Career management platforms
Career management platforms are online platforms that support users to track and manage their career development and/or build their employability.
Developing learners' essential skills supports learners to develop their employability, which is part of (and does not equate to) a learner's careers education.
Using the Skills Builder approach to develop skills through your career management platform
Amongst other things, some career management platforms have provided a space for users to track and gather evidence of their essential skill development. Skill development is part of a picture that builds an individual's wider employability.
On the platform, an individual can:
Identify the essential skills needed for success in their careers (the skills increasingly recruited for by employers), as well as in education and their wider lives.
See how the skills are used in different careers
Understand what progress in each skill looks like
Identify their strengths and weaknesses in the skills, by reflecting and self-assessing against the Universal Framework
Track experiences through which they are applying their skills
Reflect on and track their skill development through different experiences
Understand how they can practise their skills to further reinforce skills they've applied, and/or to start working on a higher skill level.
In this case, the Universal Framework supports more targeted and accurate reflections, and individuals are supported to be more specific in the way they document their skills.
The evidence bank users create can be used to support them to put together a CV and/or prepare for an interview. In a school/college setting, the evidence bank is also a way for teachers to show how they meet the Gatsby Benchmarks.
Achieving an impact level for a career management platform
It is possible for a career management platform to achieve impact level 4. Below you will find actions to help you work towards achieving impact levels 1-4.
You can read more about the impact levels and the directory here.
Include an introduction to the essential skills, their definitions and the Universal Framework
Include information about why the skills are important to build; the links between essential skills and positive outcomes, e.g. research shows that essential skills are correlated with life outcomes, from increased wellbeing and higher earnings to a lower probability of being out of work or education.
Recommended:
You may want to link the skills to Labour Market Information/other careers content (e.g. why the skills are important in different jobs/sectors), for contextualisation.
Follow the guidance to achieve impact level 1, plus:
Ask (reflective) questions to support users to reflect on their strengths and development areas in relation to the Universal Framework.
Gather and store the stage/step level at which users are working, and make this visible to users (to encourage users to revisit the data and use it formatively).
Recommended:
Support users to document specific examples of when they've applied their skills. Some platforms encourage users to add activities, and tag the activities with a skill they've applied..
Follow the guidance to achieve impact level 1 and 2, plus:
Support users to practise their skills by:
Signposting resources to help them to do this, e.g. specific pages of the Universal Framework (and the advice on each step page on how to 'practise' it) and/or specific Launchpad modules (see here for info on signposting in a targeted way).
Including learning resources on the platform that make explicit which skill steps a user would be applying through each activity.
If there's any programme/project work that users do in parallel to their use of the platform, provide guidance to the facilitators of the programme/project to promote structured skill development support (see here for how a facilitator might support a learner to practise their skills).
Follow the guidance to achieve impact levels 1, 2, and 3, plus:
Provide a skills evaluation/ assessment at the start and end of the programme, so you can quantify if progress has been made. You may want to include more regular reviews.
We'd need to see evidence that you are tracking progress in at least 1 of the skills.
Supporting Resources
For a refresher on all the tools/resources mentioned below, see here.
Introduce the Universal Framework to users. It’s important that users take time to get to know what the essential skills are, their definitions, and what 'good' looks like for each skill.
Use the skill steps of the Universal Framework to provide structure to users' reflections.
Embed the reflection questions in the 'Build It' section of each skill step to scaffold individuals' reflections.
Signpost Benchmark for users to complete self assessments and build a picture of their strengths and areas for development.
Signpost Launchpad for users to learn more about and practise their essential skills.
Signpost the Hub to any facilitator users of the platform (where they can find teaching resources, and a group-level assessment tool).
You may want to add resources such as the reflective log or skills based CV Guide to the pltform for users to complete.
Scaffold users' reflections/assessments further by breaking down the skill steps, incorporating the expanded framework.
Use our videos to introduce to users the skills and/or specific steps they will be reflecting on and/or practising.
Drop these picture files of the eight essential skill icons onto the platform to support users to make a visual connection to the skills they may be developing in other areas.
