Create a career plan
Your career plan will help you organise your career ideas, and keep you on track to achieve your goals. Follow our guidance to find out what career is right for you, and clarify your aims and objectives.
You can create a career plan in 4 easy steps:
1. THINKING ABOUT YOU
2. RESEARCHING OPTIONS
3. MAKING PLANS
4. TAKING ACTION
1. Thinking about you
The first step of a career plan allows you to reflect on you and the qualities and attributes you possess currently. By thinking about this, it will provide you with a clearer picture of your capabilities, preferences and talents and what kind of careers might align with them.
Identify your skills
Understanding the skills you have will help when you start looking at job roles. You can check if your skills match the job requirements and identify skills that you would like to develop.
We have a full guide on identifying your skills as you'll need to be able to outline and demonstrate your skills in applications and during an interview. You can also use our skills audit PDF document to help you do this.
Thinking about the skills you have to offer involves looking at all aspects of your life, including:
- your academic studies (modules, projects, group working)
- your work history (work experience, work shadowing, paid and unpaid employment and voluntary work)
- your social life (membership of teams, societies or activities in your community)
Explore your career interests
To explore your career interests you can use the Career Interests Inventory to identify how your skills and abilities align with what you are interested in. . This will give you an idea, not only of careers that you are suited to from a skills perspective, but also careers that you will find enjoyable and fulfilling as they align with what engages and excites you.
Register online with your University of Portsmouth email address to access Team Focus and scroll down to the Career Interests Inventory. After you have completed the inventory a report of your results will be emailed to you. Make a note of the career themes identified in your report as well as the job titles you discovered when you looked at 'what jobs might suit you'. You can always explore these job titles in much greater detail by using the job profiles on the Prospects website.
Understand your values
Values guide the way we live and work. Living according to our values makes life more satisfying and not living according to our values feels wrong and makes us feel less energised and connected. When you are clear about your values, making career related decisions becomes easier, however, most people find it hard to articulate their values – or at least to identify those that are really important and fundamental.
The purpose of the Values Based Indicator of Motivation is to help you discover your underlying values and to understand more about what drives you to commit time and energy to the things you value. As above, you can access Team Focus to complete the Values Based Indicator of Motivation, and you will be emailed a copy of your results.
2. Researching options
Now you have reflected on you and your attributes, the next step is to start researching potential career options. The steps below will help you to explore opportunities of interest and generate ideas for different career paths.
A good place to begin to find out what kind of jobs would suit you is by using an online questionnaire that takes you through the process; Prospects offers a job match questionnaire that helps you generate ideas and explore your interests. The questions are also designed to identify your skills and find out what motivates you in a job.Try to be positive with your answers and avoid choosing "don't mind" too often, and make a note of any questions you think are important to you; doing this will help you identify what you want from a career.
The quiz then matches your skills and motivations to graduate-level occupations and helps you research jobs in more detail. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Which ones interest you and why?
- Are there any you wouldn't consider?
- Why not?
Seeing what your peers or those who graduated before you are doing can really help you out. You can find out what other graduates have done after their course using:
- University of Portsmouth LinkedIn - The alumni tool on LinkedIn allows you to search previous UoP graduates and see what roles they have gone into, the organisations they work for and their career trajectories. You will need a LinkedIn account to access this feature.
- Prospect's "What Can I Do With My Degree" tool outlines what other graduates from your course in the UK have gone on to do in terms of different job roles, industries and sector.
- The Discover Uni tool allows you to compare the outcomes from different course disciplines
You should also think about job roles that aren't linked to your degree. Many employers seek graduates from any discipline as they aren't only interested in the subject you've studied - they value the skills and understanding you've developed and your future potential. Employers will support new graduates with on-the-job training, and will give you the tools to learn what you need in order to be successful in your role.
Identifying areas that you definitely don't want to work in can help you narrow down the areas that you do. Try doing a vacancy sift by finding job listings online, and then cross out everything you wouldn't consider quickly, with not much thought. Take a look at what you have left and ask yourself:
- What sort of things do they have in common?
- What was it that appealed to you?
- Why?
Many jobs that are similar to each other are in clusters or "families" with lots of overlap. This can give you ideas that branch off from your interests into areas you may not have considered.
Job profile listings provide a great starting point such as:
- Prospects job profiles
- Job descriptions from TargetJobs
- The National Careers Service's job profiles
These days there are nearly as many job titles as there are jobs, so don't feel like you have to go for a specific job title. Doing so could exclude a wide range of jobs that all have the criteria for a job that you are after. For example, an accountancy graduate could look at many roles in the finance sector; the role doesn't have to have "accountant" in the job title to be of relevance and interest.
Recent statistics show that most graduates change jobs within three years of graduation. Don't try to identify something you'll do until retirement; instead think about finding something that will hold your interest and allow you to build up experience for a couple of years.
You could also take a year out after you graduate to try gaining some shorter term work experience or research your path more clearly. Remember, you can always come and speak to a friendly adviser from the Careers & Employability Service about your options.
3. Making plans
Writing an action plan will help you achieve your goals; this can be in any format you like so use what suits you best. An action plan will help you bring together all the work you've done so far and give you a clear idea of what your next actions should be.
Firstly, think about your goals in the short, medium and long term. Short term goals are immediate, medium term over 1-5 years, and long term 5-10 years. We recommend using the SMART method to set your goals, see below for more information.
SMART goals
Specific
Is your goal well-defined? Avoid setting yourself vague or unclear objectives, and try and be as precise as possible.
Measurable
Be clear on how you can tell when you've achieved your goal. Use details like dates and times to represent clear objectives.
Attainable
Make your goals challenging but realistic. Setting yourself impossible goals will only end in disappointment.
Relevant
Make sure you're always keeping your goals relevant to you and where you want to end up.
Time-bound
Set yourself a timescale for completing each goal. Even if you need to change this as you progress, this will help you to stay motivated.
Examples of SMART goals
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'Complete an online course to learn Power BI over the Easter break to improve my data analysis skills'
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'Undertake some volunteering with a local wildlife organisation to gain experience in the environmental sector. I intend to do this by Christmas'
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'I will complete my CV and identify at least 4 overseas working opportunities to apply to by the end of the summer term'
Non-SMART goals
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'Find a graduate job'
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'I want to work abroad'
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'Complete a PhD'
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'Do some volunteering'
Action steps
Once you have decided on your goals, include the action steps you need to take to get to where you want to be in the future and meet your aims; this will help you to break your goals down into more manageable chunks. Include a timeframe of when you want to achieve things by, as well as dates to review your plan.
4. Taking action
Now it's finally time to put your plans into action! Whatever goals you set for yourself, start working to complete the action steps to reach them. Remember our top tips:
Be flexible
Ensure your plan is flexible so you have a contingency to fall back on, and don’t forget that you can adjust the timescales if necessary.
Be kind to yourself
Related to the above, don’t be too hard on yourself if some of your circumstances change and you have to adapt your plan. Try not to see this as a setback, but instead a learning opportunity! Having a positive mindset will help you to ensure you are being kind to yourself.
Get advice
You can always book an appointment with one of our friendly advisers to discuss your options and career plan in more detail - they can offer advice and resources to help you achieve your goals. Get in touch with us to make an appointment.
Further Resources
- Skills Audit (PDF) - fill out this document to assess your current skillset
- The 53 Student Employability profiles (PDF) produced by the Higher Education Academy with the Council for Industry and Higher Education help you identify the work-related skills you've developed through your studies
- How to choose a career - Prospects article with more information on creating a career plan
- Targetjobs Pathways - Targetjobs have a range of self guided online learning modules that help you to explore different options (you will need to create a free account to view)
- Our Disability, Equality and Diversity Guide is for students who feel that their personal issues may affect or disadvantage their career planning or job selection process
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