The following career planning tools can be useful ways of generating career options and take into account some of the following: your strengths, skills, experience, academic studies, preferences.

Both tools can be accessed online for free.

Career planning tool 1

Prospects Planner
Is an online career exploration tool for Higher Education students and graduates. You will be asked a series of questions about your skills, interests and motivations. Prospects planner can help you to:

• Identify what you want out of a job
• Generate and evaluate new job ideas
• Identify what you can offer to the job/employer
• Research your job options in more detail, compare your job options and decide on the right choices for you

Prospects planner cannot cannot make decisions for you and tell you what you should do. It is advisable to discuss your results with a careers adviser who can help you to work through the complex process of choosing a job or career.

Career planning tool 2

Targetjobs Careers Report

Careers Report uses questionnaires and psychometric tests to explore your interests, strengths, personality and abilities and matches you to jobs that would suit you. The questionnaires and psychometric tests take approximately 30 minutes to complete.

• You can download your own personal Careers Report and action plan to take away and review:
• You can use the Career Report to practise psychometric tests and see where you stand against other graduates and students.

Employment

Whether it be a graduate job or entry level role; resources, information and advice are available to help you kick start your job search. If you are considering entering the jobs market then see the Prospects Planner note below, a useful tool to help you to explore the options available to you and help you to generate career ideas.

See the Jobs and work section for a range of places to search for employment opportunities.

Explore types of jobs with Graduate Prospects A-Z list of careers.

Graduate Internships

Graduate internships are an opportunity to work in an organisation from 3 months to a year. They can give you real life work experience, let you try your hand at a possible career, and prove yourself to a potential employer.

Graduate internships

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs)

These are similar to internships because you work with an organisation to gain real life work experience. You tend to work with small to medium size businesses for 10-40 week placements on specific projects.

See Graduate internships for further information on KTPs.

Further Study

Also known as Postgraduate Study, an essential entry requirement for some professions. Some people choose this option to try and enhance their employability, or others because they have a love of their subject and want to study it at a higher level.

Further study

Teacher training

Teacher training section includes further information and advice on routes into teacher training, essential information before you apply also advice on how to prepare applications and interviews for teacher training courses.

Working for yourself

This could involve setting up your own business or working as a freelancer. If this idea appeals to you you can get advice; if you do not yet have an business idea in mind or you have an idea but you do not know what your next steps should be, there are a range of support services to help you make it happen.

Working for yourself

Gap year

This could involve going travelling, gaining some experience via volunteering or in a variety of different jobs.

Further information:

• Work experience and volunteering section for UK and overseas opportunities.
• Work and study abroad