Planning your career is not an easy task. How do you know if a career is for you just by reading about it? The reality of career planning is that you will never know if you have chosen the right career or company until you start working there.
Every career has clear indicators profiling the types of characters who would enjoy working in that particular role. Do not ignore these profiles as they will help you identify suitable careers and your careers service will have a number of tools to help you choose. Your degree will also be an indicator of whether you would enjoy working in roles related to your discipline. Having a good understanding of your goals and aspirations is a key starting point.
Self-assessment
Knowing YOU is the first step to being able to identify a career. You need to understand your likes and dislikes before you can make any decisions. Do you operate well under stress? Do you like working with customers or prefer computers? Do you like to travel or do your personal commitments limit your time away from home? What are your strengths and weaknesses?
If you have a good understanding of yourself, you are better placed to find a career that fits your needs. The careers service will have a range of diagnostic tools for you to use, but there are some simple exercises you can do to understand what’s important to you.
How to choose a career that’s right for you
Or, what do I want to do when I grow up? To be honest, this is a difficult one as most people will end up having a number of different careers over their working lives and can end up in roles that they didn’t realise existed in sectors that they hadn’t considered. The best approach is to be open-minded and not be too fixed on a particular sector. So research roles that you are interested in and fit your skill set across the board.
Also in today’s highly competitive market look for opportunities that get your foot in the door. For example, if you are interested in securing an accountancy role in a particular sector or organisation it could be easier to get a finance-related job, such as administration in the finance section in the first instance and look for opportunities from within. As 99% of the employers in the UK are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) target these and don’t just consider the industry giants. The London Stock Exchange Group Report – 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain (http://www.lseg.com/resources/1000-companies-inspire-britain) could be a good starting point. You could also use TARGETjobs careers planner (https://targetjobs.co.uk/careers-report) report to find out which graduate jobs would suit you.
How to research career opportunities
Look on university websites (not just your own university’s) and see the destinations of leavers from your course or programme of study. Use LinkedIn to track graduate outcomes from your institution and course as well as alumni you can contact for information.
Consult websites such as Career Player or Career Box for further information and the Guardian UK 300 based on graduate careers and employment. Talk to people as very often people stumble on a career and don’t actually plan it. Let them describe their route into their particular career. Go to lectures or meetings at professional bodies, attend events at your local chamber of commerce and network. You will be surprised at how much information people are prepared to share about their personal journeys when asked. You can always arrange to meet up with them at a later date to find out more about them and their role.
How to gain experience while studying at university
Take up every opportunity that is available at your university from year one. Join or run a society or club, be a student ambassador, volunteer, be mentored or volunteer to mentor students at a college or secondary school, take on responsibility at your local faith group and try to work every summer – it doesn’t matter what you do, just do something.
Look out for opportunities to work on campus through your university’s careers or employment team. If you want to develop skills through studying abroad, check if your university offers the Erasmus study abroad scheme.
All these things will develop skills alongside your studies that employers value and will give you something to talk about at an interview.
Femi Bola, Director of Employability, University of East London
Personal review
Another means is to conduct a self-assessment by viewing yourself through the eyes of others. A personal review allows you to gain insight from those you work with on a professional and informal basis. Rate yourself and then ask a minimum of five people, who know you in different capacities, to rate you. Are you as brilliant as you thought?
Don’t take the results to heart, but use them as a means to gain an insight into you and to develop an action plan. Often we don’t see our strengths or we don’t take credit for the things we do, so a personal review helps us to gain another perspective.
Use the table below to carry out your own personal review.
| Traits and skills valued by employers | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Punctual | ||||||
| Reliable | ||||||
| Attention to detail | ||||||
| Problem-solving | ||||||
| Communication (oral and written) | ||||||
| Numerate | ||||||
| Innovative | ||||||
| Positive attitude | ||||||
| Honest | ||||||
| Meet deadlines | ||||||
| Accurate | ||||||
| Can think on your feet | ||||||
| Organised | ||||||
| Team player | ||||||
| Leader | ||||||
| Negotiator | ||||||
| Influencer |
Name one strength:
Name one weakness:
The value of a personal review
The personal review presented a few surprises. My scores were so much lower than the people I asked to review me. They had a much higher opinion of me and identified my strengths and weaknesses. It was a good exercise to see myself through the eyes of my friends and colleagues.
A psychology graduate
Developing an action plan
Employability is a journey and it is important to recognise that you will be continuously developing and honing your skills. The journey is never-ending if you wish to continue to be employable, as the market is forever changing. Therefore based on the feedback you receive or the potential career you wish to enter, develop an action plan to address either areas of weakness or areas where you lack knowledge about potential careers.
Use the action plan below to develop your weaknesses.
| Skill, attribute or area to be researched | Why are these skills or attributes important? | Action to be taken (show how you will develop the skill) | How will you demonstrate your skill? | Date for completion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example: team work | In the workplace you will be required to work in teams | Join student society or sports team | Take on a specific function to draw on examples of specific actions taken | End of academic year |
Exploring your career
The best way to find out about a career is to either speak to a professional in the sector or secure a place on an internship or insight day. Speaking with professionals and learning about their journey can help you reflect on whether this is the path you wish to take. They can give you an insight into the possibilities in the sector and within their organisation. They can also provide you with an idea about the culture of the organisation, which you simply cannot gain from reading about an organisation.
Joining professional bodies or networking at industry events is a great way to meet people who are working in your chosen careers. Every discipline relates to a professional body that often has a student membership section. Google your discipline and type in professional body and you should be able to find the body that relates to your studies.
Here are some examples of professional bodies:
- The Chartered Institute for IT: http://www.bcs.org/
- The Chartered Institute of Marketing: http://www.cim.co.uk/
Join a professional body
- It provides an opportunity to network with practising professionals both online and face to face.
- Most professional bodies will offer real-world career advice and opportunities for continuing professional development.
- It offers access many of the same resources that industry professionals use.
- It shows that you are serious about a career in your chosen profession.
- When applying for your dream job it just might give you an edge with potential employers.
Philip Preston, Network Manager,
The Chartered Institute of Marketing
Insight days
Many organisations run insight days, challenges or open days for students to understand more about their organisation and to meet recent graduates who can tell them more about possible career paths and opportunities with the organisation. They are also a great opportunity to ask questions about the application process and what the company are looking for in new recruits.
Attend an insight day
Industry insight days are also a useful way of finding out how an industry or sector currently operates and the range of roles available. Such days give you the opportunity to see how a role that you might be considering is represented in a particular sector, e.g. an HR role in a technology or construction company or an accountancy role in a health setting.
Companies often use recent graduates as ambassadors at insights days so you can find out from someone just a little further on in their career what they studied, how they secured their role and the benefits of working for a particular employer. Such days are also great for networking so pick up as many business cards as you can and make sure that you follow up leads as quickly as possible to request further information or a meeting.
Femi Bola, Director of Employability, University of East London
Challenges with MyKindaFuture
MyKindaFuture offers a one-stop-shop for businesses looking to connect with, train and recruit students across secondary, further and higher education. It specialises in helping students develop employability skills, while supporting employers with their specific recruitment needs across the board – from work experience and apprenticeships through to graduate programmes.
It connects students with businesses through meaningful face-to-face engagement and distinct online challenges which inspire students and help them understand different career routes, sectors and disciplines. The organisation works with over 70 leading businesses across a wide range of sectors.
Emma O’Connor, Senior Marketing and
Communications Manager, MyKindaFuture
Online career-planning resources
Prospects (www.prospects.ac.uk) is the official graduate careers website. It includes a prospects planner, which serves as a resource for students to research and read about prospective careers. The tool helps students recognise their skills and understand how they translate into potential career paths. There is information specifically related to degree disciplines and useful tools to research career options. The prospects planner is an extensive resource to explore career opportunities based on your skills and ambitions.
Other useful websites include:
- Careerplayer: http://www.careerplayer.com/
- Targetjobs: https://targetjobs.co.uk/
- Gradjobs: https://www.gradjobs.co.uk/
Two innovative apps
Debut is a disruptive careers mobile app dedicated to students and graduates. Debut’s mission is to change the way students and graduates learn about, find and secure their ideal careers by using mobile technology. The innovation of the product lies in the fact that it reverses the recruitment flow by bringing employers to the students and bypassing the traditional application process.
Debut is open to students in the UK and abroad and enhances access to careers for students from all different backgrounds by providing direct access to employers. Students can easily create a profile by providing basic information about themselves, their educational background and their careers preferences. These data allow Debut to match students with opportunities such as insight days, internships, graduate programmes and so on.
Through its flagship feature, the Talent Spot, employers are able to directly contact students with personalised opportunities. Talent Spots could contain invitations to events, phone interviews or even fast-track opportunities to be placed straight into the final assessment centre or interview. By using data Debut can help many students bypass the arduous application and psychometric testing phases of the recruitment process.
On Debut students can also play sponsored mobile games to learn more about certain employers and compete to win career-related prizes that include internships.
The Debut app is free to download and is available for both iOS and Android.
Michele Trusolino, COO of Debut
PathMotion transforms an established recruitment practice – conversations between candidates and employees – into a disruptive and cost-effective online solution. It gives candidates a deeper and more effective level of engagement with prospective employers. As many as 96% of candidates would like to talk with employees of their target firms. In the past, candidates were limited to their network or to attending career fairs or events to meet employees. With PathMotion candidates can attend dedicated live chat events or select employees online based on university or current job and ask them questions.
All previous discussions are available online and benefit all candidates and are search engine optimised. This means candidates and employees can exchange at a time and in a location that is convenient for them, making best use of their time while creating useful content for the benefit of other candidates.
Keith Quesenberry confirms in the Harvard Business Review that ‘people are attracted to stories, because we’re social creatures and we relate to other people’.
The role that storytelling can play in responding to candidates’ search for authenticity should come as no surprise. While job seekers can access many facts about a target employer, facts alone are unlikely to be sufficient to answer many burning questions. Candidates’ engagement activity on the platform helps PathMotion understand their interests which it can then use to tailor their experience and use to their benefit.
Jonathon Deakin, Client Director, PathMotion
Career goals: blue-sky thinking
In your ideal world, when you graduate, what position do you see yourself in? Now work backwards to identify actions to achieve that goal. How can you identify what actions you need to take? Use industry profiles of the skills desired by employers in your chosen career, assess yourself against those skills and identify areas for development. Your personal review will also highlight areas for development.
Regardless of your chosen career path, employers will have generic and specific skill sets they require in their candidates. As a result, it is important to understand the criteria against which you will be measured when you graduate. Develop both short- and long-term objectives to ensure your success. Use your own self-assessment, the results of your personal review and employer’s requirements for the role you wish to pursue to develop an action plan. These objectives should be SMART:
| Specific | What do you want to achieve and by when? |
| Measurable | How will you know you have achieved your goal? |
| Achievable | What are the actions or tasks needed to achieve success? |
| Realistic | Is it likely you can achieve this goal in the timeframe specified? |
| Timely | Give yourself a deadline |
Your goals in your first year may focus on researching the options available to you with your degree discipline. There may be careers you have not considered, as many graduate schemes are not discipline-specific and so you may study psychology but find yourself working in an investment bank.
In your first year, one goal may be to explore possible career options, and the actions involved in achieving this goal could be researching information about possible careers via the university careers service or developing your generic employability skills through extracurricular activities.
In your second year you may begin to focus on identifying means to gain an internship, noting the deadlines for applications and identifying possible companies.
When you reach your final year, your focus will be on identifying graduate schemes and companies you wish to apply to, as well as opportunities to meet with these companies at graduate fairs and open days and networking with previous graduates to learn from their experiences.
It is essential that you set yourself goals and tasks as your time at university will pass very quickly. Use the table below to develop a set of goals for your time at university and the actions to achieve them.
Don’t worry if your career goals change. At university you will be exposed to new opportunities and experiences, which will undoubtedly have an impact on you as a person and ultimately your aspirations. This is all part of the development process and will ensure that upon graduation you have a better understanding of YOU.
| Overall career goal | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | Action | Outcome |
| Goal 1 | ||
| Goal 2 | ||
| Goal 3 | ||
| Year 2 | ||
| Goal 1 | ||
| Goal 2 | ||
| Goal 3 | ||
| Year 3 | ||
| Goal 1 | ||
| Goal 2 | ||
| Goal 3 |
- Knowing YOU – your strengths, your weaknesses, your likes and dislikes – is the first step in choosing a career.
- Identify what is important to you – travel, flexibility, money or career progression?
- Research career options by networking with industry professionals or attending employer events, where you can pose your questions to the company directly.
- Join the professional body linked to your chosen career or discipline.
- Network with the alumni of your course to learn from their experiences.
- Use a personal review to learn how you are perceived by others and identify areas for development.
- Explore online resources and apps.
- Create an account on the Prospects website (www.prospects.ac.uk) and use the prospects planner to map your career.
- Develop an action plan for your three years of study to develop the skills required upon graduation.
- Define SMART career goals and the actions needed to achieve them.