Careers: Information for Students

Understanding Yourself

Choosing a future pathway starts with getting to know your strengths, interests and values. Understanding what you enjoy and what you are good at can help you explore careers that might suit you.

Questions to Get You Started

Try asking yourself:

• What am I good at?
• What do I enjoy most at school?
• What are my interests, motivations, and values?
• What kind of lifestyle do I imagine for myself?
• What do I want from my future career?

There are no right or wrong answers, just things that help you understand yourself better.

Skills and Strengths

It can help to make a list of:

• your skills (e.g. teamwork, communication, problem-solving)
• your interests
• your values
• examples of when you have shown these in school, hobbies, or everyday life

You can look and see what skills employers want but, if you are not sure what your skills and strengths are, you can use online tools to help.

Try These Tools

Unifrog personality and skills quizzes: These can help you identify strengths and preferences you may not have noticed.

Skillsometer : This short quiz asks how you feel about different statements and suggests jobs that match your interests. It Is a fun way to get ideas, but do not take the results too literally. They are a starting point, not a final answer.

What to Do Next

The world of work changes quickly, and your ideas will change as you learn more about yourself. These tools can help you start exploring possible futures, but it is important to keep researching, asking questions, and trying new things.

If you want to look deeper into career ideas, these sites can help:

• Prospects: How to Choose a Career
• National Careers Service Explore Careers

This is all about researching the job market and career paths that interest you, and narrowing down your options. Start by considering what your ideal job sector might be and this will help you to discover more potential career paths. Browsing job profiles may introduce you to some less obvious career paths where your skills and qualifications could be useful. 

Careerometer can also be used to explore and compare key information about occupations. It provides access to a selection of UK headline data relating to pay, weekly hours of work and future employment prospects for different occupations, as well as description of the occupation.

Type in the title of the job you are interested in and the widget provides a series of options from which you can select the most relevant to you. You can then look up another occupation and compare. You can also select ‘display the UK average’ and compare the information with the occupation you have selected.

It is important to understand which roles are expanding or declining. You can do this by referring to the Labour Market Information which is available on Unifrog when you look at a job profile. You could also use Start D2N2 to find out which jobs and sectors are currently in high demand both locally and nationally. 

Compile a shortlist of around five to ten jobs, before considering the advantages and disadvantages of each in terms of:

• career development
• employment outlook
• entry requirements
• job description
• related jobs
• salary and conditions
• training

You must also consider which size of employer best fits with your personality and work ethic. Are you more suited to small and medium-sized enterprises, large companies or self-employment?

This is the perfect time to consider work experience, work shadowing, and volunteering opportunities. They will help you to gain an insight into the areas you are interested in before committing yourself to a certain career path.

How to choose a career | Prospects.ac.uk

Now you are ready to start making decisions. Combine what you have learned about yourself with what you have discovered about your options and the jobs market.

From your job ideas list, decide which role interests you the most and select one or two alternatives to fall back on if you are not able to pursue your first choice.

To help make a decision, ask yourself the following questions:

• Will I enjoy doing the job every day?
• Does it meet most of my preferences?
• Do I have the right skills?
• Does the company fit with my values?
• Are there any location/financial/skills limitations I need to take into account?
• Is the job realistic in terms of salary?

If you are struggling to reach a conclusion, there are a number of exercises you can try to aid the decision-making process. Listing the pros and cons of a particular job or career is often useful, as is completing a personal SWOT analysis:

• Strengths - What skills, traits, certifications and connections would you bring to the role that nobody else could? What makes you unique?
• Weaknesses - What areas could you improve on? Do you lack any skills holding you back from excelling in the role you would like to pursue?
• Opportunities - Is your industry growing? Could you take advantage of your competitors' mistakes or gaps in the market?
• Threats - Could your weaknesses slow your progression at work? Is there anything else that may stand in the way of your development, such as changes in technology?

There is plenty of support available to help you decide. Look to:

• company websites
• family and friends
• newspaper articles
• professional bodies and industry conferences
• tutors
• school careers service.

Keep in mind that you will probably be suited to more than one career and today's jobseekers usually change career direction more than once in their working life. The key to being employable is having the ability to adapt and learn new skills.

How to choose a career | Prospects.ac.uk

Your career plan should outline how you will get to where you want to be, what actions are needed and when, and separated into your short, medium and long-term goals. Constantly review your progress, especially after each short-term goal is reached.

You must also establish a back-up career development plan, in case your situation changes. Map several alternative paths to your long-term goal, considering how you will overcome the types of problems you might encounter - such as training requirements - at each step.

Your first short-term goal may involve improving your CV and cover letter. Other short or medium-term targets could include gaining work experience, seeking volunteering experience, or attending careers fairs.

Make an appointment with your school's careers service to ask an adviser to check over your career plan and discuss your career choices, if you feel you need some professional reassurance.

Finally, do not forget that career planning is a continuous process. Revisit and review your aims and objectives throughout your career, and do not feel constrained by the goals you have set - the structure of a career plan should help you clearly map out the route to trying something new.

How to choose a career | Prospects.ac.uk