Career planning during your studies

Career planning can be a conscious activity, but in part also takes place during your studies without you always noticing it! For example, you will develop different employability skills throughout your studies, such as teamwork, problem analysis, problem solving, time management, etc.

Working life themes are also included in the curriculum in your studies. For example, when you are observing and structuring certain phenomena from different perspectives and analyzing what is going on, you are developing useful analytical and observation skills for later. Skills are accumulated through various forms of study, such as group work, independent tasks, essay writing, seminar presentations, etc.

If you are not so sure what skills you are developing exactly, checking the learning outcomes of your courses can help you to understand and identify your learning and the skills you developed. In reality what is learned is often much deeper and more complex than the subject of a single course.

Try, take a look and discover!

To understand what the right career path could be for you, it’s important to try out different things and different perspectives: to test the water so to speak. You can attend events, and chat with people from different fields, for example, or participate in a hobby or in voluntary activities, join a student association, or work during the summer or do part-time work next to your studies.

It is also worth thinking about the work in your field of study in a broad sense during the studies: the possibility of doing so-called basic tasks in an organization or sector of interest may lead to expert work with the same employer later. Grass-roots experience is often valuable if the same activity is later developed into an expert role. Skills can often be applied in quite different tasks, and a motivating task for the future can be found in an industry or employer whose existence was not even known at the beginning of the studies.

Student projects offered by employers are often conducted as part of a course. A project task can involve developing a new technological solution, organizing a cultural event or updating a service, for example. Demola is an independent organization that passes on student project opportunities from employers, and offers challenges to students, but employers can also offer projects directly to the university.

Develop your ideas and expand your network

Develop your ideas about future opportunities and expand your network already within the Universities community. Via the general working life events and those organized by student associations or degree programmes you can hear career stories and job descriptions from different fields and hear about other people’s career paths. Visiting lecturers, teachers drawing from their own experiences and fellow students who already are employed open new perspectives as well. Keep your eyes and ears open and don’t be afraid to ask questions!

A network can consist of many different people: people you met through university or working life events, but also through hobbies, volunteer work, or neighbors, friends, etc.

Discussions on study content and working life situations will connect theory with practice and give you more ideas for what comes after studying. Together with others, your understanding of the Finnnish sociey and jobmarket, as well as your routes and opportunities, will develop.

Support for your career planning

The transition from studies to work may sometimes seem to be a major change. It often makes it easier to think about the future after graduation in small pieces from time to time at different stages of study. We offer different ways to support you with this:

• You may contact the teaching and counselling staff at your degree programme, and the PSP guidance, for example, offers possibilities where your plans can be considered and weighed against future goals.
• An individual career counselling session is a free private counselling discussion about career planning themes with a career counsellor. These themes can include, for example, applying for an internship, approaching graduation, identifying your skills, employment and job opportunities.
• The career planning self-study material on the Moodle learning platform includes materials, tasks and links to support independent reflection. The themes of the self-study material include self-knowledge – identifying your skills, career stories and information about working life, career planning, job search and networks, job interviews and legal rules for working life. You can access the Moodle platform using your tuni credentials. A password is not required for the use of the self-study material.