Making a Career Choice
It is never too early to start planning your career. We recommend you start this process from day one of your studies. The key element is deciding what you want to do with your degree and putting together a plan to ensure this happens. It is worth also checking out our advice on Career Planning.
What are your options?
- Choose a career directly related to your degree i.e .one where the subject knowledge is sought by the employer
- Choose a career where the employer is less interested in your degree subject but more in your graduate status and the associated skills you have developed
There are several factors that you should consider when thinking about possible careers. These may include your skills, interests and personal values and your degree:
Your Skills
Think about what type of activities you are good at and, perhaps more importantly, enjoy. This will lead you to consider the types of skills you wish to exploit in your future career.
Your Interests and Values
This will help you think about the type of environment you wish to work in i.e. the industry sector, type of organization and even geographical location. Whatmotivates you to go to work? What really inspires you? These factors can indicate the types of jobs and employment sectors you might enjoy working in.
Career Theory
According to Holland’s Theory (1997) personalities and occupational environments can be classified into six different categories (Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Artistic (A), Social (S), Enterprising (E), and Conventional (C)) thus, individuals search for an environment in which to express their interest, abilities and values.
- Realistic: Those that have a realistic personality type are suited to manufacturing type jobs, which involve working with tools, mechanical or electrical drawings and machines.
- Investigative: Investigative personality types enjoy problem solving, analysing things and working independently. Some roles which require investigative personalities are Maths, Science and Engineering
- Artistic: Artistic people are generally creative and can take original ideas and use their imagination to come up with innovations and expressions.
- Social: Individuals with social type personalities, tend to be extroverts and enjoy working with a wide range of people and in careers that help people, encourage them and build relationships.
- Enterprising: Those that have an enterprising personality tend to have leadership skills and are good at public speaking for example, managers, team leaders and Directors.
- Conventional: The conventional types enjoy working with numbers and words and are likely to be methodical and highly organised.
Prospects website has a very useful section on where do you want to work which will tell you more about different employment sectors.
Your degree
Some of the questions to think about are why did you pick the specific course you are studying? It would be useful to think of the following points:
- What do you enjoy about your current degree, which specific modules?
- Which parts of the degree do you least enjoy?
- Pick out the modules and conduct further research into careers related to those modules
- What are your strengths for example, researching, writing, critical analysis or presentations
- Complete a skills audit to find out about your strengths and areas of development
Having gained initial insights into our preferred areas of employment the next step is research. You will need to research in detail the occupations and sectors you have identified through your analysis. Again, Prospects, is a good source of this. There are detailed articles on most graduate level careers, industry insights as well as articles on typical careers with degree subjects.
Career Choice – the process
When making career choices, it would also be useful to think of the following four stages below.
Computer Aided Guidance
There are a number of career matching software programmes you may find useful to access. These will give you an insight into particular careers suited to our skills, interests and academic specialisms.
- Prospects Planner: this has been designed by, and is available free through, Prospects, the UK’s premier graduate careers website. Like the programmes listed below it assesses your skills and interests and provides you with a list of careers most appropriate to these.
- Adult Directions: this has been designed by an organization known as Cascaid who are specialists in such programmes. It has not been designed specifically for a graduate audience but you can select “graduate only” career options at the start of the matching assessment. Adult Directions can also be accessed through the UEL site here
You may find it useful, either before or after going through the above stages, to book a consultation with a Careers Consultant who will help you identify the career best suited to you. Contact us through our usual channels.
Click here for more information on what’s on offer from our Careers Service.
