Career Guidance - What is a Career?

A CAREER is a person's pathway through learning and work which is sometimes referred to as a journey. Learning does not just mean the studying the subjects that are taken at school and college, it also means what people do in their spare time. A CAREER is not set in stone, it is flexible and can take a new direction if circumstances change but usually a person will be able to use the skills and qualities that they have already to help them.

Here are the definitions of some other career related words:

• A JOB is a paid position which requires a person to have a group of specific abilities and skills that enables them to carry out tasks in an organisation either part-time or full-time for a short or long period of time. A person’s career could be made up of a series of jobs but these will/should form part of the ‘big’ plan
• An OCCUPATION is defined as a group of similar jobs found in different industries or organisations eg construction occupations
• CAREER DEVELOPMENT is the process of managing life, learning and work over the life of a person
• CAREERS INFORMATION is information on opportunities for careers and on related issues such as financial support for learning and sources of help, advice and guidance
• CAREER ADVICE is all the suggestions based on information that help people to move from a general understanding of life and work to a better understanding of the realistic life, learning and work options that are open to them
• CAREER GUIDANCE is the help and support that a person can have from a professional, such as a careers adviser, to help them to find out about themselves, how to make decisions and decide what career they would like to go into.

To find out how you set about preparing yourself for your career go to the Making Preparing section.

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These are some of the people that you can talk to:

• Connexions careers adviser
• Career coordinator
• Head of year
• Parents or carers
• Teachers
• Tutor

These are some websites that you might find useful:

• Visit the Jobs4U website to look at job families, an A-Z of jobs and general information about the opportunities available to you
• Browse through over 700 job profiles by choosing a category or find a specific job profile using the Directgov search facility
• Visit Careersbox where you will find a video library of over 300 job profiles
• Visit Prospects the official graduate career website for Information on career sectors, occupations and graduate programmes so that you are aware of all your options and able to make an informed career choice
• Visit icould which is the place where you can get ideas about where you could go, how you could get there, what you could do, why it would be worth it and who you could be
• The links page on this website
• The list of national company recruitment websites.

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