Be all that you can be

Employers more often than not look for skills as well as education.

If you have been taking psychometric tests or any other recognised character development tests or courses, use what you have learned, any qualifications you have earned and any work experience that you have to produce a personal profile.

Your profile should provide evidence that you posses competencies that your potential employers are looking for. They will want some sort of evidence that you posses skills and experience for a wide range of jobs.

You should make a list of the skill and competencies that you already have. Here are some ideas of the sorts of things you might include if you think they are relevant to you:

• can you plan time effectively?
• are you good at working under pressure and to deadlines?
• how are your reading, analysing and synthesising skills for large amounts of text?
• can you work independently?
• are you adaptive to new circumstances?
• are you good at problem solving? (can you give examples?)
• are you capable of thinking originally and imaginatively? Like how?
• do you take the initiative?
• are you articulate and can you express your ideas clearly both in writing and orally?
• do you have experience presenting information in many ways, such as through seminars, under timed examinations, projects or presentations, group discussions, lab or technical reports?

All of these are potentially relevant to your potential employers. All of that said, be sure to tailor make what you are writing to suit to job you are applying for. Be honest of course, but you need not dwell too liong in your personal statement about your skills as a brick layer if you are applying for a new job as a computer programmer, say.

Both careers centres at universities and even government advice centres can help you write an appropriate CV.

Many university courses provide given the option of some kind of professional work placement, which might be an incentive (or disincentive) to take up that course.

These placements can take various different forms, the two most common being:

- A one full-year placement, most often between the 3rd and 4th semester or second and third year

And,

- Two 6 month placements one in the 2nd year and one in the 3rd year.

If you have never worked in the field that you wish to become qualified in by returning to university, a course with a work placement is an invaluable way of introducing yourself to that sort of work and will also look good on your CV when you come to apply for the sorts of job you want after graduation.

Professional work placements offer the added benefit of giving you a break from full time studying, which can get rather monotonous after a while. You could return from your work placement having had an interesting break that has provided you with new perspective and momentum to finish your studies.

There are even courses with work placements in other countries, giving an opportunity to see a bit more of the world and potentially even to learn another language if you want – always a bonus in our globalising world!

One very important thing you should check in advance of applying for a course with a work placement is age limits. Although not always the case with university courses that have implicit work placements, some work placements are open to people only up to certain ages – so you should be sure to get any potential restrictions spelled out in advance.

If you want to continue formal learning but have a child or children it may feel to you that there is no-one there to help you broaden your horizons while still raising happy and healthy offspring.

In the absence of family or a partner who can look after children in your absence, there are several childcare options available, registered with Ofsted. This guarantees that the care being offered has been inspected by experts to make sure that it is safe and of a good quality. As your child grows from a baby to toddler he or she will need different things from a carer and so you might want to use a variety of childcare providers if you are studying for a number of years.

Where a babysitter generally takes care of children in your own home, qualified childminders tend to look after your child at their own homes. All such childminders have been registered with Ofsted and it isn’t a good idea to let anyone else look after your child in this manner unless you know them very well and can trust them. Childminders are a good option for you if you want your child to be cared for in a home environment with other children, possibly of different ages.

As your child gets older there are plenty of good crèches and nurseries that he or she could attend, and some educational establishments actually have them on site, so that might be a consideration when choosing colleges or whatever.