Careers and Development
A Guide for Mentors
Welcome to our Careers and Development Toolkit.
The toolkit is designed for our mentors to help them guide and signpost young people in making informed subject and career choices.
The toolkit can be used alongside other toolkits in this series, namely:
Making an Early Start
(Years 7 to 9)
Positive Choices
(Years 10 to 11)
A Leap into the Future
(Years 12 and 13)
Guidance for Parents and Carers
Each section of the toolkits contains useful tips and tools, resources, contacts and
information to help raise educational and career aspirations.
For further information about this toolkit or to ask about other support opportunities
please contact info@positivefuturesgroup.org
An introduction video to our toolkit
CAREERS. THE MENTORING RELATIONSHIP
Mentoring is a way of enabling the mentee to gain the skills, knowledge
and confidence to make informed choices through giving them access
to impartial guidance and support.
Mentor – YOU Mentee – The Young Person
Your role as a Career Mentor?
- Share your own career path, provide guidance, inspiration, support, motivation and role modelling to young people.
- Help young people to explore careers, set goals, develop contacts and find out about resources which can help them.
- Sometimes your role may change, depending on what the young person wants to learn/find out about.
- Act as a trusted confidant and a sounding board.
- Encourages or facilitates self-reflection and learning
- Provide a safe, open, and non-judgemental learning environment. The mentee should be able to challenge and question you without fear of a negative reaction.
Some of the skills you need to be a Career Mentor
- Active listening
- Questioning to clarify and make sure the mentee has understood correctly.
- Questioning to explore additional options and consequences.
- Gently challenging your mentee to explore a wider viewpoint.
- Being prepared to act on what has been agreed with your mentee.
Also
- Always make sure you prepare in advance for mentoring sessions
What you do when you first meet with your Mentee
- Tell them the purpose of the career mentoring session
- Set out your role as a mentor
- Find out the issues the young person faces
- What they have done or achieved so far and how to build on them
- Set realistic goals and targets
- Areas in which they would find input most helpful
Below are some questions you can ask the young person as part of the mentoring sessions:
- What will give you the most value from our sessions?
- What do you want to focus on today?
- What keeps you awake?
- What is the present situation?
- What is happening now that is working well?
- What strengths and resources can you bring to this?
- Where do you want to be a year from now? 10 years from now? How will you measure success?
- What options have you considered about the situation?
- What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
- What do you enjoy about your school work/subjects?
- What do you not enjoy and why?
- What have they done already to find out about the different professional areas of interest?
- What worked, did not work and what will they do differently?
- Who is around to help them?
As you work with more young people, you will start to build a bank of useful questions which can help the young person make informed choices.
What you do when you first meet with your Mentee
- Tell them the purpose of the career mentoring session
- Set out your role as a mentor
- Find out the issues the young person faces
- What they have done or achieved so far and how to build on them
- Set realistic goals and targets
- Areas in which they would find input most helpful
It is important for you to value the young person
- As a person
- Develop mutual trust and respect
- Maintain confidentiality
- Listen to what is being said and how it is being said
- Help them to solve their own problems, rather than tell them what to do
- Focus on their development and don’t try to produce another YOU
Share this with your mentee (young person)
- Their role
- Establish how regularly they want the sessions to be held and that they decide the items for discussion.
- Clarify their goals and aspirations.
- Opportunity to reflect on the issues they face, strengths etc.
- Opportunity to explore current and future needs and next steps.
- They are not there to be told what to do, rather they have to be responsible for their own development and for any decisions they make.
- They need to be open to new ideas, exploring issues and receiving feedback.
- It is important for them to be prepared to act on what they agree with the mentor.
PRACTICAL THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP YOUR MENTEES
Before we start, please look at Appendix 1 . This will help you to understand the different entry
requirements.
Appendix 2 also provides further information about the new GCSE grading system.
And you can find out about UCAS’s tariff points to see how many points your child may need in in
order to enter the University of their choice.
UCAS has its own calculator here – you can also ask your child to use the drop-down boxes to
input their qualifications and grades, and the total will automatically be calculated. There is also a
full, in-depth guide to different qualifications here , and from Btecs to the International
Baccalaureate.
However, UCAS also advises that not all qualifications attain points, so you shouldn’t worry if
yours doesn’t feature in that guide – very few international qualifications are included, for
example.
Let’s Get Started
At the end of Year 8, young people would have tested themselves against several subjects and interest areas.
Many will know what they like and do not like, and you will find that they do well in:
- Subjects they are good at - ABILITY
- Subjects which inspire them - INTEREST
- Subjects they want to learn in detail which can help with their career choices - MOTIVATION
What we must not forget is that there are some subjects which are compulsory in secondary school. Maths and English are compulsory from Years 7 to 11.
Many will know what they like and do not like, and you will find that they do well in:
- Signpost to our other toolkits in this series. We talk about practical things they can do, to help them enjoy or improve in those subjects, such as
- Speaking to the school/their teachers, asking for additional help or for resources or work they can do at home
- Sharing their challenges with their parents and carers so they can also provide additional support
- Asking their peers who are good in those subjects to help them
- Building their confidence through online resources– BBC Bitesize has useful online resources and schools can share links to past papers online
Practical things you can do to help a young person make informed subject and career choices, includes
- Signpost the young person to doing some research into those professional areas.
- Signpost or help them build contact with people in the careers they are interested in so they can find out more about the profession, skills and qualifications, entry points, good and bad aspects of the profession and more’.
- Signpost to volunteering and work placement opportunities in the professions they are interested in
- Signpost to careers and job fairs, school subject choice days.
- Signpost to the other toolkits in this series
- Making an Early Start – Years 7 to 9
- Positive Choices Years 10 to 11
- A Leap into the Future – Years 12 and 13
- A Guide for Parents and Carers
Your organisation may also do a few things to help the young people you mentor
- Organise visits by employers so they can talk to the young people or visits to different employers
- Run careers and job fairs
- Invite parents from different professional areas to come and share their own experiences, learning and journey with the young people.
- Invite young people who you have mentored in the past to come and talk to them and share their experiences, learning and journey.
- Do careers quizzes with the young people. See the links and resources below for some ideas.
- Support them with work placement and volunteering opportunities in the organisation or through parent/carer organisations.
- Help them to prepare CVs for the jobs/professional areas they are interested in.
- Organise mock interviews – ask the young people to dress professionally and come for interviews.
- Organise University days so the young people can review university opportunities together. They can learn a lot from each other and support their peers.
A Helping Hand with CV Writing
Some useful tips when helping your child with their CV for that all important work experience placement, volunteering opportunity, internship or apprenticeship.
Some useful tips:
- Use a simple business font such as Arial, Calibri, or Verdana
- Ensure you have used the same font and letter size throughout
- Use bold or italics to emphasise text, such as job roles, rather than underlining
- Use bullet points, numbering and dashes to format content
- Ensure new paragraphs, bullet points and headings are all in line with each other and of a consistent style
- Aim for two pages in length; less is okay, more and you risk losing the reader’s interest
- Split your CV into sections and ensure those sections are obvious (e.g. Profile, Work Experience, Education)
- When listing experiences within these sections keep to a reverse chronological order, with your most recent experience/education at the top
- If a hard copy is needed use high quality A4 paper
- When reading the Job Specification decide what the most important factors are that the company are looking for and ensure that your relevant experiences for this are on the front page of your CV
CV Sections
The following are key sections to include in your CV. Make sure you build relevant
content under each section.
Personal details/header: These are standard and required by all employers, but note
that you should not include your date of birth, marital status or gender. The essentials
to include are your name, address, email address and contact number
Personal profile: This is an optional section of a graduate CV template which can be
used to show the employer you are focused and determined to pursue a career in their
field. It should appear at the beginning of your CV, be no longer than 2-4 sentences
and give an overview of your current situation e.g. “I am looking for work experience in
…”
Your education: Write in reverse chronological order, so start with your university
degree. This should be a snapshot of you as an academic e.g. your qualifications
Work experience: Include voluntary work and summer placements, extra-curricular
activities…
Interests and activities: Write about you as a person, outside of work, hobbies, sports
teams, societies/clubs, travel interests
References: Two references usually one academic and the other you’re your school,
work experience or priest…
A few more points!
- Career mentors should aim to meet together regularly to share their experiences of working with different young people.
- Those shared experiences can help another young person in making informed decisions
- Those shared experiences can be pooled together into a resource or embedded into this toolkit. It can help other young people and mentors in future.
- You can also improve your practice as you learn from your peers, including what to do more of and what to do less of.
Useful Resources
https://www.myworldofwork.co.uk/my-career-options/choosing-my-subjects
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zmskpg8
https://www.ucas.com/careers/buzz-quiz
Subject Choices tool | My World of Work
https://targetcareers.co.uk/career-sectors
https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/
https://www.truity.com/test/type-finder-careers
Useful Links
Quizlet: (https://quizlet.com/en-gb)-
Seneca Learning: https://senecalearning.com/en-GB/)-
Freesciencelessons on Youtube: (https://youtube.com/c/Freesciencelessons
Physics and Maths Tutor: (https://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/)
Sparknotes: (https://www.sparknotes.com/)
Tutor2u: (https://www.tutor2u.net/
Fast Tomato: (https://www.fasttomato.com/)
Mr Swift History on Youtube: (https://youtube.com/user/TheJonas1917
UCAS Tariff: https://www.ucas.com/ucas/tariff-calculator
Pearson career choices: https://www.pearson.com/uk/learners/secondary-students-and-parents/career-choices.html
MI5 career: https://www.mi5.gov.uk/careers/ssq
Construction careers: https://www.goconstruct.org/learn-about-construction/find-the-role-for-you/ultimate-quiz/
Psychology careers: https://careers.bps.org.uk/
Skills assessment | National Careers Service
Prospects Career Planner : https://www.prospects.ac.uk/planner
SACU Career Quiz: https://sacu-student.com/?page_id=2850
CITB – Go Construct: https://www.goconstruct.org/
NHS Find your career : https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/findyourcareer
Cogent Career Choices: https://www.cogentskills.com/careers/
WISE Campaign (Women into Science & Engineering) –My skills my life, try out the quizz:
https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/how-to-get-involved/my-skills-my-life/
Appendix 1
Understanding the different entry requirements.
You can also visit for more information: https://careerpilot.org.uk/qualifications
Level 1
GCSEs, NVQs/VQs, awards/certificates/diplomas. Vocational and work-related qualifications may be studied full or part-time inschools and colleges from the age of 14. They are offered at levels 1 to 4 and are usually ‘BTECs’, ‘Cambridge Technical’ or ‘City and Guilds’qualifications. Broad range of subjects on offer eg engineering, artand design,construction, health and social care, business, IT and
leisure. Often course work based however changes mean that somecourses now include exams or practical assessments.
Level 2
Level 3
A levels, T levels, NVQs/VQs, awards/certificates/diplomas
and other qualifications
Level
4 to 6
Level
7 to 8
Foundation Degree
Appendix 2
GCSE Grading System
The numerical grading was phased over four years, starting with the core
compulsory subjects – maths and Englis`h GCSEs – in 2017. Most of the
main subjects switched over in 2018, including the humanities, sciences
and most modern languages.
All remaining subjects such as Biblical Hebrew, Persian, Portuguese and
Turkish switched to the new grading system in 2020.
Explaining the new grades
The 9-1 grading scheme was brought in alongside a new GCSE curriculum
in England.
The highest grade is 9, while 1 is the lowest, not including a U (ungraded).
Three number grades – 9, 8 and 7 – correspond to the old-style top grades
of A* and A – this is designed to give more differentiation at the top end
