When you try to achieve your career or education goals, it is likely you will require one or more of the elements mentioned below. In any career interview or presentation, it is likely the career adviser will be trying to help you achieve one or more of them.

•Self-awareness in a careers & education context
What do I like, what am I good at, where are my weaknesses, what are my values? And how do I know?

•Opportunity awareness
What are the career & education opportunities out there? How do I find out about them? Lots of ways such as: relevant websites, open days, expos, courses, internships…

•Decision making skills
The ability to weigh up the many future options surrounding education and career decisions, decide on goals to pursue and then come up with a realistic and effective plan to achieve them

•Transition skills (Employability)
So you have identified career & education goals (eg. you want to get a work placement with Goldman Sachs or you want to win a place at Oxbridge), what employability/transition skills will you need in order to execute your plan and how do you develop them? Depending on the objective, these transition skills could be anything from being able to write a compelling application form or delivering a competency based interview for a job with a Blue Chip employer to being able to debate the laws of quantum physics with a university admissions tutor.