Making The Most Of The Break
The break between sessions provides a great opportunity to reflect on what you have accomplished in the first session at university and allow yourself a break from study to catch up with family and friends and recharge. It also provides a time to catch up on all the other duties you have been putting on hold due to study commitments.
It also allows you time to re-focus and consider what you need to do to accomplish your goals in the next session and in the future. This may require working on a particular area you feel needs to be strengthened, or asking for advice, or thinking about where your study is leading you in regards to your career. Even looking for what employment opportunities will be available to you when you have completed your study. The break also provides a good opportunity to obtain relevant work experience and skills, to assist you achieve your goals.
Topic List
Making the most of the break
Career Hub
Career Development Learning and ePortfolios@CSU
Self-awareness and assessment
Opportunity awareness
Decision making and goal setting
Making the transition: The skills to act on your decisions
Making The Most Of The Break
Breaks between sessions are ideal times to reflect, review, keep-up", "catch-up", "sort-out", organise, plan, relax, re-energise, re-prioritise and prepare for what's ahead. To help you achieve your goals over the break consider checking out the Student Services website. Here you'll be able to access lots of valuable information from different support services eg. Learning skills, Study link, Exam Success, Careers, Counselling and Disability. For example, on the Counselling web site you'll find the article "Making the most of your Break" as well as other useful links to a range of informative self-help articles.
Career Hub
Career Hub is the primary means of communication between you and CSU’s Careers Service.
Career Hub draws together a range of valuable careers information and resources which can be personalised to meet your specific needs. All you have to do is login, create a personal profile and explore what is available. It is a free and confidential service for all CSU students and graduates.
Login to CareerHub as well as register (tick the box) to receive the quarterly Careers Service Newsletter at: Career Hub
Career Development Learning & ePortfolios @ CSU
“To do well in today’s work environment, people need to be self-reliant managers of their own careers. As well as having the technical skills and abilities needed to work in a particular role, people also need the skills, knowledge and attitudes to make good career moves.” (Australian Blueprint for Career Development)
If you look carefully at the above statement it can be divided into two, distinct, parts:
1. “…having the technical skills and abilities needed to work in a particular role...”
2. “…people also need the skills, knowledge and attitudes to make good career moves.”
The University's Careers Service believes that the responsibility for achieving Part 1 is chiefly held by students and their lecturers, which is reflected in the University’s Mission Statement (ie., To provide distinctive educational programs for the professions that prepare students for work and citizenship). Part 2, however, acquiring the skills, knowledge and attitudes to make good career moves, is something which exceeds the responsibility of CSU and belongs solely to students. But, there is help available!
The Role of the University's Careers Service
The University's Careers Service offers students information and the practical support needed for making a successful transition from university to work, and for helping students to consider their potential “career moves” which come with, as well as after, graduation. To encourage students to attain the specific competencies associated with career development learning, the University's Careers Service has developed information sheets and resources used in conjunction with your ePortfolio (PebblePad ) .
Your ePortfolio (PebblePad)
Your ePortfolio is your private space which you can use for managing your own learning and development, and for sharing and collaborating with others. Use your ePortfolio to create and gather ideas, evidence, reflections and feedback from your various learning experiences, both here at CSU as well as from other areas of your life. The University’s Careers Service can introduce you to PebblePad if you have not already experienced using it as part of your studies.
Self-Awareness And Assessment
Self assessment is the first piece of your career path puzzle. Once you have started your initial self assessment process you can begin putting together your résumé . Keeping in mind the résumé is a continual ‘work in progress’ due to the fact that as you self assess, participate in work experience and voluntary opportunities and network with employers, these experiences and increased capabilities can be included to keep your résumé continually updated.
The following links contain information and tools useful in the self assessment process.
http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/content/view/full/2791
http://www.cdm.uwaterloo.ca/index2.asp
Self-awareness - the individual having knowledge about and understanding of their own personal development. Self-awareness in a careers context involves an understanding of the kind of personal resources (both actual and potential) they bring to the world.
Opportunity awareness - an undertanding of the general structures of the world of work, including career possibilities and alternative pathways.
Decision making and planning - an understanding of how to make career decisions, and being aware of pressures, influences, styles, consequences and goal setting.
Implementing plans - having the appropriate skill level in a range of areas to be able to translate job and career planning into reality.
Opportunity Awareness
Opportunity awareness is a process for gaining more accurate information about career opportunities, occupations, and the Australian labour market. It makes you conscious about job futures, employment trends and work options. You can conduct your own research by examining sites that provide information about:
Occupations - job descriptions, qualifications required to gain entry to careers and sources of additional and related information
Industries and professions - current developments and activities in industries and professions
Labour market trends - current and projected labour market demands, recent salaries and skills required for employment. For example, see Assessing Your Marketability.
Training courses - information on the range of courses available through universities, VET/TAFE and some of the major private providers
Decision Making And Goal Setting
With a clear and realistic vision for the future, students are more likely to maintain their studies even when obstacles appear or misfortunes may occur. Often when we set out to achieve something, we focus on how we'll begin. In reality we would probably be better off deciding where we want to finish, so we can set goals and realise our dreams.
Decision making and goal setting is a natural stage of most career development models. It is well worth comparing to the ‘decision’ stage within the University of Waterloo’s (Canada) Career Development eManual and Australia’s My Guide, part of the myfuture website . Graduate Careers Australia also identifies making decisions and planning as part of the SODI Career Planning Model.
Making The Transition: The Skills To Act On Your Decisions
Making the transition, the skills to act on your decisions, encourages you to think broadly about the approaches you might use to access the job market and identifies some of the practical steps to achieve an appropriate job placement. This also covers things like preparing or revising your résumé and practising your job interview skills.
Acting on your decisions and continually revisiting your career management approaches will enable you to plan purposefully and effectively throughout your life (eg., locating job search sites, job opportunities, employer websites and recruiter profiles).