Careers Compass

Discover how the Careers Compass can support your career planning. Find out more about the different stages you can work through with easy access to related links and our toolkits for deeper exploration.

Move your career planning forward with the Careers Compass

The Careers Compass can help you review what you've done, explore your options, plan next steps and chart progress along the way. It is a career planning tool that you can use now, throughout your studies and as a graduate. 

What is the Careers Compass and how can it help you?

Making effective career decisions is a process, and we have designed the Careers Compass to guide you through this. It has five key elements and you need to work through them all to get the maximum benefit:

  • Understand Yourself
  • Discover What's Out There
  • Build Experience
  • Become Professional
  • Make it Happen

Using the Careers Compass

Each segment is important and you may find you are further along in some areas than others. For example, you may have a good understanding of your skills and strengths (understand yourself) but little knowledge of what’s out there in the labour market (discover what’s out there). This could make it hard to move forward.  

For each segment, you will find a brief introduction, related links and a corresponding toolkit to support your learning. 

Image of Careers Compass


Discover what's out there

Jobs, courses, sectors 

Being curious and exploring different sectors, finding out about different roles, courses, employers and ways of working will help you work out what’s a good fit for you. This will support you in narrowing down the options and making decisions. 

 

Image of Careers Compass Discover what's out there


Become professional

Confident, adaptable, independent 

Becoming professional is a gradual process - it includes being confident about email etiquette, building or extending networks and developing business awareness. Whatever stage you’re at in your career, there are always ways you can develop. 

Image of Careers Compass be professional


Understand yourself

Skills, values, strengths 

Understanding yourself helps you identify what’s important to you, what you enjoy and why. It also helps work out what you are good at and what suits you. You’ll make much better applications as a result and are more likely to find career fulfillment and satisfaction. 

Understand yourself 

Image of Careers Compass Understand Yourself


Build experience

Participate, volunteer, intern 

Building experience can happen in many ways: volunteering, part-time jobs, internships, being a School representative or Ambassador. Experience in an unrelated role, family commitments, employer visits, shadowing, virtual internships….it all counts. 

Image of Careers Compass build experience


Make it happen

Plan, apply, succeed

You need a strategy to maximise your chances of success - this is something you have control over. By bringing together all the work you have done using the Careers Compass, you are in a strong position to submit effective applications, do well in interviews and plan ahead.  

Image of Careers Compass make it happen


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