National Careers Week - making informed career choices

It’s National Careers Week, and here at Renovo we are passionate about supporting individuals with career transition. Whether you are a recent graduate or in the later stages of your career, making the right career decision requires careful consideration. It is important that you are aware of your transferable skills and career priorities to enable you to make more informed career choices.

Here are 3 simple steps to help you on your way:

Step 1 - Identify your transferable skills

• Look back at your career history, projects or courses undertaken, and focus on which skills you have enjoyed using the most
• Review job profiles for inspiration - websites such as https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles - will highlight key skills and responsibilities required across a range of different job profiles

Write these down and rank your skills in order of preference.

Step 2 - Identify your career priorities

• To consider the right opportunities for a career move, you need to identify your career priorities
• A career priority is something important to you that forms part of your job
• It could be linked to salary, size of company, industry, location, full time or part time hours

Write these down and rank your priorities in order of preference.

Step 3 - Generating Ideas

• Using the information above, generate ideas and identify career opportunities by conducting a jobsearch
• Incorporate the criteria as keywords using a job board aggregator such as Indeed www.indeed.co.uk
• By inputting your criteria you will identify opportunities that match the skills and priorities important to you

Final thoughts

There may be other factors that are important to you such as the company’s values or culture. These are hard to assess using job boards. You may need to use the company’s website, use your network, ask family & friends or conduct further research to ensure you share the same values. You can read more on company culture and how to assess it here.