Devon County Council has introduced a digital vocational profiling tool to support young people in obtaining high quality careers advice.
It provides an online profile to young people aged 12 years-old and upwards to identify job interests, aspirations, what they feel they enjoy or are skilled at, work experience, achievements and what type of support helps them best.
It can also help them keep track of their goals, sharing responsibility for maintaining the document with their school or college.
The council said it believes the tool will help young people, their schools and employers.
It is currently being rolled out to all secondary schools in Devon.
Identifying job interests
Debbie Stafford, the council’s senior economic development officer, said: “Vocational profiles have been around for a while and are a great way to identify a young person’s interests, achievements and what sort of job they’d like to have as an adult.
“But the online vocational profile tool that we’re encouraging schools and colleges in Devon to use with their pupils will describe a fuller and more individual profile, with more detail that is personal to them and using a format that is easier to use.”
She added: “With support of the Careers Hub and Gatsby Benchmarks, there are a lot of schools doing good work with their pupils to encourage them to think about what they want to do once they’ve left school, and about their future careers.
“But because careers is not part of the national curriculum, there’s little consistency around language, quality or time spent on advice and guidance across schools; so when thinking about an individual’s best next steps, pupils in one school may have an advantage over pupils in another school.”
