Occupations / Career Profiles / Sector Information
Introduction
Occupational and sector information can be useful to either find out more about specific jobs if you have something in mind, or as a research tool if you are not sure what you want to do.
When using this information it is worth bearing in mind a few things. Firstly, any classification of job titles will never be complete: people will always do jobs that cut across specific job titles, new occupations will emerge and some will always be too diverse to classify neatly (see sectors for more details). Secondly, there is a lot of important information about jobs beyond descriptions and salary. Prospects’ occupational information, for example, covers:
- Job description
- Salary and conditions
- Entry requirements
- Training
- Career development
- Typical employers/vacancy sources
- Related jobs
- Case studies
- Contacts and resources
These are all things that you may want to think about. Concentrating on one or two elements will not give you a balanced assessment.
Occupational, sector and professional association information is set out below. All should help in your research.
Occupational information
Prospects has over 400 different graduate jobs profiled: www.prospects.ac.uk/links/occupations. Each is written and researched by careers professionals usually working within the university sector and the profiles are updated every two years.
Either use the occupational groupings to look up professions or use the A to Z job titles list. The ‘related jobs’ link may help you to navigate around similar occupations. Profiles are available as PDF files if you want to print any out. Reference copies are held in Careers.
Connexions’ website includes information on both graduate and non-graduate careers: www.connexions-direct.com/jobs4u/.
Careers Advice from Directgov has over 700 short job profiles: http://careersadvice.direct.gov.uk/helpwithyourcareer/jobprofiles
Sector information
Job titles work fine for well-established careers but often don't reflect the sheer diversity of what people do in their work. New professions are slow to appear on the careers information radar and in some of the more contemporary sectors such as media and smaller businesses they fall short because many people have multiple roles.
The Sector Briefings in Prospects go some way to addressing these pitfalls and provide useful overviews of some key areas: www.prospects.ac.uk/links/sectorbs. Free print versions of these are available in Careers, Bishop Otter Campus.
The communities page on Prospects also draws together information about sectors and related jobs / study options: www.prospects.ac.uk/links/communities.
A resource for students on creative courses is Transition Tradition. It is aimed at the transition between education and employment for those on non-vocational courses and includes articles from previous students and a directory of organisations: www.transitiontradition.com
Professional associations
All the links above will detail professional associations linked to particular careers and sectors. These are valuable organisations for information about particular careers. University of London Careers also give details of professional associations by sector: www.careers.lon.ac.uk/output/page212.asp?node=7.
Labour market information
You may find it beneficial to have a look at the labour market information page for more details about current trends in work.
Page updated: December 2007