Career Clusters
“Each organisation, workplace, and industry needs people from each Cluster to operate successfully”
Discover the Six Career Clusters
When we think about jobs, most people picture the same familiar roles—like doctors, teachers, firefighters, or lawyers. These are the visible, well-known careers. In fact, research shows that about 50% of teenagers aim for just ten popular jobs, even though these roles make up only about 1% of the job market.
In reality, most adults work in a much wider range of careers—such as managers, technicians, operators, or sales professionals. That’s where the Career Clusters come in.
Rather than grouping jobs by industry, the six Career Clusters group them by the core skills, common tasks, and types of work environments they share. These Clusters help students and families explore a broader range of career possibilities based on real-world skills and interests. You’ll find people from each Cluster working across all industries, helping students see more clearly where their strengths can take them.
We’ve helped students identify which senior secondary school subjects connect with their Career Cluster by clearly showing these links through careers curriculum, career conversations and the cluster icons on our factsheets and website. This guidance supports students as they make subject selections for Years 10 and beyond, based on their interests and strengths—not locking them into a specific career, but opening up pathways that reflect their passions.
The knowledge and skills gained from these subjects are highly transferable, giving students the flexibility to explore a wide range of careers and industries after school.
Guardians
The Guardians are people who care deeply about health and wellbeing. They are interested in the body and how it works, and want to work in a role where they are supporting others to be their best versions of themselves. This means that they sometimes work in medical care as nurses, doctors, dentists, and pharmacists, but they also help us keep fit and strong in the fitness industry, and help us maintain our physical appearance in the beauty industry.
Innovators
The Innovators are creative, forward-thinking people who want to use their skills to make the world a better place. They are passionate about design and innovation and are able to consider the needs of the user to solve their problems with innovative solutions. While many Innovators work in traditional roles (i.e. engineer, graphic designer, etc.) they also design the systems we use to manage our lives.
Makers
The Makers are busy people who keep everything up and running. There are few desk jobs in this Cluster - most Makers can be found using specialised equipment, moving between worksites, and using their technical skills alongside their specialised knowledge. As the world of work continues to evolve, we expect that some Makers will move from repetitive, hands-on work towards roles where they monitor, maintain, and operate the complex machinery that replaces them.
The Coordinators are people who manage our lives. They are passionate about keeping things organised, enjoy making sure everything runs smoothly, and are skilled at things like maintaining schedules, strategic planning, managing teams, and coordinating customers and clients.
Coordinators
Informers
The Informers are passionate about using their extensive understanding of their subject area to help other people. This means that they often advise, guide, and teach, and they sometimes complete tasks that other people without their skills and knowledge couldn’t complete. Informers are sharers –they share their skills as teachers, lawyers, accountants, instructors, advisors, and analysts to complete a task.
Linkers
Linkers are the interface between their organisation and the public, which means they support customers, liaise with clients, and promote the organisation’s benefits to a wider audience. Linkers work in healthcare settings and connect you to the medical support you need, they work in education and help you find a program and enrol, and they connect your with your local government services.
Each organisation, workplace, and industry needs people from each Cluster to operate successfully.
For example, when we think about jobs in agriculture the most obvious job would be a farmer. But farmers are not the only people working in agriculture - we also need farm managers, auctioneers, safety auditors, accountants, agronomists, shearers, truck drivers, and software engineers to work alongside the farmers, and these people come from every Cluster.
