1.1 Finding the right information
Manuela’s primary motivation for learning more about digital skills is to help her pursue a career in marketing for the motorsport industry. She knows that as well as looking for job opportunities, she also needs to understand exactly what the job entails and find out what skills she will need.
Much of the information she needs can be found online, however, finding it can take time. Developing her skills in finding information, such as those listed below, will result in being able to search far more effectively.
- Keywords: using focused words and phrases for her search.
- Filtering her results by location.
- Filtering her results by time.
With so much information available online it is also important to know which sites are the most trustworthy. The most reliable websites will be those belonging to:
- reputable organisations/companies/industries
- government departments
- training and skills organisations
- industry specialists or experts.
A great deal of information can also come from connecting with people online and hearing about their own experiences and advice. Manuela could benefit from a more human angle, but would need to be aware that these will be opinions, rather than fact.
In the following activities you are asked to offer Manuela some guidance on searching for reliable careers information online.
Activity _unit8.1.1 Activity 1 Choosing the right keywords and phrases
Manuela is about to start some online research into Formula One careers. She’s particularly interested in marketing and needs to work in the UK. How would you advise her on:
- the most useful search terms she might use
- how she can limit her search?
You might find it useful to jot down a few notes in the box below before reading the feedback.
Discussion
You may have mentioned some of the following search terms:
- marketing
- ‘formula one’
- ‘motor sports’
- careers.
You might have included ‘jobs’ in the search terms. This is likely to generate job opportunities, rather than advice on careers.
Manuela could use an advanced search to limit her search to:
- a particular time period – she would want to find recent information so could limit results to the past six months or year
- a particular location – she could limit the search to UK websites
- she could exclude words – Formula One is usually known for racing or engineering careers. She could exclude ‘racing’ and ‘engineering’ from her search.
Activity _unit8.1.2 Activity 2 Knowing what information to trust
Manuela has found three websites that she thinks might help:
- Autosport forum – http://forums.autosport.com/ topic/ 192442-one-does-not-simply-get-a-job-in-f1/ [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
- Careers guide – the motorsport industry association – https://the-mia.com/ page/ careers
- Job in F1 – http://jobinf1.com/
Have a look at each of the sites and offer some advice on:
- what type of information each site offers
- how trustworthy that information is
- how helpful the information is to Manuela in researching careers.
You might find it useful to jot down a few notes before reading the feedback.
Discussion
The three websites all offer different types of information and vary in relation to how trustworthy they are:
Autosport forum
There might be some useful information here, but Manuela needs to remember that this is a forum and contains opinion, rather than fact. Some of the information might not be as trustworthy as it could be, as we don’t know how much experience the people in the forum have. The site is also over a year old and things might have changed since the comments were posted.
What do I need for a career in Motorsport?
This document provides comprehensive information on careers in the motorsport industry. It has been provided by the Motorsport Industry Association, which is the trade association for motorsport in the UK. This is a reliable source of information and would help Manuela to focus on what she needs to do in order to pursue a career in the sector. It provides helpful guidance and links to relevant websites.
Job in F1
Closer inspection of this site reveals that it is a private blog. The writer claims to work as a senior engineer in Formula One. However, they do not provide a name or any credentials which would allow us to confirm this. The information may well be relevant, and is worth reading. It is very comprehensive and the author has obviously put a lot of effort into writing the blog. They provide a number of links to other sites which might be useful. However, there is no obvious indication of when the blog was written, so it is not possible to know how old it is. Also, it seems to offer a lot of information related to engineering and may not mention careers in marketing.