Introduction and guidance

Introduction and guidance

Planning a better future is an introductory course for anyone considering changing jobs, wondering how to move up the ladder or return to work after a break, and those who might be looking to aspire to better things.

Each section of the course offers short, interactive quizzes to test your knowledge and provide you with the opportunity to earn a digital badge.

Successful completion of the course will enable you to gain a suite of online badges and a statement of participation. The badges are validated by the Social Partnership Network (SPN), a group of organisations with a shared commitment to extending education opportunities to all those that wish to benefit. These courses do not carry any formal academic credit. However, they do provide a way to help you progress from informal to formal learning.

Planning a better future is part of a suite of six free SPN-badged courses that aim to provide you with an opportunity to engage with learning informally, studying as much or as little of the course and at your own pace.

Guidance for accessing alternative formats

You can download this section of the course to study offline. The alternative formats offered that will best support offline study include Word, PDF and ebook/Kindle versions of the materials.  The other alternative formats (SCORM, RSS, IMS, HTML and XML) are useful to those who want to export the course to host on another learning management system.

Although you can use the alternative formats offline for your own convenience, you do need to work through the online version of the course for full functionality (such as accessing links, using the audio and video materials, and completing the quizzes).  Please use the downloads as convenient tools for studying the materials when away from the internet and return to the online version to ensure you can complete all activities that lead to earning the section badge.

In order to access full functionality in the online course, we recommend that you use the latest internet browsers such as Internet Explorer 9 and above and Google Chrome version 49 and above.

If you have difficulties in streaming the audio-visual content, please make use of the available transcripts.

Structure of the course

This course consists of three blocks, with each block focusing on a particular aspect of planning a better future:

1. How did I get here?, which helps you to take stock of where you are by exploring the roles you play in life, reflecting on your experiences – both positive and negative – recognising your achievements and identifying your strengths, weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats you face.
2. Where do I want to go?, which helps you to move forward by exploring the changes you want to make, enabling you to gather information, helping you to consider what options are available, make good decisions and to define and refine your goals.
3. How do I get there?, which helps you to make sound decisions, set realistic goals and create feasible action plans. You will also receive useful advice on the recruitment process, and on how to complete job applications, write CV and covering letters, and prepare for interviews and their aftermath.

You’ll note from Figure 1 that the blocks can be thought of as a continuous process involving taking stock, exploring opportunities, setting goals and taking action.

Figure 1 The process of planning for a better future

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Three boxes arranged in a circle, with arrows from each box pointing to the next one, showing a continuous process. The boxes are labelled ‘How did I get here?’, ‘Where do I want to go?’ and ‘How do I get there?’.

Figure 1 The process of planning for a better future

Together they amount to approximately 15 hours of study time. Each block has a mixture of reading, video clips, activities and quizzes that will help you to engage with the course content.

A further section, Taking my learning further, will enable you to reflect upon what you have learned within this course. It also directs you to relevant websites and resources, which further relate to the development of your learning and career prospects.

Once you have studied a block, you will be asked to complete a short online quiz of no more than five questions per block. This helps to test and embed your learning. If you pass the quiz (and you do get more than one attempt!), you will be awarded with a downloadable badge for that block.

Planning a better future is designed to allow you to dip in and out of the resources and collect badges as you wish, so that you can study in small chunks to fit around your work and life commitments. If you choose to complete all blocks of Planning a better future and collect the full set of badges, you can download a statement of participation that recognises your achievement. You may find this useful to show your employer as evidence of your learning. For more information on how to obtain your badges, read What is a badge?

Why study this course?

Lynne Johnson, one of the contributors to this course, will now give you a bit of background into why you might like to study this course.

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Transcript

Hello, I’m Lynne Johnson, and I’m one of the careers advisors at The Open University. Welcome to the Planning a better future course. By studying this course, you’ll be taking your first steps into developing a better future for yourself.

There may be many reasons why you’ve chosen to study this course. It might be to help you think about where you're going in your career, and what you’d like to achieve, or simply for personal interest, and to develop your confidence as a learner.

If you complete the short assessment at the end of each section, you'll be able to collect badges. These virtual badges provide a form of recognition for your learning and you can display them on your social media profiles – for example LinkedIn and Facebook.

Planning a better future is made up of three sections. In Section 1, you will consider how you got here, reflecting on your roles in life, your confidence in those roles, and positive and negative experience you've had; and realising your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Section 2 will look at where you want to go, and the changes you want to make. This section will enable you to gather information and consider what options are available to you and lastly, Section 3 covers how to get to your planned destination. This involves creating your own action plan, looking up possibilities of work experience, voluntary work, networking, and creating contacts. It also considers how to compete job applications, and prepares you for interviews. Finally, you will look at using social media to aid in networking.

At the end of the three sections, you will find information on next steps, which will signpost you to relevant websites and resources relating to further development of your learning in relation to planning a better future.

We do encourage you to study every section of this course, as each section is relevant to the next one, and often refers to activities previously carried out. The course is flexible, and there’s no time limit for completion. You can take it in small chunks, working whenever you like.

We recommend you try to engage with all of the sections in order to receive a statement of participation at the end, which recognises the learning outcomes you have met. You can then show this to your employer as evidence of your learning, if you wish.

There are guided activities throughout the course, which will help you to reflect upon your own practise, and a range of interactive quizzes at the end of each section, which gives you the opportunity to earn your badge for that section. You might find it useful to talk about your work in this course with a friend, partner, or work colleague. It might help you to stay motivated, and also give you new ideas.

I do hope you enjoy the course, and I wish you luck for your future career development.

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The guided activities throughout this course will help you to reflect on your life-long and life-wide experiences to help you to plan for a better future. Throughout the course you will find activities that ask you to write down your thoughts and feelings based on the issues being discussed. There will be a few simple questions that encourage you to focus your thinking. It would be helpful for you to spend some time thinking about what you have learned within each section, and how it relates to your current situation and future goals.

These activities are not there to test you, but designed to help you reflect in more detail upon what you have read. These activity spaces are entirely for your own use to help you recognise what you have learned. Nobody else will see what you write here. The aim is to help you become more reflective, by bringing together aspects of both your personal and work experiences so you can review and learn from them.

Here’s an interview with Daniel Morrissey about combining work and study.

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Transcript

Lynne Johnson

Hi, Dan. Thanks for joining us today. Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing at the moment.

Daniel Morrissey

I’m a trainee quantity surveyor for a company called Willmott Dixon and I’m also at university part time one day a week.

Lynne Johnson

Which university are you at?

Daniel Morrissey

Liverpool John Moores University.

Lynne Johnson

And are you also working with Willmott Dixon in Liverpool?

Daniel Morrissey

Ah, no. I’m working with Willmott Dixon in Birmingham. But I started university in Liverpool. So, because I knew all the lecturers and everything, I thought I’d stay at Liverpool University.

Lynne Johnson

And so what’s your career goal in the end?

Daniel Morrissey

To be a quantity surveyor. Long term aim, is to be a commercial manager.

Lynne Johnson

So it sounds like not only are you thinking about being a quantity surveyor, but you’ve even got a longer-term goal in mind.

Daniel Morrissey

Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, yeah.

Lynne Johnson

And how did you decide that being a quantity surveyor was going to be right for you?

Daniel Morrissey

My friend’s dad was a quantity surveyor, and I used to always be around their house and he used to be saying how good his job is, what he used to do and everything, and it seemed like it was quite interesting. So that was what I first thought about being a quantity surveyor and then I looked it up myself and it seemed something that I’d quite enjoy, because it’s a lot to do with maths and math was my best subject at school. So I decided then go down the route of being a quantity surveyor.

Lynne Johnson

And when you heard your friend’s dad talking about being a quantity surveyor, what bits of it was it that really attracted you to that?

Daniel Morrissey

There was quite a few bits, it was on site as well, which interested me as well, because I didn’t want to work somewhere where I was always in the office and he was always going out for meetings with clients and it seems like every day wasn’t the same, every day was different and that was something that I wanted to do when I decided about what job I wanted. So I knew I wanted to do a job that wasn’t the same every single day and quantity surveyor seemed like the right role.

Lynne Johnson

And were there other careers you were considering at that time?

Daniel Morrissey

There wasn’t at the time, because I was only just working out what I wanted to at A levels and stuff like that. So I didn’t really think that far ahead at that age.

Lynne Johnson

OK. So you started to make this decision to become a quantity surveyor at the time when you were doing your A levels.

Daniel Morrissey

Yeah. Yeah.

Lynne Johnson

So once you’d made a decision to become a quantity surveyor, did you apply straight for university at that point?

Daniel Morrissey

No, I didn’t. I decided to do it a different route, and become a trainee quantity surveyor for a PQS firm and it was at the time when there was a recession. So unfortunately, I got made redundant.

But then I decided to do it through university and I went to university for two years, full-time and then I decided now was the right time to become a trainee quantity surveyor, and actually work at a company. So I decided to do my last year part-time, and work for Willmott Dixon doing, like gaining experience.

So it’s helped me, because I can actually relate to my course and everything that the lecturer is talking about, and trying to explain, I can see it from a practical point of view, as well as from a written point of view.

Lynne Johnson

So it sounds like your plans really changed from the beginning, when you started as a trainee surveyor and then that didn’t go to plan, and you lost your job at that point. I mean how was that at that time? How did that feel?

Daniel Morrissey

At the time when I got my redundant, I was panicking and everything but then I spoke to my manager at the time and he said that due to the construction industry at that present moment, he said it’s best to go to do a degree full-time and that’s what I did and I’m glad I did that as well, in a way, because I got time to think more about my university, and the assignments, and exams and then it all worked out for the good in the end.

Lynne Johnson

So whilst at first it felt a bit, oh my goodness, this isn’t going to plan, after getting a bit of advice from someone in the industry, you actually reflected that a different route could get you there just as well and how do you feel about what you’re doing at the moment? Are you enjoying it?

Daniel Morrissey

Yeah, I’m really enjoying it at the moment, because I’m working four days a week. But then I’ve got that one day a week where I’m at university where I can still speak to lecturers, and gain more knowledge about the dissertation I’ve got to do, or any assignments that I’ve got to do. It’s a good balance, I think.

Lynne Johnson

So you find that the two things really complement each other-- the working and studying that subject alongside it.

Daniel Morrissey

Yeah. Yeah.

Lynne Johnson

So what skills do you think you particularly gained from working alongside studying?

Daniel Morrissey

I think I’ve gained people skills, and how to speak to different types of people – from subcontractors to my colleagues and I think that’s quite helped me and the knowledge and experience I’ve gained from doing work experience, and doing work, working and doing that part time, degree part time, I think I’ve gained a lot more knowledge and experience doing it that way as well.

Lynne Johnson

So if you want to become a quantity surveyor, what are the most important skills you need for that role?

Daniel Morrissey

I think you’ve got to be very organised, and keep on top of everything knowing what work you’ve got to do in the next week, or the week after. I think you’ve got to be quite motivated as well, because the jobs are maybe for a year. The project’s maybe for a year, or maybe two years some times. So you’ve got to keep staying motivated, and seeing the end goal, which is very important.

Lynne Johnson

You mentioned that you had advice from your friend’s dad, and you also spoke to your manager when that job hit redundancy. What other kind of career advice have you had? Who else has kind of given you support in your career planning?

Daniel Morrissey

Well when I was applying for the job at Willmott Dixon, I’d got advice off my lecturer to see what kind of, what to write in a cover letter, and how to make myself come across and I also went to a career zone which is at the university and they showed me how to write a good CV, because mine was too long at the time and they shortened it down, and showed me how to present all my work experience and my grades. I think that really helped. It was beneficial.

Lynne Johnson

So it sounds like through your career planning, you’ve had a number of sources of advice all the way through and some of them have been the more formal kind of careers advice, but also just advice from friends, people you’re working with, and also your lecturers.

Daniel Morrissey

Yeah. Yeah.

Lynne Johnson

And looking forwards, I mean, how do you think your university career and this work placement will make a difference to you actually finding work?

Daniel Morrissey

I think it will help massively, because I’ve got the experience, well I’ll have the experience and then I’ll also have the degree, which will help me with the knowledge of my role and also I’ll be able to deal with difficult situations, because I may have had them before. So I know how to adapt and change situations to make them more beneficial.

Lynne Johnson

And is there anything that concerns you in that kind of forward planning? Any barriers you see that might be standing in your way to you moving forwards?

Daniel Morrissey

Only that it’s I know that I have to do work outside of my job in university to make sure that I complete my assignments on time, and revise my exams and I think that’s the only real barrier at the moment.

Lynne Johnson

So it’s really just the difficulty of kind of planning your time well, and making sure that you do well at both your studies and also the commitments of working alongside that.

Daniel Morrissey

Yeah. Yeah.

Lynne Johnson

So how are your managing to pay for your training?

Daniel Morrissey

Willmott Dixon are funding my training at the moment. So they’ll pay for my degree and also they’re paying for my RICS, which is the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. So that’s good.

Lynne Johnson

Great and that’s the accreditation you need, isn’t it, to actually call yourself a professional chartered surveyor in the end and is that normal that a company in construction would help fund your training?

Daniel Morrissey

Yeah, yeah. It is in the construction industry.

Lynne Johnson

Great. Thank you very much for your time today, Dan. That’s been really interesting.

Daniel Morrissey

That’s great. Thank you.

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The following interview demonstrates the importance of support from mentors and family.

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I’m Robin Howard. I’m directly responsible for menswear and childrenswear at Boden. Boden is a direct mail company based in London, and we sell clothing around the world, basically. Our main markets are America and the UK.

What I cover and the bits that I enjoy the most I suppose are what I would call the creative side, the idea of creating things, be it clothing or whatever. Even down to a colour palette, choosing colours, I find, I’ve always found really quite exciting. I like that vitality. That’s the thing that’s kept me alive, I suppose, for 50 odd years.

I think I was always creative, I was quite very artistic. I could draw. I followed in my mother’s footsteps and I did art for O-level, certainly. And I was always sketching, drawing things, cars or hands. I used to draw my hands all the time. I don’t know why. But I never really understood it. I didn’t think of it of something I could use in a career. It was just something that I enjoyed.

I did flounder, actually. I didn’t know what to do when I left school. I had no idea. And in fact, when I did leave school eventually I didn’t go to university because I felt I wanted to get out there and get on. I actually worked as a builder, as a plasterer’s mate and did bricklaying and plastering and all sorts of stuff for about six to nine months, which I really enjoyed. Because it was kind of creating something. I suppose that was pushing me in that direction.

And my father was an accountant and he said, well if you can’t decide on anything else to do go and be an accountant. So I went to Poly and I went for a term and failed the exam, thank god, by one point. And so they kicked me out, which I was very pleased about. Because my father had forced me, in a sense, press ganged me into going to do it. In failing I walked out of that door feeling pretty good, actually. And if I’d gone down that route it would’ve been a hideous disaster.

From that point I kind of felt I should go into retailing. I don’t know why. Something just told me that that’s what I should do. Harrods, bless them. There was a woman there who I met, she was the personnel director who interviewed me first time round. And she kind of took a shine to me in the nicest possible way. And she, in fact, became my first mentor. And she made me work on the shop – well, I worked as a stockroom boy, basically. You know, sweeping the floors and putting stock away down in the dungeons of Harrods’ building in London.

Then I became what they call an executive trainee there. So I kind of fell into that quite by luck. But the thing that got me going was this woman.

My wife, I have to bring her into it. Again, it probably sounds a bit twee, but we live on the Isle of Wight, this company is based in London. For 10 years I’ve spent five days a week in London and the weekend at home. I could never have done that without that trust. And she understands that I really, really enjoy this job. And actually, what’s the point in getting in the way of that?

My highest point in my career, which sounds really corny, is working here at Boden. Because what I’ve been able to do here over the last 10 years is pull all the kind of experience that I’ve had around the world – because I’ve worked in various countries – together, and help build this business. So I’m sitting on the top of the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done. And I absolutely love it.

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Learning outcomes

After completing this course you will be able to:

• reflect on where you are now and where you would like to be
• understand the impact of change for you and what options are open to you
• identify your goals and action that you can take next to reach them.

Finally, we hope that you will enjoy your study on the course as well as finding it useful when planning for a better future.

Before you begin

Spend a few moments thinking about your current learning needs and opportunities by doing Activity 1 below.

References

Acknowledgements

This free course was written by Neil Murray (lecturer at The Open University). Contributions were made by Clare Riding (Head of Careers and Employability Services at The Open University), Lynne Johnson (Careers Advisor at The Open University), Louisa Smith (Projects Officer at Unionlearn) and Rachel Bennet (Learning Services Officer at Prospect Union).

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated in the acknowledgements section, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit:

Images

Introduction and guidance: © Wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com.

Video

Why study this course?: Lynne Johnson: © The Open University 2016; careers adviser interview with trainee: © The Open University 2016; Robin Howard: iCould, http://icould.com/ videos/ robin-h/, https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by-nc-nd/ 3.0/.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.