Six step guide

1. Assess yourself

2. Investigate

3. Shortlist

4. Make a choice

5. Enhance your skills

6. Apply and compete

Assess yourself

• Your skills

• Your interests

• Your values and motivations

Skills and values

• Communication, teamwork, leadership, problem solving, analytical.

• Flexible, dependable, honest, loyal, reliable, responsible, motivated, professional, confident.

Investigate

http://ww2.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/What_jobs_would_suit_me___Prospects_Planner_/Login_to_My_Prospects2/p!ejgFgXm?mode=try_pp

Shortlist and make a choice

• Reject some options from long list by cross referencing with ‘assess yourself’ section

• Find out more about shortlist

• Talk to people in these jobs

• Job shadow

• Careers events

• Use your network of contacts

• Narrow the list down to one or two options

Enhance your skills

• In your degree programme

• Options choices

• Project topic

• Industry or study abroad year

• Integrated Masters, MSc or PhD

• Clubs and societies

• Work experience

• Vacation job

• Internship

Apply and compete

• Network

• Events in the School

• Careers events

• External opportunities

• https://stars.leeds.ac.uk/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fdefault.aspx

• The STAR approach

Situation

• Describe a specific (real) event

• E.g. my IT degree has a professional development module where we had to do a group presentation on one of the School’s research areas

• (In general) select an event that went well and in which you were successful

Task

• What were you doing?

• What were the indicators of success?

• What were the consequences of failure?

• What had gone wrong (or right) already?

Activity

• What actions did you take?

• Don't say what you might do, say what you actually did.

Result

• What happened?

• How did the event end?

• What did you accomplish?

• What did you learn?

• Quantify results when possible

An exampleSituation: During my internship last summer, I was responsible for

managing various events.

Task: I noticed that attendance at these events had dropped by 30% over the past 3 years and wanted to do something to improve these numbers.

Action: I designed a new promotional packet to go out to the local community businesses. I also included a rating sheet to collect feedback on our events and organized internal round table discussions to raise awareness of the issue with our employees.

Result: We utilized some of the wonderful ideas we received from the community, made our internal systems more efficient and visible and raised attendance by 18% the first year.

http://web.mit.edu/career/www/guide/star.html

Some example questionsGive me an example of a time when you had to be quick in coming to a

decision.

What is the toughest group that you have had to get cooperation from?

Give me an example of a time when you went above and beyond the call of duty.

Describe a situation when you were able to have a positive influence on the action of others.

Tell me about a situation when you had to speak up (be assertive) in order to get a point across that was important to you.

Have you ever had to "sell" an idea to your co-workers or group? How did you do it? Did they "buy" it?

Describe a recent unpopular decision you made and what the result was.

Give me an example of an important goal which you had set in the past and tell me about your success in reaching it.

http://www.brockport.edu/career/behave.htm