A student's view of how to use Prospects Planner - Louise Hurford

I am a second year student who has used Prospects Planner to see how user friendly and useful it is. I would recommend any one who is unsure about what they want to do to give it a try, it is quite fun too!

Do remember though that Prospects Planner is only a computer package and it can not be 100% accurate. Therefore, do not take it too seriously if it decides you have the profile to be a zookeeper, or an astronaut! Prospects Planner simply gives you an idea of what career areas may suit you.

Here is a step by step guide of what the program involves:

1. The program initially determines your personal profile, by defining your general skills, personal skills, interests and motivations.
2. You are asked to rate certain activities depending upon whether you would like to do them in your job. I found that it was easiest to ignore the top rating and divide the activities between whether you wouldn't mind doing them and those that you never wanted to do!
3. Then you can review those activities you have chosen and define two or three that you feel that you would be most capable or enjoy doing in your job for your top rating. You can click on the activity and press amend, which allows you to change your rating.
4. From your personal profile the program produces a pie chart showing which career areas are more likely to be relevant to you.
5. The program then allows you to explore specific career options and discover whether they are compatible with your personal profile.
6. Finally, the program even assesses whether you have the right qualifications for the job, the likelihood of your application being successful and points you in the right direction with references to relevant organisations.