Getting started

There are two factors that can help:

Self-awareness

Knowing your strengths, what gives you satisfaction and what values are important to you is key. Improve this by:

• Experience: any activity can improve your self-awareness such as volunteering, part-time work and involvement in co-curricular or community activities
• Reflection: an important way to dig deeper into what you have learnt.

Carve out some time to try the following:

• Prioritising what is important to you using the Values Grid (PDF) or answering these key questions - What am I like (PDF)
• Completing a simple skills audit
• Participating in The Gold Award which requires you to complete a reflective log

Job knowledge

Most of us probably know 5% of the jobs that exist.

• Find out more about jobs from attending our employer events, from industry panels to careers fairs
• Do some online browsing of job profiles, prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles is a great place to start.
• If you are over-whelmed, you can complete this planning tool, Prospects Career Planner, to get suggestions of job profiles that match your skills and interests.  Treat this as a starting point. Or start with your degree title to get related job suggestions

Key Advice

• You can book an appointment with a careers consultant to discuss any of the above. It’s a great way to get advice on a practical next step
• Take every opportunity to develop – you don’t know where it might lead!
• Find out more about volunteering
• Get inspiration for action by looking at the activity list for the HEAR

What’s stopping you?

Here are some common reasons

• Expecting a perfect match (almost impossible to find)
• The (mis)perception that everyone else around you knows what they are doing
• Fear of the future
• The whole thing seems overwhelming
• You just want to enjoy university

All these reasons are valid – the solution is to take one small active step and then to keep going.