Exploring employment areas and job profiles

Diagram highlighting attributes going into career
Figure 5.2

A list of career areas is given in Table 5.1. You can see that this list is very long – so how do you choose?

Table 5.1 Career areas
Administrative and clericalManufacturing and engineering
Alternative therapiesMarketing, selling and advertising
Animals, plants and landMedical technology
Arts, crafts and designMedicine and nursing
Catering servicesPerforming arts, broadcast and media
ConstructionPublishing and journalism
Education and trainingRetail sales and customer service
Environmental sciencesScience and research
Financial servicesSecurity and uniformed services
General and personal servicesSocial services
Information technology and information managementSport, leisure and tourism
Legal servicesStorage, dispatching and delivery
Maintenance, service and repairTransport
Management and planning
(Source: National Careers Service, 2012a)

You might find it helpful in the first instance to look at the decisions taken by other carers in the following four different career areas:

  • social work
  • information technology (IT)
  • health and social care
  • nursing.

You can read and listen to their circumstances and find out more about the courses they have started, together with the other strategies they have used to gain related knowledge and experience and increase their employability.

You will then be invited to look in more detail at selected career areas outlined in Table 5.1 to explore job profiles and key skills in areas of interest to you.

Learning outcomes

Finding out about social work