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Shortcuts to success: career planning for busy people

Posted on • Career planning

Struggling to find time to plan your career? Don’t put it off any longer – fulfil your ambitions with the OU’s quick and easy careers guides, exercises, templates, and links.

I’m Catrin, and I’m an OU Careers and Employability Consultant who supports students and graduates like you to work towards their goals. My 6 quick shortcuts can make navigating your future more manageable, helping you accomplish your goals one step at a time.

1. Shortcut to the OU career resources most relevant to you.

Our intelligent self-diagnosis tool, Career Readiness Pulse, will signpost you to tailored support most relevant to your needs. Keep up with new resources and upcoming events by checking your email folders for your monthly Careers Express newsletter. Discover popular options with your qualification on the ‘Succeed’ tab of your Study Home page.

2. 6 manageable steps for your whole career journey.

Whether you’re at the Discover, Explore, Achieve or Progress career readiness stage, the highly rated Your Career Planning Guide provides helpful exercises to take you through the 6 key stages of career planning, from ‘Knowing Yourself’ to ‘Getting the job’. Download the PDF or request a print copy. It’s our most popular career tool, with 10,000 downloads last year.

3. Simple exercises for discovering options.

Choosing a career that suits you takes you through steps on identifying your motivations, skills and strengths, and interests. Each of these have downloadable exercises for you to complete. Then take your first steps to navigating your future on our Career self-assessment page, including drawing a ‘life line’ to review where you are now and what has led you here, identifying your values, and a SWOT Analysis to set your goals.

4. CV examples and quick guides.

Compare examples of CVs, from chronological to skills-based to CVs for different scenarios like presenting a career gap, criminal convictions, and disabilities. You can review your CV in seconds using CV360. Quickly navigate our other CV resources using our Quick Guide to CVs. There are also Quick Guides for Cover Letters, Application Forms, Assessment Centres, Psychometric Testing, and Interviews.

5. Achieve your goals using vacancy services for jobs and internships.

Our advertised jobs page covers the OU’s own OpportunityHub, tactics for internet searches and finding work via recruitment agencies. Also check out regional and national vacancy services. For work experience, you can see how our exclusive paid internships work or use our 5-step source your own internship guide.

6. Progress your personal development with this template.

Personal development planning tool FutureYOU is a structured framework for tracking progress to potential study, career and personal development options and goals. You may have access under the ‘Plan’ or ‘Succeed’ tab of the Study Home page for your subject area (if not you can use the Open Qualification version).

Careers and Employability Services

Catrin Davies is an OU Careers and Employability Consultant specialising in FASS. Catrin helps students achieve their ambitions and fulfil their potential through one-to-one appointments and by designing events and resources for the OU. Explore the rest of our blog for more articles from the Careers and Employability Services team.