Pathways – Career Development Programme

Career Pathways programme for professional service teams.

Open for nominations January 2020

Pathways provides colleagues within professional services departments the opportunity to increase their self-awareness, learn and develop new skills and create knowledge so that they can define their career pathways.

Programme aims & benefits

The programme aims to prepare individuals who wish to define their career aspirations by helping them to:

  • Identify strengths and development opportunities
  • Understand what they want from their career
  • Identify opportunities to assist in achieving the identified career pathway
  • Provide practical skills in CV writing, applying for roles and attending interviews

The programme will also bring benefit to the wider university by providing attendees greater connections from other areas, while also developing skill levels in a variety of roles across the institution.

 Content

  • Introduction and Overview
    • Motivational factors
    • Strengths and Development Needs
    • Enhancers and inhibitors
    • Learning styles
    • Signposting opportunities
    • Development Goals – Personal pathway
  • CV writing
    • Purpose of a CV
    • What to include, what not to include
    • Personal statements
    • Promoting yourself – Online
  • Making the application
    • Identifying transferrable skills
    • Providing examples of essential criteria/skills
    • Use of language in applications I/we
  • Interview skills
    • Split into 2 sessions
    • Types of interviews
    • What to expect and how to prepare
    • Giving a good interview
    • Personal presence
    • Structuring answers and questions
  • Putting it into practice
    • Mock interview and feedback

Key underpinning principles

The key underpinning principles of the programme

Self-Awareness: Those who know their strengths and development opportunities, leading to high self-awareness leads to humility rather than overconfidence. Self-awareness is a predictor of overall success. To know where you want to go and to understand strengths and weaknesses self-awareness is required

Personal responsibility: Taking conscious control of your responses to the events and circumstances in your life. You are responsible for yourself, whether you like it or not. What you do with your life and what you have done already is up to you. You are nevertheless responsible for how you think, act, and feel in response to those things. Your career pathway is an area where you need to take responsibility

Programme Commitments

The programme consists of workshops where the participants’ full commitment will be critical to the programme’s overall success and to ensure the full benefits from participation. Once a person is confirmed on the programme, detailed joining instructions for each element will be forwarded by the Learning and Organisational Development team ahead of each activity.

Workshops: Each nominee will need to ensure that all workshop dates can be accommodated in their diary. This time should be agreed with line managers ahead of confirming the request to attend and, once confirmed, safeguarded to facilitate attendance.

Workshop Dates:

Workshop 1       Introduction                         Monday 3rd February 2020              0930-16.30

Workshop 2       CV Writing                           Wednesday 11 March 2020              0930 – 2.00

Workshop 3 /4    Making an Application        Wednesday 1 April 2020                  0930-16.30

and Preparing for Interview

Workshop 5       Interview Skills                    Wednesday 29 April 2020                 0930-16.30

Mock interviews           19 and 20  May individual times will be arranged

Workshop 6      Putting it into practice         Thursday 4 June                                09.30 -11.30

Personal feedback       Thursday 4 June – individual time to be arranged

Optional programmes

  • Personal 1:1 1hr coaching session based on the GROW model – any point across the programme
  • Presentation Skills – Monday 20 April 2020 0930-12.30
  • Personal Presence – Wednesday 13 May 2020 0930-12.30
  • Assertive communication – Wednesday 8 April 2020 0930-12.30

We would like your final Pathways nominations to be emailed to Learning and Development (ldev@kent.ac.uk) by Friday 17 January 2020, to those accepted on the programme will get joining instructions on the 21 January 2020.