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How could careers advice be better?

This poll is closed

How could careers advice be better?

Regular one-on-one career guidance sessions/mentors 25%

More support from universities 12%

Improve awareness about different options after school/college 15%

Official advice from the government about options available 7%

Better work experience opportunities 37%

Something else (tell us in the thread)3%

Total votes: 99

CamembertPaws

TSR Community Staff

Throughout your education, you've likely spent a lot of time thinking about what you want to do in the future and great careers advice can open doors, boost confidence, and help people find the right path. But there’s always room for improvement!

So, we'd like to know, based on your experience with careers advice - what do you think could be done better?

Would you like more work experience opportunities? Better government advice and resources? Or do you think you'd benefit from more 1-to-1 guidance? perhaps there's something else we haven't thought of!

Take a vote in the poll above and share your thoughts below :smile:

(edited 1 month ago)

Reply 1

Songbird19

More knowledgeable careers advisors. My daughter had a careers interview in yr 11 I think and said she wanted to be a doctor. She came out with some printed off sheets about studying medicine and a personalised plan saying something like work hard on science gcses and research unis. None of that was useful (she was on target for 8s or 9s anyway)

Good advice would have been to get public facing work or volunteering experience in a care home or childrens centre as that is vital for a med application. She should have been told that studying chemistry and preferably biology but definitely one other science or maths at a level would open up most med schools as options, to know that she would need to take the ucat in yr 12 and to research the gmc for skills and traits a doctor needs and think about how her life experiences or extra curriculars are helping her develop those. She should have been told to try early to get work experience as it takes a while to set up.

Reply 2

ⓁⒶⒾⒷⒶ

I feel work experience! My school doesn't do it all but I think my council does. I think everything else is mostly provided as we were given mentors and made aware of all the different schools. This is just my school though!

(edited 1 month ago)

Reply 3

aspalax

Careers advice at secondary-school level was all really, really generic and generally poor. Lots of suggestions to do the quiz-style ones that just suggest you an incredibly generic outcome like, in my case, "digital designer" - a title that is actually dozens of jobs piled under one header - and there's no mention of the different things you'd need to do to achieve those different pathways. General knowledge about "newer" jobs and industries in tech etc. were very poor.

At college level it was better, but my college really pushed degree apprenticeships without any acknowledgment that these aren't really at all a thing for more creative fields and without really providing any meaningful alternative other than "go to university...?". A lot of my career goals and research was self organised.

At university, we also had faculty-specific career advice but again, mostly centered around generics like CV improving, mock interviews, cover letter reviews - without a huge amount of specific knowledge to specific modern fields.
I also think there's a wider issue with people choosing creative degrees like illustration, fine art etc. without a career plan for what to do after they graduate, or even what their career options _are_ - I spoke to many of them as an ambassador.

Across the board my experience with career advice was them telling me things I nearly always already knew, or helping me with correcting typos... when I think we can hope for a bit more 😅