You may not have noticed, but Christmas is fast approaching! If you follow us on social media you may have seen our 12 days of Careers-Mas countdown, featuring a series of helpful careers tips. Inspired by this, we thought it might be helpful to have a quick post outlining some of the ways you can keep your career planning ticking along during some of those periods where you’re sick of turkey (and perhaps your family….)
Tip 1. Relax, and don’t feel you have too!
We’re writing this post to give you some inspiration about ways to keep yourself engaged with careers – but equally, please don’t feel obliged to or guilty if you don’t act upon any of these. Whatever stage of your degree you’re at, getting through a busy Autumn Term is a great achievement and you’d be quite justified if all you want to do is put your feet up for a couple of weeks, whether you’re celebrating Christmas or not. Given a number of you will probably be returning in January to exams and deadlines, it’s important not to overwork and burn out, and so disengaging from careers for a little while is an absolutely valid decision. For those of you who do want to dedicate a bit of time to career planning though, we hope the following will be useful.
Tip 2. Catch up on some reading
You could use the time to do a bit of careers-based reading. Options include
- Take a look at some of the 100+ titles we’ve freshly updated and posted onto our Career Kit. Whether you want to read up on different sectors and browse related sites to get a feel for whether they’re the right fit for you or find out more about some general career-related topics, our kit should have something for you.
- Access the King’s Careers Hub. This features a range of different resources, interactive content and practical steps you can take to improve your employability, split into different sections depending on whether you feel that you’re at the discover, focus or action stage of your career.
- Catch up on blog posts, particularly the fascinating case studies submitted as part of the My First Steps series. Obviously as the editor of the blog, I would say this, but there’s been a lot of great posts submitted this year by a range of different writers.
Tip 3. Watch some of our events
It’s been a busy term of events as ever in the Autumn Term, with hundreds run both on and off campus. This term we’ve managed to Lecture Capture more of these than ever, with close to 40 recordings from the last three months available to watch on our KEATS page, along with a number from the last two academic years. Alright, so in terms of family-friendly festive viewing they’re not exactly Home Alone, but there’s lots of panel events about working in different sectors featuring a range of speakers currently working in the industry, and there’s few better ways of getting inspiration than that.
Tip 4. Plan for next year
Even if you don’t intend to do much in the way of formal career planning over the Christmas break (and as per Tip 1, that’s absolutely fine) an easy way of making some progress might be to start thinking about where you are at the moment and what you’d like to achieve in 2019. This doesn’t necessarily have to be something enormous – if you’re in your first year of an undergraduate degree and in the discover stage, it might be that you just want to come in for a Careers Guidance appointment at some point, or look into some volunteering opportunities. Alternatively, if you’re looking to gain some formal work experience either in the form of an internship or a graduate job, start to think about what sectors and roles interest you and start signing up to emails from related vacancy boards. Whatever your intentions, mapping our what you’d like to achieve and the steps you’ll need to take to get there can be a very helpful exercise in order to keep on top of what you’re doing and not get overwhelmed.
We’re now closed until 2nd January 2019. From all of us at Careers & Employability, Merry Christmas! We hope you have a restful break whatever you’re doing, and look forward to seeing you again in 2019.