1. Home
  2. Careers squared: Turn your ambitions into manageable actions

Careers squared: Turn your ambitions into manageable actions

Posted on • Career planning, Discover

Struggling to find your next step, overwhelmed by your ambitions or daunted by the options available? OU Careers Consultant Steven provides some tools and advice to navigate your future in manageable steps:

“Many students I talk to struggle to know where to start when it comes to their career. I like to use the ‘square it down’ method to help them find manageable actions they can take”.

OU Careers and Employability Services divides the process into four main steps: know yourself, explore opportunities, decide what to do, and take action. See our Career Planning webpage or work through each step in our highly popular Your Career Planning Guide.

Know yourself and define your dream

Deciding to figure out your ambitions is a big deal, but help is at hand. First, ground yourself with core principles that define what you want and why. Choosing a career that suits you features downloadable exercises to identify your passions and dreams.

Turn your dream into goals

You might not yet even be sure whether developing your career is for you right now. Banish any doubts with a robust decision making process. Use our downloadable Decision Making Guide and other tools on our Career decision making webpage.

Divide your goals into achievable steps

How can you make sure that you achieve your goals? When setting goals, make sure you consider where you are in life, your values, strengths, constraints, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Our Career self-assessment webpage works you through all of these with helpful exercises that will ensure you set achievable targets. You can also use our skills audit exercise to identify your strengths.

Exploring specific pathways and next steps

Now that you’re a career planning pro, you can start exploring your specific career pathways and interests and even begin applying for and taking on new opportunities. If you’re at this stage, our intelligent self-diagnosis tool, Career Readiness Pulse, will let you know what to do next and signpost you to tailored support. You can also talk your plans through with me or one of my colleagues in a one-to-one careers consultation.

OU Careers and Employability Services

Steven Reid is an OU Careers and Employability Consultant based in Edinburgh. He 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.