CEEC - Student Based Services - Lancaster University

Career development learning in higher education has traditionally been based on a particular model or framework of career planning competencies or skills. This framework will take a student or graduate through four stages, not necessarily in any particular order, and is frequently referred to as the DOTS model.

1. Self-awareness - 'helping learners to know and understand their 'self' in career-related terms
2. Opportunity awareness - 'helping learners to know and understand what work and other opportunities are available'.
3. Decision learning - 'helping learners to understand factors which might influence their choice and to make decisions based on their own criteria and circumstances'.
4. Transition learning – 'helping students to effect their transition to next stage of their career'.

The 4 elements of the DOTS model are of equal importance and must be drawn together for effective career management. However it is initially helpful to explore them individually as below.

Structured self-reflection

Thinking about yourself is an extremely important aspect of career planning since it is your career being considered. There are various aspects to this but perhaps three broad areas:

Interests: ideas and activities which interest you (positive and negative) can influence your choice of course or job; and effective presentation of these can make you more successful when applying for opportunities.
Skills: an ability to identify and clarify the skills you are developing and an ability to describe them and demonstrate your employability is essential to all future applications.
Values: your views of how the world around you should operate and how you wish to function within it, are important factors in your own individual choice of future courses and careers.
If you have been using MyPlace this kind of self reflection should prove relatively easy to undergo – a good reason for keeping your MySpace up to date!. MyPlace http://myplace.lancs.ac.uk is your private and social web space to record and share reflections on your learning, explore your goals and aspirations, think about future careers, and support your personal development. It is based on the increasingly familiar tool of web log or blog.

Researching opportunities

You are developing research skills in accessing and analysing information as part of your university course – but these also need to be applied to reviewing future course and career opportunities.

This information can come from static sources (publications and pre-programmed computer software); people (graduate recruiters, graduate employees, course tutors, careers advisers); or media (this includes TV, radio, advertised vacancies in newspapers and magazines).

Making decisions

You need to understand your personal decision making style.

Students make decisions all the time – choice of course or module; where to live; how to prioritise spending
Few decisions are completely free – there are often constraints on choice, or things which will carry additional weight in your selection criteria (eg location, salary, need for a work permit etc)
It is important not to wait until you are ready to focus on a major decision point (of course or job) but develop an understanding of your personal style along the way

You should understand how as an individual you tend to make decisions, eg

spontaneous, deciding on a whim ?
only commit yourself after extensive information collation and research ?
choose things to please other people ?
opt out of decisions and let events control you ?

If you are clear about this you can consciously choose to make decisions on a different basis in the future, or at least can operate some damage control if necessary.

Taking action

You can take action in small as well as large career steps, but effective action depends on you drawing on:

the knowledge you have gained about yourself, plus
the information you have gained about the opportunity (course, further research, job), plus
having insight into your normal decision making style and factors influencing your choice

Action planning is very important and your ability to plan a course of action will involve considering three steps:

where am I now ?
where do I want to be ?
how do I get there ?

The ability to implement an action plan involves

identifying steps needed for you to reach your goal
preparing contingency plans
the ability to network and cope with uncertainty

Career Management Skills

The list below includes some of the skills you will need to demonstrate or acquire in order to plan your career and make a successful transition into employment. There are 15 statements - perhaps you might start your career planning by considering how skilled you are at these aspects already.

Self Awareness

You should be able to:

Define your own skills, interests and motivations
Promote your strengths both orally and in writing
Identify areas for personal and career development

Opportunity Awareness

You should be able to:

Apply research skills to finding and investigating opportunities
Identify the range of opportunities available to you (including self employment and further study)
Identify (and illustrate) the specific skills and qualities required or preferred in your chosen opportunity

Decision Making

You should be able to:

Relate self awareness to occupational knowledge
Evaluate how your own personal priorities and constraints may affect your career decisions.
Identify the steps needed to reach your career goals
Make career related decisions

Transition Skills

You should be able to:

Aware of, and able to use, different sources of vacancy information
Use networking skills as a positive approach to finding jobs/opportunities
Recognise and demonstrate what makes an effective application
Able to discriminate between different recruitment & selection processes used by employers
Know the purpose and process of interviews and identify strategies for self presentation.

The Centre for Employability Enterprise & Careers will do all we can to help you to achieve these skills and competences during your time here at Lancaster.

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