How do you prefer to receive careers advice?

It's really important that career's advice is accessible for everyone

@National Careers Service would you like to know you like to access advice around your career options.

Please answer the poll and chat with us in the thread about how you usually access careers advice and whether it's been helpful


1. Through webchat
2. Face to face with a careers adviser
3. Over the phone
4. Through social media
5. Research career options independently

It's really important that career's advice is accessible for everyone

@National Careers Service would you like to know you like to access advice around your career options.

Please answer the poll and chat with us in the thread about how you usually access careers advice and whether it's been helpful


1. Through webchat
2. Face to face with a careers adviser
3. Over the phone
4. Through social media
5. Research career options independently

It's really important that career's advice is accessible for everyone

@National Careers Service would you like to know you like to access advice around your career options.

Please answer the poll and chat with us in the thread about how you usually access careers advice and whether it's been helpful


1. Through webchat
2. Face to face with a careers adviser
3. Over the phone
4. Through social media
5. Research career options independently

It would be great if all of these options were available and have enough information as people will have different preferences. When I was looking for careers advice, I used option 5 and 2. When I was at school, we had the opportunity to talk to a careers adviser, and whilst she was helpful in figuring out our interests, I felt she was very pro-uni and didn't really give enough information about other routes after A-Levels. I'm not sure how it is now, but I think a good careers adviser should provide good information on all routes e.g. college leaver schemes, employment, apprenticeships rather than just pushing one option. Not every student is suited to university.

Research independently- the careers advice I had through a SDS advisor at school was a bit rubbish, and sometimes factually incorrect. Any advice that they did offer was very vague/not specific to the person in front of them, but guess that's what happens when it's a random person that doesn't know you

Embarrassed about talking about career stuff face to face or via my voice. Prefer online and independent research.

From experience, careers advisers are crap. They just ask you a load of questions about yourself which you already know and proceed to give advice about a career sector your not particularly interested in (from my experience). I've also found they (based on 2 careers advisers) try and convince people to do a levels or go to college instead of considering apprenticeships. Can you tell I'm not a fan?

independently to find out as much as I can. Then once I perhaps have an idea of very basic experience of an area I reach out to someone who is experienced. I want to get into film -> i've researched roles and day to day activities -> currently speaking to directors of photography and organising trainee roles onset.

It sounds like you have a really great strategy. Have you ever spoken to a careers adviser yourself?

I've always found career advisers to be too general and use a lot of nonspecific terms/reference locations. There's no substitute for finding out how a role works first hand.

Research careers independently - on the couple of occasions I went to the career advisers in college, they kept emphasising apprenticeships to me even though I never mentioned wanting to do one. I much prefer doing research myself on potential careers, though for things like interview and CV help I think face to face careers advice would be more beneficial

I find it so much easier to just do the research myself. I've never been to a careers adviser and I'm not sure if I ever will.

So you didn't feel like it was tailored enough to you personally? How could it have been more helpful?

It ultimately impossible for a careers advisor to know every detail about careers. Even when you get a well informed random, they typically can only talk about things in vague manners given how quickly the job market evolves and the individual preferences people and potential employers have.

This is really interesting - did the adviser ask you any questions about yourself/ your interests? Did you have to submit any information beforehand?

So did you feel that they had more of an agenda or did you feel that they genuinely thought an apprenticeship would be the best route for you?

I think that that particular adviser just wasn't really listening to me and giving generic advice; I went to a different one later and they were much better

Out of interest what was it that made it better

I totally agree.
While id also have preferred options 2 and 5, i think all options should be available. People do have different preferences and ways of doing things.
I found at my school that they ave a lot of info on college or 6th form, but not enough info on other stuff like apprenticeships and other stuff. And at 6th form i found that it was very uni orientated and no info on anything else (like college courses, apprenticeships, jobs etc).
Careers advice should be better in general.