Careers advice

We can help you think through your options after university. Use the career ideas section on our website, and book a chat with a careers consultant if you need more advice and guidance on how to get where you want to be.

• Career ideas - how to start career planning, with links to self-assessment exercises to help you consider your values, priorities and personality
• York Profiles and Mentors, and What do you actually do? podcast series - find out about what graduates actually do
• York Strengths programme - identify your personal strengths to help you choose a job you will thrive in
• Talk to us - drop-ins, careers appointments, and how to book.

You may have considerable work experience already, or you may have had little opportunity for work experience in the past. Either way, you may be able to try one or more of these during your time at university, depending on your personal circumstances:

• Look for part-time work
• Get involved in volunteering
• Find some work experience or an internship
• Get involved with student activities
• Get a paid internship via York Internships (exclusive to University of York students)
• Visit employers and attend careers events, virtually or on campus

All these will help you to develop skills and explore career possibilities, and demonstrate that you are familiar with the world of work in general.

These activities will also help you to start building a network that can be useful in looking for jobs. You may already have built a network through earlier employment or family life. Use professional networking sites like LinkedIn to develop your network, and look out for events each semester where you can make contact with people in career areas you are interested in.

Under the Equality Act 2010, you are protected from age discrimination in all aspects of your employment, including recruitment, employment terms and conditions, promotions and transfers, training and dismissals.

• Acas advice on age discrimination
• Age UK has some helpful advice on ageism at work
• TargetJobs equality and diversity in graduate recruitment
• Working Families has advice and a free helpline for parents and carers.

Job applications

Information about finding jobs, including graduate vacancies

Local job vacancies on Graduate Jobs and York Press websites

Information about applying, including CVs, cover letters, interviews. From these pages you can access CareerSet for feedback on your CV, Shortlist.Me to practise video interviewing, specific tips for mature students and career changers, and information about mock interview and careers advice appointments.

Skills

Think about how to communicate your skills to employers. As a mature student you are likely to have positive characteristics such as:

• organisational skills, time management and the ability to prioritise 
• experience of coping with pressure, and juggling many tasks 
• the ability to cope with a heavy workload/commitments 
• determination, commitment, tenacity, motivation 
• experience of the working environment 
• adaptability to change/flexibility 
• self-discipline/self-reliance 
• greater customer credibility 
• experience of solving problems/using initiative 
• people skills – interpersonal, communication.

Your application should include evidence to demonstrate your skills - it is often useful to use the CAR method, see below.

Using the CAR method

CAR (Context, Action, Result) is a good way to structure the examples you give:

Context: briefly set the scene for your example. ‘In my part-time work in a busy coffee shop…’

Action: explain what you did. ‘...I demonstrated leadership skills by mentoring new employees and assisting the supervisor during busy periods...;’

Result: explain the outcome. ‘Leading to me being promoted to supervisor where I managed four colleagues and dealt with any problems that occurred during my shift.’