Choosing your career
Whatever stage you are at, choosing a career direction can be daunting. But like with any other challenging project, doing careful research, putting together a plan and setting yourself some realistic goals will put you in the best position to succeed. The steps below provide a helpful process to follow and signpost you to some really useful resources to support your career planning.
Get to know yourself
Start increasing your self-awareness to help you decide what kind of job or career might be right for you.
- Ask yourself: What skills do I have? What do I enjoy doing? What are my preferences and values?
- Talk to friends, family, tutors, peers, employers, colleagues or a member of the Careers Network team to help identify your strengths.
- Use the Personal Best skills programme and complete the 'Skills Profile'.
- Seek out online tools to make this easier. Start with Career Planner by Prospects or Discover your skills and careers (DYSAC) from the National Careers Service.
Explore different careers
Once you have identified the skills, interests and preferences that might influence your career choice, start exploring what careers are out there and find out more about them.
- Explore careers related to your degree, and the graduate destinations of previous º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ students.
- Research broad career areas to generate ideas and discover jobs you may have never heard of or.
- Investigate your ideas further using the detailed, easy to read job profiles from Prospects, providing up-to-date info and all the further links you need.
- Gain indepth knowledge using labour market information, such as Luminate, Future of Skills and Graduate Labour Market Statistics.
- Review vacancies and opportunities that are currently available on Target Connect or linked to via Get Placements, Internships and Graduate Roles.
Make some decisions
If you have managed to follow the steps above, you will now have lots of information to use to identify some possible career paths for you. You might have narrowed down the career sectors that interest you the most, and even chosen specific roles that you would like to apply for. But if not, don't worry.
- If you would like to discuss your options, or you still have no idea what to do for a career (and that's ok), book an appointment with a member of the Careers Network team.
- Try the Prospects article How to choose a career.
- Talk through your ideas with others and begin networking to build some connections in the professions or companies you are interested in.
- If you think you might prefer to set up your own business and work for yourself in the future, access the help available from the º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ Enterprise Network.
Take action
Once you have made some decisions about your next steps you will need to set some goals to put them into action.
- To find out about companies you can work for, and available job vacancies, visit Get Internships, Placements and Graduate Roles for links to the best websites for students and graduates.
- To search for vacancies advertised through Careers Network, log in to Target Connect.
- Once you have a plan, visit Make Applications for how to make an impression in CVs, applications and interview processes. Make one of your goals to complete our interactive online course Excel in Employer Selection Processes available on Learn CA007.
- If you have opted to carry on studying, check out our Postgraduate Study advice.
- To find out more about goal setting visit Personal Best.