How Do I Define My Career Management Strategy?

Not sure where to begin?

Daunted?

Dis-illusioned?

Our new motivational video might help you follow the road to your new career management strategy.

Graduate Programme Versus Apprenticeship - which is best?

 Which is better a graduate programme or an appprenticeship? I am often asked this question. Only yesterday I was recruiting for a blue-chip company graduate programme. This company is also recruiting for its apprenticeship programme at the same time.

Bottom line is that for big employers both forms of recruitment offer the much needed injection of talent into the organisation. Such intakes are required to create flow within the organisation, unlocking gridlock, enabling their more experienced staff to progress in the organisation. In a nutshell these roles create flow, enabling career progression to take place.

Is a graduate programme for you?

An apprenticeship could be a great option

Photo credit: ralph and jenny                                                    Photo credit:jovike

What is a graduate programme?

•  you go to university and study for a degree, which provides a great start to a professional career.
• during this time you are not earning any income and may incur university fees and debt.
• typically graduate programmes offer higher starting salaries.
• on graduation you join an employer who offers a structured learning and development programme, often with clear pay progression points.  
• prospects.ac.uk is a great career site for graduates. However you only need to google "graduate recruitment" to see the vast array of blue-chip (FTSE 100) companies offering graduate programmes.

What is an apprenticeship?

• for lots of different reasons university may not be for everyone.
• apprentices gain work experience on the job, working towards a recognised qualification.
• a good apprenticeship programme should also offer a structured learning and development programme, often with clear pay progression points.  
• apprenticeships are now available in a wide range of careers as can be seen on apprenticeships.org.uk . Blue-chip (FTSE 100) companies also offer some great schemes.

So what does this mean for the individual? Well in times of high student loans and university fees an apprenticeship can be a great option of ultimately reaching the same place or career goal. Sure graduate programmes have high kudos, but as many graduates will vouch for sometimes, even with a great degree, it can be difficult to get a job on graduation. Its a bit of a chicken and egg situation - employers often want to recruit graduates with some work experience, but they can't get that all important first role without the necessary experience.

Apprenticeships provide a way of gaining vocational on the job training, whilst also earning an income earlier than you would if you studied a degree. Any high quality apprenticeship programme should have a structured learning and development programme in place, which often also includes pay increases upon satisfactory performance against targets. It also provides a way of achieving a recognised qualification, such as HND, without incurring the debt many graduates encounter. 

However some employers are now launching longer degree apprenticeships, enabling  individuals to gain valuable vocational training and experience as well as working towards a degree.

So what about pay? Initially graduate programmes will provide higher earning potential. However don't rule out an apprenticeship on that basis. If the apprenticeship programme is a good one it will have factored in pay increases. So as you are working and earning from day one you may find that over time, say 5 years, the graduate programme and apprenticeship programme could converge in terms of earning power and career progression.

So in effect both could provide different solutions to reach the same place. Ultimately it just comes down to personal choice, as not all options will suit everyone.   

CV Writing and Career Management from the One Stop Career Shop

Do you need a CV refreshed or a bespoke CV professionally written? 
Are you looking for a new job? 
Do you need some career coaching? 
Or perhaps some presentation and interview skills coaching? 

One Stop Career Shop www.onestopcareershop.co.uk can help with all your career management needs.

Basic Career Advice to Junior School Children

Starting young, from little seedlings.......

Grow early work life skills in junior school

Photo credit: Katerha

As part of our business values the One Stop Career Shop works with local schools to help coach work-life skills. Generally this has been at secondary school level. However recently I observed CV writing at an earlier age.

As a fun game junior school children were asked to "bid" on simple classroom tasks they wanted to undertake, such as clearing away. They all prepared a very brief CV stating why they felt they should be awarded the task they had chosen. I thought this was a really innovative way of teaching junior school children the grass roots basics of career management. It put it into a meaningful context for them and more importantly gave them a personal goal to aspire to.

I then spoke to a subset of the children at a very high level about CV writing and what career management meant.  This is what they wrote, which made me smile:) I was very impressed with their writing, interest and level of understanding, so much I have decided to share their thoughts on our blog.

" In this day and age it is so hard to get employed so your curriculum vitae (they wrote this in full not CV!) has to be better than  the rest. You need to make yours original, but do not put too much information in your CV otherwise employers will get bored and put your CV aside. 

If you  find it hard to write CVs no worries follow the link to One Stop Career Shop  - (who needs SEO or a PR guru when you have a captive audience of ten year olds!). The most important part of finding a job is to get the right job for your career history, so that in your interview employers are impressed by your skills.

Employers are looking for responsible, organised, skillful workers who will contribute to their business.

If you are looking for a first time job to start your career history first you have to find what job you want. Next you need to find out if you want to work full time or part time and what salary you are aiming for.

We hope this article has helped you reach your career potential " 

Brilliant - spot on! I think they have captured what I told them in their own unique way.

Lifelong Career Management

I liked this article from Careerealism http://www.careerealism.com/career-management-process/ It dovetails nicely with our earlier posts on developing a personal career management strategy; and encouraging career choices and talent management at an early age in schools.  

What I particularly liked is the reference to career management being a life-long exercise. We will be exploring taking ownership for your own career management in later posts

Talent Management is critical in schools

Encouraging & nurturing talent in schools is essential. Picture: Sean MacEntee

There seems to be a lot in the press at the moment about the lack of women in executive positions. Following on from articles yesterday, and our earlier blog posts, I have spotted this article in The Telegraph today (13th April 2013) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/9985111/Forget-women-at-the-top-business-must-work-harder-to-appeal-to-school-girls.html

I can see the article has attracted a lot of comments already. Once again I would state quotas don't work and are divisive - promotion should be on talent. However, that said we should be growing talent at an early age in school - which unfortunately is not always the case.

I was educated in the state system and was fortunate to go to a good all-girls school. I was an academic pupil and had decided I was interested in becoming an accountant. To this day I remember meeting with the then deputy head to discuss career advice and my options. I told her about my aspirations. 

Career advice? She said to me "accountancy is a very difficult profession and most people fail so I would advise you to do something else"   

How demotivational was that?  Thankfully I was, and still am, a confident and strong-willed person. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and looking back her comments only served to make me even more determined!

I am pleased to say I qualified as a CIMA accountant in 1995!

My worry is that this mentality may still exist. We should be encouraging young people, both male and female, to follow their dreams and tell them that anything is possible with hard work.  That is why at the One Stop Career Shop one of our core business values is Demonstrate Integrity. We believe in positively contributing to growing talent, as they are the future. We work actively with local schools to help young people develop work life skills.

What Does Career Management Mean to You?

Part 1 of our series on career management. 

In the coming weeks we are going to be exploring what is career management, with a view to helping individuals devise their own career management strategies.

  

Recently on LinkedIn I ran a poll on what others associated with career mentoring. 

The results were as follows:

50% wanted help to formulate a career strategy 

20% wanted help in establishing what is important to them in driving their career

20% were seeking help and support with job applications  

10% wanted help to identify a career direction in terms of role/sector

This led me to thinking that the components required for an effective career strategy was probably a good topic to launch our blog.  

I particularly liked the picture above which got me thinking about what to consider for an effective career strategy. Other factors I thought of were:  

• Contribution 
•  Knowledge 
•  Perseverance 
•  Responsibility 
•  Growth 
•  Potential 
•  Performance 
•  Development 
• Training 
•  Ability 
•  Management 
• Experience 

I have clustered these component parts loosely as follows and will cover them in future posts

More information about career mentoring can be found here