This weeks talk was from the university’s careers consultanty Laia Auge Poch.
Laigh talked about the 4 stages of career planning, deciding, planning, competing and sorted. In her talk she emphasied the university’s career service, particularly the Pathways section, which has a selection to choose from. She specifically talked about the Successful Futures pathway today, which has a variety of things to look into, for example, my current location of where I want to take my goals, showcasing my skills and creating a plan for my next steps, or an Action Plan.
She showed the Southampton Skills Modes, which is a framework for skills to develop based on 7 categories for a total of 14 skills. I completed this assessment, which is shown below:
This shows that I have lots of skills to improve throughout my final year at university.
Next, she asked the class to look at some listed job roles and in pairs, got us to discuss the skills found in the roles that are easier or harder to reference and how the degree I’m taking me is helping with those skills. She then suggested to build a skills portfolio, showing what activities I did to build those skills, and the evidence for those activities.
In terms of building skills, she suggested game jams, growing my portfolio, entering into a trade body like UKIE or TIGA and volunteering at game expos.
In terms of what I’ve done already, I have attended a 15 minute careers appointment where I discussed possible careers I wanted to go into, which are Software Development, Game Development and 2D Animation. I was then given a longer 40 minute appointment, which I had to cancel at the last minute but was given a referral. With the first appointment I was also given a set of links to look into. Next steps are to use the referral for the longer appointment and to do more career research.