New Year Career Planning Courses & Uni Ideas

New Year Career Planning Courses & Uni Ideas

So how’s your Christmas and New Year been? Did it live up to expectations, or pan out slightly differently than planned? Who’d have thought in early December that things would be as they have been? Bearing in mind that people’s careers often can take unexpected ‘turns’ too, we thought that a blog on New Year career planning, courses & uni ideas, aimed at planning your future career and education might be timely. As you will know, New Year is often seen as a time to ponder the ‘what if’s?’ and ‘what am I doing?’ type questions. Before we jump into some top tips, it’s worth mentioning that careers nowadays are a lot more ‘squiggly’ than say 10 or 20 years ago. What do we mean by squiggly? Well, there are often more sideways moves into different roles or industries and mixing permanent positions with freelance work. Traditionally, people might have started their career with a company and ‘managed’ their career by going for promotions within the same company or at a competitor. This obviously still happens but there is a growing emphasis on the option of building a career over a lifetime and not being constrained by the ‘starter’ career you move into after finishing full time education. There is a wonderful careers theory called Happenstance, which in a nutshell suggests that people can manage their career by taking advantage of unexpected opportunities that arise – for instance ‘that’ work experience which shows you previously unknown clinical science jobs or conversations with employers visiting your school where you find out about different roles you hadn’t heard of previously. Saying ‘yes’ to unexpected opportunities here is the key!

Tips – 

The obvious place to start is to generate some career ideas! Understanding what your skills are and what motivates you will really help ensure that these ideas are suitable for you. Try not to get too ‘side tracked’ by the salary! Using https://www.myfuturechoice.com/mycareerchoices/ can be a really good way to do this.

A large percentage of students do further studies after they finish 6th form. This can be through full or part time degree. Why not have a look at https://www.myfuturechoice.com/myunichoices/ as a way to see if university studies are for you?

There is an increasing interest in apprenticeships, especially now that degree apprenticeships are becoming more widely available. Why not find out more at https://www.ucas.com/understanding-apprenticeships

One aspect that is often overlooked is understanding what motivates you. You are likely to be working for several decades, so doing something that aligns with your values is really important. Does saving the world from pandemics, working with dolphins, writing code or learning languages get you day dreaming about what you could do?

Having great and aspirational career ideas is what we’d like you to have! Once you have these, breaking down how to get into them, and the actions you need to take will be something to talk through with your careers adviser in school.

Building on the happenstance theory mentioned above, what opportunities could you say yes to? Even if they sound scary and would take you out of your comfort zone – this approach will help build your confidence and CV!

Have a think about whether you’d prefer to work for one employer and have a permanent job with them long term or whether you’d like to build a ‘portfolio’ career where you might mix some freelancing with employed roles. Some industries will be a lot more dominated by freelancing than others, for instance design industries have a higher percentages of freelancers than say solicitors in the legal sector.

You don’t have to achieve all these tips in one go! Which ones would make a good starting point for you? One of the main things to remember is that even if you start your career in one career area, that doesn’t ‘pigeon hole’ you for life! You will be able to take the skills and knowledge gained from, say being an accountant, into a whole host of other careers and directions and we hope you found some inspiration on New Year career planning, courses & uni ideas.

Here at My Uni Choices we specialise in helping students, parents & educators make the best uni choices. Review all the Universities & Courses here or discover more About Us & the best uni courses for you, finally if you’re ready let’s take The Test to find out what course or degree you should do.

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