Career Success Guide
Career planning
The information in this leaflet is designed to get you started. It gives some ideas on strategy and tactics, lists some of the resources available and provides suggestions on what to do next.
How do people make career decisions?
For some it is a matter of making the most of opportunities that happen to come along. For others it is the end product of a lengthy process which includes building a detailed personal profile, conducting in-depth research into jobs and carrying out an effective matching exercise. The second approach gives you far greater control over your destiny and provides an excellent platform when applying for jobs and attending interviews.
What’s the connection between skills and career planning?
Employers demand a great deal from graduates and place major emphasis on skills. In order to make a good career decision you need to make the connection between the skills you have, the skills you want to develop and the skills needed in your chosen career. Employers will ask you to provide examples of how you’ve used certain skills as evidence of your employability.
A career planning model to get you started
The next sections refer to a four-stage model:
Section 1 Helps you to build a profile of yourself - your skills, motivation and personality
Section 2 Focuses on ways of gathering information about possible options - jobs, further study, etc.
Section 3 Looks at how to match yourself to opportunities and begin to make decisions Section 4 Examines ways of finding opportunities and making effective applications.
Section 1 - About you
Past experience
Consider what you have liked or disliked about your experience in work, education or leisure activities. Can you see any potential links when considering your future career path?
Interests and values
Can you describe your personal and professional interests? What would really matter in your working life? Is status important to you? Are you interested in making a contribution to your local community or society in general? What type of working environment would you like to be involved in? What are you motivated to achieve?
Abilities and aptitudes
Abilities and aptitudes are often defined by the activities that come naturally to you. Do you have something that you’ve always been naturally good at doing? Try listing them and thinking about how they might connect to career options.
Personality or personal style
Your personality or personal style may be reflected in the way you approach tasks. Do you look at the ‘bigger picture’ or concentrate on detail? Are you driven by personal values or logic?
Skills and qualities
Employers expect a great deal from graduates. In addition to qualifications they want you to have a broad range of skills and personal qualities. These will differ according to the job but the following are often in demand:
Team working / Verbal and written communicationProblem solving / Planning and organisation
Flexibility / Time management
Initiative / Interpersonal skills
Your skills profile will match some jobs better than others. When applying for jobs you will be required to write and talk about your skills profile. This means developing evidence, drawing on examples from your employment, education, voluntary and leisure activities.
Interest and personality guides
You might also like to use the following online questionnaires:
v Prospects Career Planner: http://www.prospects.ac.uk/myprospects_planner_login.htm – a guidance tool for evaluating your interests and skills in order to generate a list of suggested careers for further consideration.
v Target Jobs Careers Report: https://targetjobs.co.uk/careers-report – uses questionnaires and psychometric tests to explore your interests, strengths, personality and abilities and matches you to jobs that would suit you.
Section 2 Research occupations
Once you’ve built a personal profile and identified the factors which are most important to you in a career, the next stage is to find out what’s available and develop an in- depth knowledge of occupations using a range of methods.
Researching occupations is an important part of:
· Making decisions about the career you want
How do you know you want a career, or if it plays to your strengths, if you do not know what it involves?
· Planning your continued learning
Will you need postgraduate and/or professional qualifications to progress in a career and, if so, what experience will you need in order to take them?
· Applying for jobs
Research will tell you where vacancies are advertised, which organisations to target and the knowledge and skills required for that career.
What do you need to know?
The items listed below will help you to target your research and may well raise some issues that you had not considered when making your career choice:
· The questions you could answer, to give you a clear picture of an occupation, are:
· What does the occupation involve?
· What skills, knowledge, experience, qualifications and personal qualities does it require?
· What further training and development will be necessary?
· How do people progress in the occupation?
· What type of organisations recruit people in this occupation (e.g. public or private sector? Size of organisation?)
· Where are these organisations located?
· What lifestyle will this occupation give me? (i.e. hours, financial reward, stability)
· What organisations recruit staff in this occupation?
· Where are vacancies advertised?
· What do recruiters want from candidates?
How do you get started?
You can start exploring careers using the following resources available on www.prospects.ac.uk:
· Job sectors provide a good introduction to a wide range of sectors such as Accountancy, Education, Health and Information Technology. They include information on types of jobs, entry routes, training, professional qualifications, typical employers and overseas opportunities.
· Under the ‘Jobs and work experience’ heading you will also find information about different types of jobs. The job profiles are listed alphabetically and by sector.
· The job profiles provide information on most graduate careers and include information about entry routes, training, potential employers and salary data.
Graduate careers websites
The following websites contain information about graduate careers and graduate job search.
· www.prospects.ac.uk is the UK’s official graduate careers website;
· www.careerplayer.com graduate jobs and career advice on video;
· www.icould.com view real life career videos;
· www.targetjobs.co.uk check out their section on employer insights;
· www.insidecareers.co.uk;
· www.fish4.co.uk/graduate/;
· www.totaljobs.com/graduate;
· www.grb.uk.com The Graduate Recruitment Bureau.
Take a look at our bookmarking site Diigo - https://www.diigo.com/user/Dmugateway and browse through the site resources, using the relevant tags and tag bundles to narrow your search.
Other sources of occupational information
Professional bodies
Professional bodies such as the Royal Institute of British Architects or the Royal College of Midwives produce a range of information on careers within their profession, particularly on training and development issues. Whilst you may have to become a member to regularly receive their journal or vacancy bulletin, a great deal of information is available free of charge and usually posted on their websites.
Careers fairs and events
Careers events are a good opportunity to meet employers, find out what they are looking for and start building up your own network of contacts. Regularly check our pages: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/dmu-students/employability-and-careers/ upcoming-events.aspx to see what events are planned.
Employers and occupations
In addition to finding out about occupations you need to explore which employers or employment sectors offer jobs in your target career field. Many careers such as information technology, accountancy and marketing will have opportunities in a wide range of organisations in the public and private sector.
To find out about the occupations offered under structured graduate training schemes check the graduate careers websites listed above.
Take a look at local and national newspapers; for example jobs appear in the Leicester Mercury every Wednesday and can also be viewed online at www.leicestermercury.co.uk
Networking
There is great merit in talking to people who are working in the career field you are considering. If you don’t have a contact it may be worth seeking advice from the relevant professional body.
Attend career fairs and events to meet and talk with employers. Check for upcoming events here: https://mygateway.dmu.ac.uk/students/events/search.
Alternatively, use www.yell.com to research and contact local professionals by phone or email to find out about different careers and to ask them about potential work experience. Also use social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter) to broaden your employer contacts and to keep up to date with sector news and developments.
Work experience
Relevant work experience is invaluable for a number of reasons. It provides you with the opportunity to test your understanding of the job and also, if you decide to pursue your interest, the experience can be highlighted on your CV to demonstrate your motivation and commitment. If you can’t get a part-time or vacation job you could enquire about the possibility of work shadowing. Taking the initiative and thinking creatively is essential.
Work placements
A placement is a period of time spent working for an external employer as part of your studies. Many courses at DMU offer the opportunity of a sandwich year placement or shorter placement, fully supported by the university. A placement is the perfect way of discovering how your studies relate to the real world and may lead to you securing your first graduate job even before you graduate. Each of our faculties has a dedicated Work Based Learning Unit to help you source, apply for and carrying out your placement as part of your studies.
Mandatory placements
If you’re studying a programme in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences (HLS), it is likely you will have placements embedded throughout your studies as part of your professional qualification. The Work Based Learning Unit in HLS will provide you with information, advice and support about placements and your employability from your first week onwards.
Internships
The schemes listed below provide an opportunity to gain relevant experience and skills by working for local or regional employers and may lead to permanent employment. Many of the placement opportunities are likely to be with Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
· DMU Frontrunners: www.dmu.ac.uk/frontrunners
This is our popular and highly successful internship scheme where students work on paid projects at the university, supervised by academic or professional services staff. Students work between 8–12 hours a week over a period of months, fitting this around their study timetable.
· DMU Graduate Champions: www.dmu.ac.uk/graduatechampions
This scheme supports recent graduates in securing graduate-level employment by providing high quality short internships within and outside DMU.
· Step Enterprise: www.step.org.uk
Offer placement and recruitment programmes for students and graduates.
· Knowledge Transfer Partnerships: www.ktponline.org.uk
Offer graduates 12 to 36 month placement opportunities across the UK generally in business, technology or design.
· Graduate Talent Pool: http://graduatetalentpool.direct.gov.uk/
Placements or internships last from a month to 7-12 months. Search by career and region.
· Inspiring Interns: www.inspiringinterns.com/
· Enternships: https://enternships.com/
Voluntary experience
Voluntary work is particularly relevant if you are considering public sector roles such as social work or careers in voluntary organisations. The latter may include opportunities in fundraising, marketing/promotions work, database development, directly helping people in need, or contributing to a particular cause such as environmental/conservation work.
DMU has a dedicated office, DSU Volunteering, which advertises a variety of volunteering opportunities for students. More than 2,000 students get involved with DSU Volunteering every year. Register online here: https://www.demontfortstudents.com/getinvolved/volunteering/.
DMU Square Mile is another way students can make a positive impact by volunteering within the local community whilst gaining vital skills. This award-winning initiative utilises a network of student volunteers and academic experts to co-ordinate and run projects that make a positive impact on the local community in Leicester. Find out more here: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/dmu-square-mile/dmu-square-mile.aspx.
Macmillan Volunteering is a unique, award-winning partnership with DMU, which offers students the opportunity to volunteer on a range of initiatives supported by Macmillan Support. These include opportunities in palliative care, marketing and promotions and finance. Participating students also have the opportunity to be accredited for their volunteering by undertaking the Volunteering Module. Further details are available here: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/dmu-students/employability-and- careers/volunteering.aspx.
Working on any of these innovative volunteering projects would give you unique opportunities to put the skills you have learnt on your degree course into practice, and strengthen your CV while honing the skills employers look for.
You could also try approaching your local volunteer bureau such as Voluntary Action LeicesterShire on Newarke Street in Leicester - they have lots of opportunities in a number of areas. Visit www.valonline.org.uk. If you wish to find voluntary work elsewhere in the UK try the following links to find your nearest local volunteer centre:
· England: www.volunteering.org.uk
· Scotland: www.projectscotland.co.uk
· Wales: www.volunteering-wales.net
Voluntary involvement will not only help you to develop relevant skills but can also build personal confidence, allow you to network with like-minded people and may give you insights into the demands of related job areas.
Global Experience
#DMUglobal is a unique international experience programme for De Montfort University students which aims to enrich your studies and expand your cultural horizons – helping you become global graduates, equipped to meet the needs of employers across the world.
Through #DMUglobal, the university offers a wide range of opportunities including on- campus and UK activities, overseas study, internships, faculty-led field trips and volunteering, as well as Erasmus+ and international exchanges. Find out more here: https://www.dmuglobal.com/.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) is a popular choice for people wanting to work abroad - a TEFL qualification is not essential, but it is useful if you want to arrange a job before you leave the UK rather than approaching language schools on your arrival. Check out www.tefl.net for suitable courses.
There are numerous opportunities advertised for overseas voluntary work and expeditions to many developing and third-world countries. Assignments can include projects relating to the environment, conservation, social welfare, development, education and teaching - to name but a few! You will almost always need to pay a fee and/or your travel and living costs for these projects, so it’s important to research these voluntary opportunities carefully.