Exploring careers

In order to browse careers and get a better understanding of which is your ideal fit, there is a series of resources you could use:

Suggested activities

• Good from Grade 9 onwards:

Activity 1: Interests, strengths and skills 

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* Identifying interests, strengths and skills.

* Gathering your experiences (and using the Strategy Advisor on Bridge-U).

​Watch the following video and follow the instructions provided: 

After watching this video, you will have created three mind maps for your interests, strengths, and skills (using the following guidelines):

1. My Interests: What do you like doing? Think about your hobbies and subjects you like at school. Music? Sports? Tech? Reading?

2. My Strengths: What is your personality like? Are you calm or high energy? Creative? Practical?

3. My Skills: What are you good at? Teamwork? Leadership? What have you spent time learning? Languages? Computer skills? For this, please open the following document and carry out the suggested activities:

Activity 2: Profiling activities on Unifrog

​Unifrog offers effective profiling activities to help you reveal your interests, work environment profile, unique personality type and distinctive skills. To access these, please click on the button below:

• Good from Grade 10 onwards:

Activity 3: Profiling activities, psychometric assessments and pathways exploration on Unifrog

​Unifrog offers effective profiling activities to help you reveal your interests, work environment profile, unique personality type and distinctive skills (followed by three psychometric assessments) and a wide range of tools to explore future pathways. To access these, please click on the button below:

Activity 4: UCAS Personality Quiz, Careers Browsing and Subject Tasters

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Discover your ideal job using this tool provided by UCAS. Although UK based, it will give an interesting insight into different career options, hard and soft skills you will require and some interesting statistics.

Activity 5: College Board's Career Quiz and Careers Exploration

Discover your ideal career using this tool provided by College Board. Although USA based, it will give an interesting insight into different career options, hard and soft skills you will require and some interesting statistics.

Activity 6: Career Exploration

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Learning Outcomes:

You will understand how to relate interests, strengths and skills to career options.

Thinking about careers:

Source: https://bridge-u.com/ (accessed on 22 April 2020)

Tasks:

1) ​Log in to Unifrog and click on ‘Careers library’.

2) Explore some of the Career families that are relevant to you. Use some of the tools offered by Unifrog (profiling activities and psychometric assessments) to help begin finding the right career family for you.

4) Reflect on your exploration of the careers families, are you noticing similar themes from your previous research? Are there any careers that jump out to you more than others? Do you have a visceral reaction to any of the careers? If so - unpack this. What is making you feel so strongly?

5) Now, mark ‘interested’ for any careers you want to research further. Try to add around 3 different possible careers that interest you, based on the results by assessing your own skills. Further, make sure that you also signal which related degree subjects that you should study in order to access your potential career pathways.

​6) Complete the graph below:

7) Complete the course report tables (including Super-curricular and Extra-curricular activities):

Activity 7: Academic exploration

You can also use the resources provided by the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford:

Activity 8: Subject choices, transitions and future pathways

Check the intranet section related to subject choices, transitions and future pathways. This section also includes information related to life beyond VIS (guidelines to subject choices and where each subject can take you). To access this section, click on the button below:

Activity 9: Further exploration

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If you are still undecided, wish to continue exploring or you are considering two or three different options, then you can do the following things:

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* Take different online enrichment programs (MOOCs and online workshops) in different fields you might be interested in to check which of the different programmes you might be more interested in. 

* Check different organisations that offer lectures and seminars. You can find some by clicking on the button below:

* Do some external reading: journals, articles, books, etc. You can find some recommendations by clicking on the button below:

* Carry out some professional experience and internships. You can find some options by clicking on the button below:

* Take pre-university courses and summer programmes. You can find some options by clicking on the button below:

* Keep an eye on webinars, events, notices, and university visits. You can find a link to some of these by clicking on the following button:

Some other interesting resources: