Sponsored content: created in partnership with Morrisby.
For school leavers, choosing the next step has always been a daunting task. But in an era of increased uncertainty, getting the right advice about finding a career path feels especially important.
Morrisby is an independent careers education, advice and guidance service with more than 50 years’ experience of supporting young people in their decision-making. Used by more than 1,500 schools in the UK and abroad, the service works by building a comprehensive profile for each student, based on a series of psychometric assessments.
Students undertake a timed aptitude test designed to measure their strengths and logical ability, followed by questionnaires taking into account personality and aspirations. Once their profile is built, sophisticated algorithms suggest potential matches for careers, subjects or degrees, and students can read more about the skills and experience required to get them there.
Morrisby careers advisers Jo Carrington and Katherine Skinner work to ensure that the advice and job information is kept up to date, and provide one-on-one support to students where needed.
“Our careers interviews will typically involve giving students feedback on their assessment results, before talking with them about what they want to do in the future – may that be which subject choices to take for sixth form, or where to go on to post-18. Then we write an action plan together,” Carrington explains.
The Morrisby Profile tool will usually recommend an initial list of 12 career choices and subjects , but users are free to retake assessments should their interests change. Additional tests can help determine personal motivation drivers and which options might give the most job satisfaction. “We can look at factors including salary, mobility, leisure time, wanting to make a difference to other people,” says Skinner. “Study interests are also really relevant to young people who are thinking about university education and their first degree.”
In recent years, external factors such as economic instability and the Covid-19 pandemic have had a significant influence on student career aspirations. According to Skinner, an increasing number of users have inquired about nursing qualifications, for example. “We’ve also seen a real trend towards students and adult learners thinking about vocational degree courses, as well as higher and degree-level apprenticeships,” she says. “They want to choose a course that’s going to give them job opportunities at the end.”
Morrisby Profile has the additional benefit of introducing young people to careers paths they might not have heard of or come across before, Carrington adds: “A really important part of our job is to say to students, ‘you might be under-represented in higher education or in a particular area of work, but that doesn’t mean it’s not open to you’.”
Crucially, Morrisby experts can advise students on how to develop skills that will make them adaptable to the fast-evolving job market and resilient to change. “Young people today have more information at their fingertips than ever before – but making sense of it all can be difficult,” says Carrington. “That’s something we’re here to support them with, day in, day out.”
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