In today’s ever-changing workplace career management skills are more important than ever. Students will need to accept and understand that they will continue to learn and upskill throughout their career – setting goals, acquiring skills, making informed decisions, and continuously improving to stay relevant in the job market.
Career management skills will help students develop an agile career, where they understand what matters to them and how to get that, both now, and throughout their chosen career. Here are five top tips to guide them:
1. Cultivate self-awareness
The foundation of career management is understanding yourself. Help students explore their strengths, values, interests, and skills, using tools including coaching questions, psychometric profiling and question cards. Understanding their drivers in this way will help them to create informed decision-making; a process they should review throughout their career.
2. Teach goal-setting and planning
Setting clear, actionable goals is critical for navigating a career. Support students with how to break their ambitions into short and long-term objectives. Encourage them to create a roadmap that includes steps like gaining relevant experience, upskilling, or networking. And as with all career management skills, support them to understand this is not a one-time thing; it’s a process they need to keep doing throughout their career.
3. Encourage adaptability
The only constant in today’s workplace is change. And whether they’re planned or unexpected changes, supporting students to navigate these is key. Discussing scenarios such as redundancy or self-driven career pivots helps students develop the skills they need to navigate them, such as problem-solving. It also reassures them that careers are based on a series of decisions, not just those you make in Year 9 or 11.
4. Develop networking and job search skills
Networking is one of the most valuable career management tools. Encourage students to build and maintain professional connections, both online and in-person. Pair this with practical job search skills like writing strong CVs, tailoring applications, and mastering interviews. These will help develop their brand for both now and future career moves and maintaining a strong network will support them as they look to make career changes throughout their career journey.
5. Encourage lifelong learning
As students move on in their careers, for true career growth, they’ll need to adapt to a process of continuous learning. This can be particularly challenging for students who struggled at school. Reassuring them that learning in the workplace looks different; from learning on the job and work-shadowing to short webinars or professional training courses, there are a plethora of ways to learn. Planning CPD, actioning it, and logging it, will help them build the skills and knowledge needed for their transferable career management and to thrive in an agile career, needed in today’s workplace.