with three rules for good listening under it. Angle: rules that begin with a verb: look, wait, ask.
  • Write three questions for a career day visitor that begin with How. Angle: a How question cannot be answered with yes or no. Put your best one first.
  • Write two career day questions: one about the hardest part of a job, one about the part nobody sees. Angle: ask the second one first. It gets the longer answer.
  • Write what surprised you most on career day. First line: I thought the job was mostly driving. It is mostly waiting.

How it works

These career writing prompts stay with what a child can see of work: what a person does, wears, carries and says. None asks what a job pays or how to get one.

Read the full guide

Writing prompts for what I want to be when I grow up

Fifteen prompts, seven of which open with When I grow up. They ask for reasons, for the clothes, for the first thing done at work each morning. One asks for the job you would not want, and what somebody else must love about it.

A career day writing prompt for before and after

Before the visit: questions to write, an introduction to read aloud, a sign for the classroom door. After it: a thank-you note that names one thing learned, a report with the visitor's best sentence in quotation marks, the thing that surprised you most.

  • Stuck on When I grow up? Start with what you do on a free afternoon and work backward.
  • For a day in a job, begin before the work does: the alarm, the shoes, the trip there.

Questions and answers

What is a good when I grow up writing prompt?

One that asks for more than the name of a job. When I grow up, the first thing I will do at work each morning is... Or: describe what you will wear to work, from shoes to hat.

What is a career day writing prompt?

Something to write when a visitor comes to talk about their work. One here asks for a single question about the first ten minutes of their working day. Another compares two visitors: one thing their jobs share, one thing only one of them does.

Are these career writing prompts for kids?

Yes. The jobs are ones a child has met, a vet, a chef, a train driver, and the jobs that do not exist yet are there for the fun of inventing one, such as a puddle inspector.

What if I do not know what I want to be?

Then skip the name of the job. Write about working outdoors, indoors or on the move, or list five things you like doing and put a job beside each. Both prompts are on the list.

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