Career planning
There are many career options available to you. Whether you have a career in mind or are just starting to explore your options, your Student Futures team are here to support you.
Spending time during your studies to research your options and test out ideas can help you to navigate your future career decisions.
How well do you know yourself?
Understanding yourself is an important part of career development and can be helpful when making career decisions or speaking to employers.
Skills and Strengths
Knowing your skills and strengths can help you to identify what you are good at and what you have to offer. These resources will help you start to identify your skills and strengths:
- The QAA Subject Benchmark Statements provide information on the knowledge and skills generally expected of graduates. Discover the Subject Benchmark Statement for your subject area.
- Identify your strengths by taking our strengths assessment
Personality
Reflecting on your personality can you help you when exploring all the opportunities available to you.
- Find out about your personality style by taking the personality insight assessment
- Identify your personality preferences by completing the temperament assessment
Values and Motivation
Knowing your values and motivation can help you understand what you want from life and work.
- Find out what drives you by taking the Motivation at Work assessment
What can I do with my degree?
Many employers don't require a specific degree, but if you want to get ideas of where your degree could take you, the following resources may be a helpful starting point.
- Discover options related to your degree: What can I do with my degree?
- Learn about the destinations of graduates from your undergraduate degree by searching for your programme at Discover Uni.
Researching roles, employers and sectors
Researching career options can help you generate new ideas and support your career planning and decision making. Many graduate careers do not require a specific degree subject, but some might require further study in the form of a master's degree, a professional qualification or training. Learning about sectors, roles and employers can help develop your career ideas.
Job sectors
You might be interested to learn more about the different sectors or already have one in mind that you would like to work within. It can be important to stay up to date with sector trends and changes and you can apply this knowledge to your career planning.
Job roles
Do you want to explore a role in more detail or are looking for inspiration? Prospects and Target Jobs provide individual role profiles with a breakdown of salary, responsibilities, key skills and qualifications and typical employers.
- Explore what jobs might suit you by taking the Prospects Career Planner quiz
- Explore job profiles on Prospects
- Explore job descriptions on Target Jobs
Attending career and employer events
Attending careers fairs, employer events and presentations can help with researching organisations and opportunities.
- Find out more about career and employer pop-ups, presentations and events on myFuture.
Grow your network
Networking is an important skill to learn. Talking to professionals can help you to explore occupations and employment sectors.
Informational interviews
An informational interview is a conversation with a professional where you might speak with them about their job, organisation or career. They can be a valuable tool to help you get realistic, up-to-date information on a career, build your network and help you to make informed decisions.
Find out how you can make the most of an informational interview.
LinkedIn can be a tool to search for jobs and keep up to date with what's happening in industry. It can also be a source of potential contacts and works well as a research tool to help you identify and reach each out to alumni or other professionals working in areas of interest to you.
Graduate Outcomes Survey
Anyone graduating from a UK Higher Education Institution will be invited to take part in the Graduate Outcomes survey around 15 months after completing their course. The survey aims to help current and future students gain an insight into career destinations and development.
Find out more about the Graduate Outcomes Survey