1 hour careers appointment with Susan Smith

I’m delighted that you have booked a careers appointment and I can’t wait to meet you.

What is a careers appointment?

A careers guidance interview focuses on supporting you to clarify your career thinking and offers you the opportunity to explore your ideas with a professional who is trained in to support you with up-to-date information on education, training, labour market and job information.

While at school or college you may need support with making effective subject choices or with weighing up the pros and cons of options such as going to college/university versus doing an apprenticeship for example. You may also need help sifting through the vast (and ever changing) range of occupations available.

While significant people in your life such as teachers, parents or carers will be able to help with this to some extent, they may only know about the jobs they have held themselves and their knowledge may also be out-of-date. The careers appointment will help you understand the options and pathways open to you and support you in deciding which choices will work best for you.

At the end of your appointment, you should feel clearer about your choices and have developed some further action points to take your research and decision making forward.

What will it cover? 

Your career guidance interview is about you and focuses on the needs you have in terms of careers guidance and information. Your careers adviser will at times make suggestions regarding options that might be worth considering – they may for example be aware of work or educational opportunities that you were not aware of – but they should never tell you what you should do.

When we consider that in many other countries and contexts career guidance professionals are often referred to as ‘career counsellors’ or ‘career coaches’, this more accurately hints at the skills you can expect to be used in your interview.

Counselling skills involve empathy and unconditional respect, but also highly developed listening and communication skills and professional career guidance is no different.

Your Adviser will ask you questions for instance, but for the most part these will be open questions starting with ‘why’, ‘where’ or ‘how’. A careers adviser will get to know you, to get a sense of how best to support you and can only do this be asking questions that prompt you to share your qualifications, achievements, anxieties and just generally ‘what makes you tick’.

What will I gain from it? 

Part of a Careers Adviser’s job is to make sure that you leave your interview with an accurate understanding of your strengths, your areas for development and the challenges you may face in pursing any of the options that you explore together.

It may be for example that they will need to challenge any misconceptions or knowledge gaps you may have around certain occupations or different qualifications. They will also help you understand some of the practicalities you will need to consider, such as the typical qualifications needed for entry to certain occupations and the availability (and location) of jobs in the current labour market.

Don’t worry if you are not sure what courses you want to do after Year 11 or what job you want to do when you are older; Careers Advisers are trained to help students in exactly this situation and can usually help you get to the point where you have some ideas for further exploration at the very least.