Career Planning
Getting the job you want when you graduate is not as easy as you might think.
Increasing numbers of graduates are now competing for the best jobs and the population is becoming increasingly well qualified. It is not enough now just to get a degree. The best candidates will also have a range of knowledge, skills and experience that give them a head-start.
Career planning is about preparing yourself for entry to these often competitive markets. By spending some time getting to understand the jobs market in your discipline you will give yourself an advantage. It is clearly beneficial to have an idea about where you want to go career-wise and the University College Careers Service can help with this.
If you understand the following you are well on your way to making an effective career plan.
Self Awareness
One of the fundamentals of career planning is getting an understanding of yourself. Quite a lot of people have blind spots when it comes to realistically assessing their skills, interests and abilities.
Do you know what you are good at? Are you an organiser or perhaps you are great at generating ideas. Alternatively you may be good at working with others, a good communicator or have a whole host of other abilities.
Knowing what you are good at (and what you are less good at) is important when it comes to promoting your skills to employers. It will also help you identify the careers that you are most likely to enjoy and flourish in.
Creative Focus - Building Self Confidence
Self Focus
Clearly if you know where you want to go it is easier to get there.
Knowing your options is a good place to start. Use the what can I do with my degree? section to help you with this. You can also contact the Careers Adviser and discuss your options.
Job Search Strategy
Having identified where you are going and gone some way to identifying some of your skills and aptitudes you are ready to put together a job search strategy. This will involve:
Self Promotion
Research by the the Uk’s official graduate careers website prospects shows that 42% of Art and Design graduates work for themselves at some point or another. Recruitment across the creative industries involves raising your visibility and letting people see what you are capable of.
Clearly it will not help you commercially to produce fantastic works if the right people are not seeing it.
Creating a profile of what you’ve done and what you want to do is essential. This makes things clear for the person you want to work for and helps in preparing a pitch.
Exploring and creating opportunities
With over 70% of jobs not advertised, a figure that may rise to 80% for the creative sector, gettting to know and understand the area you want to work in is very important, not to mention meeting people who might be in a position to either offer you work or recommend you to someone else.
For more information click on Networking
You will inevitably need to make applications for jobs - see CV's and Applications
What employers want
Although employers all differ in what they are looking for there is much common ground. To read more: What employers want
There is no subsitute for talking to people in the industry. Asking them for hints and tips is a good start.
Action Planning
Not everyone likes to make plans. However, when planning a career, it can be important to do so. Indeed many graduate careers will require you to make a plan. The plan will involve a series of steps to help you get to your goal.
This may sound daunting when all listed together.
A good action plan will break down the task into easily manageable chunks. The acronym SMART describes some of the features of an effective action plan.
S – Specific (It gets to the point and is easy to understand)
M – Measurable (You know whether you have done it or not)
A – Achievable (It is not so difficult or onerous that it puts you off)
R – Realistic (you are not expecting a career in Nuclear physics to emerge from your Fine art degree)
T – Time Bound (The objective will be completed by a certain point).
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