What do you want to be when you grow up is a big question to put to a seven year old, and most of them answer it to get rid of you. This deck asks a smaller one sixteen times instead: doctor or nurse, astronaut or pilot, chef or teacher, this one or that one. By the end there is a ranked list of the jobs the child kept choosing, which is a far more honest answer than the one they would have given you up front.
Sixteen jobs, each with a grown-up job title behind it
The deck covers sixteen jobs a primary-age child can picture: Doctor, Nurse, Astronaut, Pilot, Chef, Teacher, Firefighter, Police, Artist, Musician, Farmer, Vet, Scientist, Builder, Athlete and Writer. Each card carries a symbol and a plain description of the work - helps people feel better, flies the plane, grows food, discovers new things - so a child who is not reading yet still knows what they are choosing between.
Every one of the sixteen also holds a second, more specific title that appears at the Years 5 and 6 ability level. Doctor becomes Cardiologist, Nurse becomes Paediatric Nurse, Astronaut becomes Mission Specialist and Pilot becomes Airline Captain. Further down the list, Chef becomes Head Chef, Teacher becomes Headteacher, Firefighter becomes Fire and Rescue Officer, Police becomes Detective Inspector, Artist becomes Illustrator, Musician becomes Composer, Farmer becomes Arable Farmer, Vet becomes Veterinary Surgeon, Scientist becomes Marine Biologist, Builder becomes Civil Engineer, Athlete becomes Olympian and Writer becomes Novelist.
That second layer is why the deck suits an older child. The activity stays identical - two cards, pick one - while the vocabulary jumps from job words a four year old knows to real career titles an eleven year old may not have met. The choice is never the hard part; the label is where the learning sits.
Pairings are drawn fresh from the pool of sixteen every time the page loads, rather than being fixed. Doctor will not always be up against Nurse, and one load might set Farmer against Astronaut, which is usually a more interesting round than the tidy version.
How a round of the jobs game plays
Two job cards appear side by side with a VS badge between them. Tap or click either one to choose it. With a keyboard, A or the left arrow takes the left job, B or the right arrow takes the right, and R picks for you. Swiping left or right works on a tablet. The counter reads Round 1 of 8 for a full pass through all sixteen, or Round 1 of 5 at the youngest setting, where the game pauses afterwards and asks whether to carry on.
The Choose for me button under the cards is there for the child who wants both and will not be moved: it settles the round at random so the session keeps its rhythm. At the end a podium ranks the jobs by how often they were picked, the winner is saved as a sticker, and a printable log lists every matchup in the order it happened.
Adding ?mode=bracket to the address turns the deck into a knockout instead. Sixteen jobs is exactly the right number for one: eight matches, then four, then two, then a final, which is fifteen picks and one job left standing. It runs longer than a quick pass and gives a single answer, which is the version to use when you want one thing to come back to next week.
Careers talk without putting a child on the spot
Asking a child to name an ambition asks them to commit, in front of an adult, to something they will be judged on. Asking which of two jobs they would rather do asks almost nothing and can be answered with a finger. The information you were after arrives anyway, spread over eight rounds instead of one awkward sentence.
It is also a vocabulary lesson in disguise. Sixteen jobs come with sixteen descriptions of what the work involves, and at the top level with sixteen titles a child will meet again at secondary school. The pairs do half the teaching: Farmer against Vet raises the question of what the difference is, and most children want to answer it.
- Future and conditional forms: I would be a vet, I would not want to be a builder.
- Job vocabulary: who works outside, who works at night, who needs a uniform, who works alone.
- Reasons: ask what makes the chef better than the teacher once the pick is in.
- Career titles at the top level: cardiologist, illustrator, composer, civil engineer, marine biologist.
- Noticing your own pattern: read the podium back and ask why every winner was an outdoor job.
- Turn-taking: swap rounds with the adult and let the child challenge your choices.
In a lesson, a session, or at the kitchen table
Nothing installs and no account is required, so it opens mid-session on any device and shares cleanly over Zoom, Meet or Teams. The cards stay big enough to read on a shared screen, so an adult can drive while the child decides - which is how most of the 1:1 tutoring this site was written for actually runs.
The ability level in the grown-up controls (press T anywhere on the site) is doing two jobs at once here. It sets how many rounds a run lasts, and at Years 5 and 6 it swaps in the career titles across the whole deck. That makes one page work for a Reception child pointing at the firefighter and for a Year 6 class talking about what a mission specialist does, without either version looking wrong for its reader.
The printed log is the part worth keeping: a dated record of what a child wanted, in their own choices rather than an adult's summary. Useful in a transition meeting or an annual review, and worth comparing against the same deck three months later.
Careers that turn up on the cards
- Doctor
- Nurse
- Astronaut
- Pilot
- Chef
- Teacher
- Firefighter
- Police
- Artist
Questions about the Jobs deck
- Is the jobs game free?
- Yes. The jobs deck plays in a browser with no signup, no download. Choices and stickers are kept in the browser, so a tutor or parent can open it and start a round immediately.
- What jobs are in the game?
- Sixteen: doctor, nurse, astronaut, pilot, chef, teacher, firefighter, police, artist, musician, farmer, vet, scientist, builder, athlete and writer. They are re-paired at random on every load, so a full pass is eight matchups and no two runs line up the same way.
- Does it work for older children?
- Yes. Set the ability level to Years 5 and 6 in the grown-up controls and every card swaps to a specific career title - cardiologist, paediatric nurse, mission specialist, airline captain, headteacher, detective inspector, civil engineer, marine biologist and so on. The pictures and the tap-to-pick rule stay the same, so the activity suits an older child without reading as babyish.
- Can a child who does not talk take part?
- Yes. Every turn is a tap, a click, an arrow key or a swipe, and both jobs stay visible while the child decides. An adult can name the two options out loud and take a point, a look or a hand on the screen as the answer, which is why the deck works in speech and language sessions as well as classrooms.
- Is this a careers test?
- No. It measures nothing and predicts nothing. The end screen simply counts how often each job was chosen and ranks them, so it is a conversation starter and a record of what a child was drawn to on the day, not an assessment or an aptitude result.
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