Creating a Record of Achievements

Hopefully you’re now starting to think about the area of the industry that most interests you. Even if the final decision on your chosen career route is a long way off, there’s plenty you can you be doing in the meantime, to help you prepare for your application to university, an apprenticeship scheme or work.

A Record of Achievements – An Achievement in Itself

It’s never too early to start keeping a record of your achievements, work experience and additional activities. Your academic qualifications are important but employers, universities and the organisations that offer apprenticeships want to hear about what you’ve done and the skills you’ve developed in the process, to support your application. Taking the initiative to build a record of achievement will also show your future employer (regardless of the sector your chosen career falls under) that you have a positive attitude and are proactive. This will improve your confidence and self-awareness for when you start applying.

Creating a record of your experience and achievements doesn’t have to take up a huge amount of time. You can gather a range of evidence as you go along, such as references you may have received from employers, work experience placements and voluntary activities or even photographs/ brief videos of your school projects.

Get Organised!

Creating this record and keeping it up to date will:

• provide an instant source of evidence of your wider experiences, to help you stand out to future employers. Completing this online course is one piece of evidence you could add now!
• help you reflect on what you’ve done, what skills you’ve used in the process. If you’ve produced a great group presentation at school, you’ve demonstrated that you can communicate well and are able to work as an effective member of a team; both essential skills for a successful career in property.
• help you think ‘what next’ to prepare you for your chosen career path. You can set yourself goals for the future and decide what other kinds of experience might be useful to help you reach them. You could find out where you can gain further advice and experience, for example looking at what work experience is on offer at local property companies.

To help you get started, one of our current 1st year students on the BSc in Real Estate at the Henley Business School, has shared their own Record of Experience and Achievement. You can view this here. As you can see there are lots of entries in this record that date back over 8 years and your starting point may look very different.

Why not start to build your own!