Study UK: Preparing for work
Boost your career with essential job search and employability skills with Study UK
Duration
3 weeksWeekly study
4 hours100% online
How it worksDigital upgrade
Free
Study UK: Preparing for work
Navigate UK recruitment processes with ease and broaden your career prospects
Unlock your potential and kickstart a fulfilling career journey with this comprehensive course tailored for international students looking to join the UK job market.
Gain essential skills that not only make you job-ready but also prepare you to thrive in any professional environment.
Develop self-awareness and identify your key skills
The first part of this course taps into your sense of self to better understand your strengths and areas for growth. You’ll work through self-reflective exercises, such as skills audits and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis, to identify and develop the core competencies that make you stand out to potential employers.
By the end of this week, you’ll have a clear sense of your capabilities and how to leverage them effectively in your career path.
Build a strong personal brand and enhance your networking skills
Next, you’ll focus on building a professional identity that showcases your unique strengths and achievements.
You’ll be guided through creating an impactful LinkedIn profile, crafting memorable elevator pitches, and effectively using social media to expand your professional network.
By mastering these skills, you’ll be better positioned to make powerful first impressions and expand your career opportunities.
Navigate the recruitment process and excel in CV writing
Finally, you’ll wrap up this course by gaining a clearer understanding of the recruitment process, from crafting eye-catching CVs to tailoring cover letters for particular positions to acing application forms.
What’s more, you’ll also explore techniques for navigating your way through applicant tracking systems and preparing for various assessments and interviews.
Syllabus
Week 1
Career exploration week
Welcome and introduction
This week you'll join our Facebook Live event to meet your course facilitators. Plus, you'll take the career readiness analysis survey to see where you are on your employability journey. Let's get started.
Unlocking your potential: skills and self-awareness
This activity boosts self-awareness by helping identify your skills and strengths. You'll conduct a skills audit and SWOT analysis, learning to confidently showcase your abilities to employers.
Motivation, mindset and me
This activity focuses on identifying your career motivators and values. You’ll learn to build a growth mindset, articulate what job satisfaction means to you, and effectively demonstrate your motivation to employers.
Career action planning
This activity covers career action planning, emphasising its importance for career progression. You'll learn how to create a career action plan, set career goals, and write SMART objectives to achieve them.
Navigating university support
Learn how to navigate UK university career services and access support effectively. You’ll become familiar with key terminology, manage your expectations, and understand available resources, helping you seek support confidently.
Week 2
Career catalyst week
Mastering the job hunt
This activity provides practical tools to help you create a job search plan, find opportunities and optimise your LinkedIn profile to access hidden job markets.
The power of networking and your personal brand
This activity demystifies networking for job hunting, covering its importance, how to start and where to network. It also focuses on building a personal brand and crafting an effective elevator pitch.
CVs, cover letters and successful applications
This activity helps you understand CV and cover letter content and structure, tailoring them for specific roles. It covers different CV types and offers practical tips on what to include in a successful job application.
Navigating recruitment processes
This activity explores recruitment stages for part-time work, placements and graduate jobs. It covers assessment centres, psychometric tests and interview question types, offering strategies for interview success.
Week 3
Workforce readiness week
Work-ready essentials
In this activity, you'll learn how to navigate the first few weeks of a new job. We'll cover onboarding tips, personal well-being, remote work, finding a work-life balance, workplace etiquette and company culture.
Working across cultures
This activity helps you build cultural fluency and effective communication skills for working in diverse environments, focusing on cross-cultural relationships and global business etiquette.
Commercial awareness
This activity enhances your commercial awareness by focusing on economic, industry, and market trends. You'll learn how to make informed decisions and demonstrate your commercial knowledge to potential employers.
The future of work
This activity explores the future of work in the digital age. Learn about AI's impact, new career paths and develop adaptability, creativity, and planning skills for a tech-driven, evolving job market.
When would you like to start?
Start straight away and join a global classroom of learners. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.
Available now
Learning on this course
If you'd like to take part while our educators are leading the course, they'll be joining the discussions, in the comments, between these dates:
- 7 Oct 2024 - 25 Oct 2024
On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...
- Identify your strengths and use these to reflect on your career path
- Demonstrate a range of professional skills that can help you succeed in any workplace
- Develop an effective strategy to get the right job for you
- Collaborate, network and communicate more proficiently with people from different cultural backgrounds and in different cultural contexts
Who is the course for?
This course is designed for current international students and recent graduates who aim to navigate and enter employment in the UK, their home country, or a third country.
It supports students in identifying their skills, communicating effectively with potential employers, and understanding workplace culture.
Who will you learn with?
Nicola is an Employability Adviser at Gradcore with over 20 years of experience supporting students and graduates to achieve their potential and find work they love.
Femi Bola MBE is an Associate at Gradcore. She has over 20 years' experience working in career development and graduate employability, with a particular focus on tackling social inequality.
Rosie is the Head of International & Postgraduate Employability at Gradcore. She is passionate about enhancing the experience for international students in the UK.
Gin is an Associate at Gradcore. He is a recruitment and career coaching specialist, having previously worked for one of the UK's biggest recruitment companies.
Who developed the course?
British Council
The British Council builds connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and other countries through arts and culture, education and the English language.
We work on the ground in more than 100 countries. In 2019-20 we connected with 80 million people directly and with 791 million people overall, including online and through our broadcasts and publications.
GREAT Campaign
The GREAT campaign showcases all four corners of our nation to inspire the world and encourage people to visit, do business, invest and study in the UK.
What's included?
British Council are offering everyone who joins this course a free digital upgrade, so that you can experience the full benefits of studying online for free. This means that you get:
Learning on FutureLearn
Your learning, your rules
- Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
- Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
- Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores
Join a global classroom
- Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
- Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
- Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others
Map your progress
- As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
- Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
- Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate
Want to know more about learning on FutureLearn? Using FutureLearn
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