Developing a careers programme for your students

A model that many careers advisers use to create a careers education programme is DOTS, which was developed by Professor Bill Law. Decision Making, Opportunity Awareness, Transition and Self Awareness are the framework's components and a quality careers education programme would include at least one topic covering each of the 4 categories. The rationale behind DOTS is that by an individual following the process, their career decision is arrived at in a researched, well informed way and is appropriate for their skills and personality. DOTS is usually re-arranged into the following:

1. Self-awareness

   1. Here individuals explore skills, personality, hobbies/interests etc to identify their own characteristics. They also break a job down into its constituent parts and explore what they do/don't want in a job. This provides a "personal careers" framework for the individual to take to the next stage.

   2. Activities could include: a careers questionnaire, a Skills Audit, Job Analysis.

2. Opportunity awareness

   1. The first stage often gives an individual clues as to what job or sector that they need to explore. It also encourages them to look at the family of jobs that link to a specific job as this may open up other options.

   2. Activities could include: researching job families, attending careers fairs, work experience.

3. Decision making

   1. Having become self-aware and aware of the opportunities an individual is now informed and in a position to make a decision. There are a variety of tools that can help with this e.g Compare and Contrast.

   2. Activities could include: Compare and Contrast, SWOT analysis, work experience.

4. Transition

   1. Once a decision has been reached an individual can take the practical steps to make this a reality such as writing a CV, completing an application form, practising interview skills, etc.

   2. Activities could include a CV workshop, mock video interview, application form workshop.

Petroc's Careers Education and Guidance Adviser has lots of experience in delivering a range of workshops/presentations covering each of the DOTS categories and has developed a series of "off the shelf" workshops/presentations, if you would like support with this then please do get in touch careers@petroc.ac.uk.