Squished among National Science Week and National Skills Week is Book Week! Traditionally is does tend to focus on primary school and early education students, but you could flip the idea and the theme to something more suited for high school students. That doesn’t have to mean fancy dress and a parade past the staffroom.
For careers advisors, it’s another chance to get students thinking about their futures without them realising that’s what’s happening. Every book on a shelf connects to a real job somewhere, from the author, editor, publisher, printer, and marketing teams, to the careers featured in the book itself. Book Week gives you a ready-made excuse to harness those opportunities. Whether your school goes all in on costumes or prefers a quieter approach, there are plenty of ways to link reading to careers thinking in any school setting.
Why books make good career starting points
Students often switch off when careers advice sounds like a lecture. Books work differently. A student who loves a crime thriller is already interested in how evidence gets collected, how a case gets built, and how someone decides who’s telling the truth. That’s forensic science, law, and policing, all wrapped up in a story they picked up for fun.
The same goes for other genres. A student who enjoys a survival story might be drawn to outdoor education or expedition work. Someone who reads a lot of biographies about scientists or explorers is showing an interest in research, engineering, or fieldwork, even if they’d never describe it that way. Book Week gives you a natural opening talk about the jobs hiding in plain sight.
Matching authors and genres to career clusters
If your school uses tools like the Cadi Career Clusters, or other psychometric tools that group jobs by strengths, skills, and values Book Week could be a great time to bring them out. Not only they provide valuable indicators and conversation starters about of the kinds of work students could enjoy doing, books map to these clusters/groups surprisingly well. Creating links between authors and different genres could help develop a Book Week theme that’s subtle but effective.
Non-fiction nature writing, for example, tends to appeal to students who’d suit the Guardian cluster, roles involved in protecting people, animals, or the environment. Mystery and investigative journalism books often attract future Informers, the researchers, analysts, and advisors. Books about invention, design, or building things tend to appeal to Makers. You don’t need to overthink the matching. The point isn’t to sort every student perfectly, it’s to start a conversation about what draws them to a story in the first place.
Alternatives to dress-up
Secondary school students tend not to embrace rocking up at school as a wizard or a detective, and that’s fine. There are other ways to run Book Week that still get students thinking about careers.
A themed library display is one option. You could set up sections based on career clusters, with books grouped under headings like “for future Guardians” or “for future Linkers,” alongside a short note on the kinds of jobs each cluster covers or posters that illustrate the same point at a glance. Alternatively, build a display around a local industry. If your area has a strong presence in healthcare, agriculture, or manufacturing, pull together books, both fiction and non-fiction, that connect to that field and show students how the industry on their doorstep is full of possible futures for anyone.
A bring your favourite book project could work well too. Ask students to bring in a book they’re reading now or have enjoyed in the past. It could be fiction, non-fiction, or a biography, ask them to explain what career(s) appears in it and if that career appeals to them – and why or why not. This works for younger students with a picture book about a vet just as well as it does for older students reading a biography of an entrepreneur. The task doesn’t need to be long. A short paragraph or a two-minute chat with a partner is enough to get them thinking about the link between what they read and what they might do.
Keep it light hearted
Whatever format you choose, the goal is to keep thing fun and low-pressure. Enjoy the Book Week hype and potentially plant a small idea that a career worth exploring could be sitting somewhere in their reading pile. Some students will make an obvious connection, others might need a nudge, and a few won’t see it at all yet, which is perfectly OK too. Book Week works best when it feels like curiosity rather than an assignment.
Bring the conversation back to real careers
Once students have made a connection between a book and a career, the next step is helping them explore it further. That’s where a browse through real career profiles can help turn a passing interest into a genuine idea worth researching. You can point students, or use in your own planning, our Jobs & Careers section for profiles that show what these careers actually involve day to day.
