Are you wondering what type of job or placement you want to do? If you have no idea where to start and feel overwhelmed – don’t worry! There’s lots of you in the same boat. And it can be easily be broken down into manageable chunks.
Career planning for students and recent graduates
Career planning is a process which involves thinking about
- Where you are now
- Where you want to be
- How you will get there
The 3 steps to help you get the job that is right for you
1. Self Awareness
This is understanding yourself and what you are looking for in a career. There are lots of great online tools you can use to help you become more aware of your strengths, skills, interests, values and personality.
- Prospects Career Planner is a job exploration tool for students and graduates. It can help you find out what motivates you and identify your skills and desires. It then matches these to related occupations
- Personality Assessment Your answers to this questionnaire results in a report which will highlight your personality type, strengths and weaknesses. It helps to enhance your understanding of yourself, your motivations and strengths
- Careers Assessments on personality, workplace culture, strengths, motivations, learning style and temperament are all available on Surrey Pathfinder
- If you would like to talk through the results of these assessments you can book a guidance interview with a careers adviser who can help you to understand how to use your results.
2. Research Opportunities
If you have found out some ideas of jobs the next step is to investigate what these careers involve. There are some really good resources available to help you.
- Subject specific resources Find out about career routes for your subject area. This leaflet series is a comprehensive database of useful careers resources for Surrey students and graduates
- Prospects –what can I do with my degree? has career options for most degree subjects
- Target Jobs – career sectors includes hints and tips about how to get a graduate job in specific sectors
- National Careers Service – job profiles has a database of over 800 job profiles including those not traditionally considered to be graduate level careers
- What do graduates do? Find out what UK graduates with your degree subject do after leaving university in this 2018/19 report. There is also a short video which summarises the findings
3. Take Action
The only way to know if you would like a job for certain is to give it a try. There are various ways to do this including: a professional training year, a summer internship, a part-time position, voluntary work, work-shadowing or taster or company insight days.
- These opportunities are all advertised on Surrey Pathfinder
- You can also look at the jobs sites on our Advertised Vacancies leaflet
- The hidden job market leaflet gives advice on how to approach employers
Start networking to find out about opportunities that interest you
- You can use LinkedIn to research what graduates with your degree are doing now. You could also link up with Surrey graduates who are working in fields or companies that interest you.
- Go to company insight days and network with the people you meet there. Ask people you meet if you can have their business cards and follow up your conversation with an email.
Further Resources
