Your Career: Plan It, Prove It, Present It: Plan Your Career, Prove What You Offer, and Present It with Confidence

Getting work has changed. In 2025, UK graduate employers received an average of 140 applications for every vacancy, the highest since the Institute of Student Employers began counting in 1991, and its members' graduate hiring fell by 8% in 2024/25 (ISE Student Recruitment Survey, 2025). AI tools make applying quick, so many people apply for more roles; employers respond with software to sort applications and online tests to screen people before anyone reads a CV. Some now hire on evidence of skills rather than qualifications alone. Careers have widened too: apprenticeships, hybrid work, short contracts and portfolio careers (several pieces of work at once) are all normal. Career development is less a decision you make once than a skill you keep using.

Careers educators map that skill with DOTS (Law and Watts, 1977). Self-awareness: knowing what you offer and what you want. Opportunity awareness: knowing what is out there and what it needs. Decision-making: weighing the two and choosing a next step. Transition learning: making the move: finding, applying for and securing an opportunity. Sheffield Hallam University's Career Management Skills framework (2012) uses its four themes in its own words (self-awareness, opportunity awareness, action planning and job seeking), and the AGCAS Careers Education Benchmark Statement (2005), a reference point for UK universities, groups its learning outcomes under them. The Career Development Institute's Career Development Framework (2021) describes the same lifelong skill in six areas.

This module follows DOTS: Self in Lesson 1.2, Opportunities in Lesson 1.3, Decisions in the fit you judge and the actions you set there, and Transitions from Lesson 1.4 to Lesson 1.6.

One tool holds it together: Andrew Hirst's Career Planning Canvas (first published as the Job Search Canvas, adapted from Osterwalder's Value Proposition Canvas). The square is the employer: its organisational goals (what it is trying to achieve), the workplace (what it is like to work there) and the job specification (what the role needs). The circle is you: your employability components (the eight components of Andrew Hirst's Employability Success Framework, in Lesson 1.2), your role skills and experiences (the evidence you can tell as stories) and your ambitions and purpose (what you want from work). Between them sits fit: where what you offer meets what they need, and where it doesn't yet.

That is DOTS on one page. Self and Opportunities sit side by side, so you can't think about one without the other, and FIT makes the Decision visible: why a role suits you, or what you'd need to do first. Most people start with the square, bending themselves to match adverts. The canvas starts with your purpose, so the roles you chase are ones you want, then looks hard at the employer before you write a word.

Employers say self-awareness is what graduates most often lack: in the Institute of Student Employers' 2025 Student Development Survey, 54% of employers said graduates fell short on it. Many people underplay what they can do, and most lists of "employability skills" never say what good looks like.

Andrew Hirst built his Employability Success Framework at Sheffield Hallam University (2015–2018) to fix that. Its eight employability components each have basic behaviours (what any applicant should show) and strive-to-achieve behaviours (what stands out). In brief, updated for 2026:

Communication skills: basic, speaking clearly and writing professional emails and reports, including on video calls; striving, explaining complex material engagingly and persuading. Teamwork: basic, finishing your tasks to deadline and respecting others' views; striving, listening, recognising others' contributions and building team spirit. Leadership and management: basic, deciding with confidence and prioritising; striving, coordinating a group, setting expectations and resolving conflict. Problem solving and creativity: basic, working systematically and testing ideas; striving, defining the real problem and combining old and new ideas. Professionalism: basic, being punctual, reliable and honest and acting on feedback; striving, working to a high standard and delivering what you promise. IT and numeracy: basic, office software, online collaboration tools, reading tables and charts, and using AI tools responsibly, checking what they produce; striving, interpreting data and explaining what it shows. Self-management: basic, planning your time and reviewing progress; striving, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and learning from mistakes. Passion and drive: basic, aiming to do your best and using pressure positively; striving, persistence, energy and exceeding expectations.

Know a skill (something you learn and practise) from a strength (something you do well that energises you), and name your values: what matters to you about work, such as fairness or security.

For each component, give yourself a level, basic, strive or not yet, and attach your best example: where, when and what you did. "I'm a good communicator" says nothing until it is tied to a moment, and moments hide in paid and unpaid work, study, caring, volunteering and clubs.

Career Poker helps you find them. Andrew Hirst's Career Poker cards each name a kind of experience, from a part-time job to a dissertation. You pick out the cards you've done, play each one against the eight components, and see which cards prove the most and which components no card covers yet.

A not yet is useful. The conscious competence model, usually traced to Martin Broadwell (1969) and often wrongly credited to Abraham Maslow, describes four stages of learning a skill, from not knowing what you can't do to doing it without thinking. Its second stage, seeing the gap, matters most: a gap you can name is a gap you can close.

The circle shows what you offer; now look at the square. Before you apply, you need to understand what the employer is trying to achieve, what it is like to work there and exactly what this role requires. Applications that skip this step are generic, and with so many applications per vacancy, generic ones rarely get through.

Start broad with labour market information: facts about jobs, sectors, skills, pay and demand. Useful sources include job adverts themselves (read twenty in your field and note what keeps coming up), sector and professional body reports, government and official statistics, graduate careers sites, and conversations with people who do the job. Labour market information tells you whether a direction is growing, what it pays and which skills are scarce, and it keeps your ambitions realistic without shrinking them.

Then narrow to one organisation. Its organisational goals appear in its annual report, website, recent news and leaders' interviews: is it growing, cutting costs, launching something new? The workplace shows in how it describes its culture, its ways of working (office, hybrid or remote), its employee reviews and what current staff say on LinkedIn. Both help you explain why you want this job, which interviewers ask about often.

Then read the job specification line by line. Most adverts separate essential criteria, which you must show to be considered, from desirable ones, which make you stronger. Copy each criterion into a list. Most criteria map onto one or more of the eight employability components from Lesson 1.2, which helps you see which of your examples to use.

Now compare the square with the circle in a skills gap analysis. For each criterion, write your best evidence. Where the evidence is strong, you have a match. Where it is thin or missing, you have a gap. Gaps are normal: they are a list of things to do. Gaps close through experience you can create, such as a placement or internship, volunteering, a project for a local organisation, a role in a society or club, a short course, or taking on a new task in your current job. Employers value this kind of extracurricular evidence because it shows initiative as well as the skill itself.

This is where the D in DOTS happens. With matches and gaps side by side, you decide: apply now, close a gap first, or look for a role that fits better. Turn each important gap into a SMART action: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. "Get better with data" is a wish. "Complete a free online spreadsheet course and use it to take over and rebuild the hiking society's membership spreadsheet by 30 November" is an action someone can check.

Most interviews include competency-based questions, which ask for a past example: "Tell me about a time when you worked under pressure." Interviewers ask about the past because what you have done is a better guide to what you will do than what you say you would do. Without a structure, answers to these questions wander, skip the important part or end with "and it went fine".

STAR gives the answer a shape. Situation sets the scene: where and when, in a sentence or two. Task is the challenge: what needed to be done, and why it mattered. Action is what you did, step by step, and how. Result is the outcome and its benefit to others, ideally with a number or a concrete change, plus what you learned. The Action is the heart of the story and should take at least half of it. Tell it in "I", not "we": the interviewer is hiring you, not your group. If the result was mixed, say so and say what you would do differently; honest learning is still evidence.

A reliable way to build a story has three steps. First, choose a relevant achievement that proves a criterion from your job specification. Second, brainstorm or mind-map what happened under each STAR heading. Third, write a short summary for each heading, using strong action words such as organised, devised, negotiated or analysed rather than "was involved in" or "had to".

PAR (Problem, Action, Result), and its close cousin CAR (Circumstance, Action, Result), are short forms of STAR. They suit CVs, and they are especially useful when one job or project gives you several examples, because each can become its own line. To turn a story into a CV line, pick a few action words that describe what you did, build one tight sentence for each part, then read them together and edit for flow until you have three or four brief sentences, or a single line for a CV.

Some employers, especially large graduate recruiters, also use strengths-based questions: "What do you enjoy doing most?", "What energises you?", "When do you feel at your best?" These look for what you do well naturally and enjoy, so a rehearsed STAR story can sound flat. Answer them honestly and briefly, then give a quick example. Your values and strengths from Lesson 1.2 are the raw material.

Build a small bank of stories rather than one per question, starting from your strongest Career Poker cards in Lesson 1.2. Three or four strong, different stories can answer most competency questions if you choose the right angle on each.

Your CV has two readers, and it usually meets the less patient one first. Many employers use an applicant tracking system (ATS): software that collects applications and helps recruiters sort and search them. Text boxes, tables and graphics can confuse it; a single-column layout with standard headings (Profile, Education, Experience, Skills) suits software and people. Where the advert's own words truly describe what you have done, use them: "stakeholder management", not a synonym. Never add words you can't back up.

The human reader is quick. In TheLadders' 2018 eye-tracking study, recruiters spent an average of 7.4 seconds on a CV's first screen before deciding whether to read on, looking at job titles most. It measures a first keep-or-reject glance, so make the top third count.

The biggest improvement most CVs need is from duties to achievements. "Responsible for social media" describes the job; a PAR line starting with an action word says what you did and what changed. Include a number where you can: people served, time saved, money raised.

At the top, a personal statement (or profile) of 60–80 words says who you are, what you offer and what you want, aimed at one role. Rewrite it for each application.

UK CVs usually leave out a photo (except for acting or modelling), date of birth, marital status and nationality; age is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Add your right to work in the UK if it might be questioned, and check conventions before applying abroad.

Many employers also want a covering letter. Andrew Hirst's covering-letter tips keep it to three paragraphs. The first sparks interest: something you know about the organisation and why this job appeals, don't open with "Please find enclosed my CV". The second gives your key strengths and why they matter for this role, with one specific detail. The third is a polite call to action: restate your strengths and ask to discuss the role at interview. Keep every sentence to 14 words or fewer. Write the middle paragraph first, because it's the hardest; once it's good you can reuse it, adjusting it to each advert. Address the letter to a named person if you can, and get someone else to proofread it.

A LinkedIn profile is often the second thing an employer checks. Its headline should say what you do or want to do, not just "Student"; its About section can adapt your personal statement in a warmer voice.

AI tools can help you draft and check, and many employers accept that. The rule: every claim must be true, and you must be able to explain it at interview. A polished application you can't talk about will fail at the first question.

Selection has more stages than it used to, and some happen without a person in the room. Depending on the employer you may meet an online application form, online tests, a recorded video interview, a live interview by video or in person, and an assessment centre with group exercises, a presentation and further interviews. Tests vary: numerical and verbal reasoning, diagrammatic or logical reasoning, and situational judgement tests, which show you workplace scenarios and ask how you would respond. They reward practice: most test publishers and university careers services offer free practice tests, and doing a few under timed conditions makes the format familiar so your nerves don't take over.

In a recorded video interview, questions appear on screen and you have a set time to prepare and answer. Treat it like a live interview: look at the camera, keep answers structured and use your STAR stories. Check your camera, sound, light and background beforehand.

Almost every interview opens with some version of "tell me about yourself", and it's worth preparing a 60-second introduction. A simple shape: who you are now, two pieces of evidence that matter for this role, and why you want this role at this organisation. End by handing back to the listener. The same introduction, adjusted, works at a careers fair, at a networking event and in a recorded interview.

Next, predict the questions. Take each essential criterion from your job specification and write the question an interviewer would ask about it, then map each question to a story from your bank. Add the questions you are sure to meet: why this role, why us, a strength, a weakness, and your own questions for them.

First impressions and nerves matter, but they're manageable. Arrive or log in early, greet people warmly, speak a little slower than feels natural, and pause before answering; a few seconds' thought reads as care, not hesitation. Nerves are normal and usually invisible to the interviewer. Preparation is the best cure.

Finally, networking. It is building relationships with people in the field you want to join, not asking strangers for jobs. Start with people you already know, then alumni, people you meet at events and people whose work you admire on LinkedIn. Ask about their work, listen, and follow up with thanks or something useful. Many opportunities are never advertised, and the people who hear about them are the people others remember.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is software that does tasks that usually need human judgement, such as writing text, spotting patterns or making predictions. Generative AI, the kind most people have now used, produces new text, images or code from a prompt.

The most useful way to think about AI and your career is in tasks, not whole jobs. A job is a bundle of tasks. AI changes some of them a lot, some a little and some not at all, so most jobs change shape rather than disappear. That is what UK graduate employers say. In the Institute of Student Employers' (ISE) Student Development Survey 2026 (144 employers, surveyed in January and February 2026), 87% expected AI to reshape graduate and apprentice roles, and 43% said their entry-level roles had already changed, though not yet been formally redesigned. Yet 40% didn't expect AI to replace any entry-level roles over the next three years. The ISE summed it up as "reshaped not replaced": routine admin, basic data tasks and basic writing are expected to matter less.

That matters most at the start of a career, because entry-level jobs have often been built from exactly those routine tasks. What is left, and what grows, is the work that needs a person: judging what matters, checking whether something is right, talking to customers and colleagues, and deciding what to do.

The global picture is similar. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 surveyed over a thousand employers worldwide. They expected 170 million jobs to be created and 92 million displaced by 2030, a net gain of 78 million, with nearly two-fifths of the skills workers need changing over the same five years. These are employers' projections, not facts about the future. Treat any confident prediction about AI and jobs, including a headline figure, as an estimate.

So don't ask "will AI take my job?" Ask "which tasks in the role I want will change, and what does that mean for the evidence I need?" A task audit answers it. List the main tasks of your target role. For each, decide whether AI could help (you do it faster, with AI's help), AI could do much of it (with a person checking), or it needs a person, and say why. The why is the point: it shows which of your strengths the role will rely on more.

Software has sorted applications for years: the applicant tracking system you met in Module 1 is one. What has changed is how much of the sorting can now be scored, ranked and decided automatically, and how often AI is involved.

Here is where you may meet it. Application screening: software reads your CV or your answers to application questions, looks for words, skills or qualifications, and scores, ranks or filters you. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator, warns that an application "may be rejected before a human recruiter can review it". Chatbots answer your questions or ask screening questions. Online tests are often scored automatically. Game-based assessments and recorded video interviews are sometimes scored partly by software. And employers are wary of AI-written or misleading applications: in the ISE's Student Development Survey 2026, two-thirds of employers believed graduates and apprentices use AI to misrepresent their skills, up from around half in 2025.

Keep it in proportion. In the ISE's Student Recruitment Survey 2026 (155 employers, reported in October 2026), only 16% of employers said they were using AI in recruitment, and only 10% of game-based assessments were fully AI-driven. Automatic scoring is more common: in the 2025 survey, 57% of employers scored numerical tests automatically, while in-person interviews and group tasks stayed almost wholly human. Automated isn't always AI, but both can decide what happens to you.

What to do. Read the employer's careers pages and privacy notice for what they say about AI and automation. Write for both readers: a plain layout, one clear piece of evidence for each criterion, the advert's words only where they are true. Don't try to trick the software: hidden keywords and inflated claims are dishonest, and the next reader is a person.

Your rights. Since 5 February 2026, the UK GDPR (amended by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025) says that when a significant decision about you, such as rejecting your application, is made with no meaningful human involvement, the employer must have safeguards: telling you about it, letting you give your view, letting you get a person to look at it again (human review), and letting you challenge it. In its Recruitment rewired report (31 March 2026), the ICO found many employers were probably making such decisions with weaker safeguards than the law requires. The Equality Act 2010 still applies whatever tool is used, including reasonable adjustments, which Module 4 covers. This is general information, not legal advice; other countries' rules differ.

If AI takes on more routine tasks, what are employers looking for instead? Two sources agree closely. In the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, seven in ten employers called analytical thinking essential, the core skill most often named, while AI and big data were among the fastest-growing skills. In the ISE's Student Development Survey 2026, UK employers named critical thinking, AI literacy, communication and adaptability as growing in importance, with sound judgement alongside.

You already have a way to assess these. Each maps onto the eight employability components of Andrew Hirst's Employability Success Framework from Module 1. Critical and analytical thinking is problem solving and creativity: defining the real problem and testing ideas and assumptions. Communication is communication skills. Adaptability sits in professionalism, whose basic behaviours include adapting to change. AI literacy is part of IT and numeracy, where using AI tools responsibly and checking what they produce is already a basic behaviour.

AI literacy means knowing what AI tools can and can't do, using them well on real tasks, checking what they produce and protecting data. Four habits show it. Know the limits: AI tools can state wrong facts confidently and can't know what they weren't given. Use it on real work: drafting, summarising, suggesting options, practising questions. Check everything: facts, figures, sources and tone, against something you trust. Protect data: never paste in other people's personal details or anything confidential, and follow your organisation's or course's rules.

There is good news for anyone who feels behind. The same ISE survey found employers almost twice as likely to build digital literacy on the job as to recruit for it. You don't need to be an expert. You need to show you can learn, that you use AI with care, and that you bring the judgement it lacks.

The skills that hold their value are also the hardest for AI to fake in an application: a true story of how you defined a problem, persuaded someone or changed course when a plan failed. Your STAR stories already carry this kind of evidence.

You now know how AI is likely to change the role you want, where it sits in recruitment and which skills matter more. This lesson turns that into a plan, in two parts: how you'll use AI in your job search, and how you'll build evidence that you use it well.

Using AI in your job search. Most employers now accept some use of AI: in the ISE's Student Recruitment Survey 2026, 64% did, mostly for CVs and covering letters, and 82% gave applicants guidance on it, up from 55% a year before. The line is firm at online tests, interviews and assessment centres: undeclared AI in interviews was the misconduct employers reported most. Guidance differs between employers, so write your own rules. A sensible set: follow the employer's guidance where there is any; use AI to draft, check, research an organisation and practise interview questions; never let it add a claim you can't back with your own evidence; never use it where it's banned, such as in many online tests; and keep other people's personal details out of it. If an employer asks whether you used AI, tell the truth.

Building evidence. Saying "I'm good with AI" proves no more than saying "I'm good with people". The evidence is a story: a real task where you used an AI tool, checked what it produced, caught what it got wrong and decided what to keep. It can be small, such as a club's spreadsheet, a summary of feedback for a volunteer group, or a faster way to do a routine job at work. Plan it so it ends as a STAR story with a clear Action, told in "I", and a Result.

Making it happen. Turn your plan into dated actions and add them to the FIT section of your Career Planning Canvas, beside the actions you already have. Revisit your rules each time you apply: the tools change quickly, and employers' guidance is changing too.

Plans like this work for everyone. A student can use a seminar project, a returner a community group, a career changer a task from their current job, and someone in work can volunteer for a team's first trial of a new tool.

Networking has a bad name: a room of strangers swapping business cards, or a message asking someone you've never met for a job. Neither is what this module means. Here, networking is building and keeping professional relationships that help both sides: you learn about work you'd like to do, and the other person gets a thoughtful new contact and the chance to help, which most people enjoy. It is slow, small and friendly, and it starts with people you already know.

Your network has three kinds of tie. Strong ties are people you know well and are in regular touch with: family, close friends, close colleagues. Weak ties are acquaintances: course-mates, people from a club, a former lecturer, someone you met once at an event. Dormant ties are people you once knew well but have lost touch with, such as former colleagues and managers. They are often the easiest to reconnect with, because the trust is already there.

Weak ties matter more than you might expect. In a classic study, the sociologist Mark Granovetter (1973) asked professional, technical and managerial workers who had found a job through a personal contact how often they had seen that person around that time; most said only occasionally or rarely. People you see less often move in different circles, so they hear about things your close circle doesn't. Almost fifty years later, researchers tested the idea with experiments on LinkedIn involving more than 20 million users over five years (Rajkumar et al., 2022). Moderately weak ties, people with whom users shared some mutual connections but not many, did most for job mobility: more than strong ties, and more than the very weakest. It also depended on the industry: weak ties helped more in more digital industries, strong ties in less digital ones. So the message isn't "only acquaintances count"; it is that your useful network is wider than your closest circle. That matters because many roles are filled without being widely advertised, and people hear about them from other people.

Start with a network map: four lists. Strong ties, weak ties, dormant ties, and people you'd like to know (a named person, or simply "someone who does this job there"). Aim for at least ten names. Then mark who is closest to your goal, or likely to know someone who is, and choose three to contact first.

The map works whatever your situation. A student has course-mates, lecturers, part-time colleagues and alumni. A career changer has a whole previous field of weak ties. A returner has dormant ties in former colleagues and managers. Someone in work can map colleagues in other teams: internal networking counts.

Andrew Hirst's tutorial How to Introduce Yourself, written for students meeting businesses at a trade fair, sets out steps that still work. Make friendly eye contact and smile: it shows interest and confidence. Say your full name, ask for theirs and use it straight away ("Good to meet you, …"), which helps you remember it and shows you were listening. Open with something light, such as the event, the venue or the talk you've just heard. To join a group, wait for a pause and ask, "May I join you?" Then talk about what interests them: ask about their work before you talk about yours. His tips still stand: never criticise, and keep your attention on the person in front of you.

Handshakes and other greetings. In many UK business settings a brief handshake is usual: say your name first, use a comfortable grip (Andrew's notes suggest about the grip you'd use on a door handle) and let go after two or three pumps. But greeting norms vary with culture, religion, disability and setting. Some people don't shake hands at all, or not with someone of another gender; in some cultures steady eye contact can feel rude. The safe rule is to follow the other person's lead: if no hand is offered, a smile and a nod are just as warm.

From introduction to elevator pitch. In Module 1 you prepared a 60-second introduction for interviews: who you are now, two pieces of evidence and why this role. An elevator pitch adapts it to a conversation with a different goal. Andrew's Networking Tutorial gives it four parts. Who: who you are, and the one thing you want them to remember. What: what you can offer, with your evidence. Why: why you rather than someone else, or what is distinctive about you. Goal: what you'd like from this conversation, such as advice, a name or permission to follow up. Andrew wrote it for student businesses at a trade fair; for a career, the business is you. Aim for about 150 words, roughly a minute spoken. Rehearse it aloud until it sounds like you talking rather than reciting, and be ready to stop after twenty seconds if the conversation moves on.

Where to use it. Careers fairs, employer talks, professional body events, local meet-ups and online events all reward a prepared pitch. Before you go, check who will be there and choose two or three people to talk to. At online events, a good question in the chat, with your name and what you're interested in, is often the easiest way to be remembered. Afterwards, note names and what you discussed while it's fresh.

Online, networking is mostly about being easy to find and making a good first approach. After someone meets you, they will often look you up, so your LinkedIn profile is the place people check. You wrote a headline and About section in Module 1; make sure the headline says what you do or want to do, and that your photo, location and education are filled in. It needn't be long, just honest and tidy.

Finding people. Start with your map's weak and dormant ties: search for former colleagues, classmates and lecturers. Then look wider. Most universities and colleges have a school page on LinkedIn with an Alumni tab, where you can see where graduates work and what they went on to do, and find alumni in your field to ask for advice. What the tab lets you search and filter changes from time to time, so explore the page rather than following an old guide. Professional bodies, LinkedIn groups and online events in your field are other routes, and mutual connections show you who could introduce you. A shared course, employer, club or town gives you a natural reason to get in touch.

The first message. Build it in three small steps. Why them: the connection you share and what interests you about their work. What you'd like: to learn, not to be hired. A small ask: something easy to say yes to, such as a 20-minute call or two questions answered by message. Keep it short, specific and about them. A generic request is easy to ignore; a note that shows you've looked at their work is not.

Check the limits before you write. At the time of writing (October 2026), LinkedIn's Help Centre says a note on a connection request can be up to 200 characters, and that members can add a personal note to only three connection requests a month unless they pay for Premium. Limits change, so check the invitation box itself. Two hundred characters is about two sentences, so save personal notes for the people who matter most. With others, connect first and send a fuller message once they accept, or use email if you have it.

What not to do. Don't send mass connection requests, don't paste the same message to everyone, and don't ask for a job, a referral or a CV review in a first message: it asks too much of someone who doesn't know you yet. If there's no reply, one polite follow-up after a week or two is fine; after that, let it go and try someone else on your map. Silence usually means busy, not no.

An informational interview is a short conversation in which you ask someone about their work and field, to learn, not to ask for a job. It is one of the most useful things networking produces: twenty minutes with someone who does the job you want can tell you more than hours of reading, and helps you decide whether the role suits you before you apply. People often agree because being asked for advice is flattering, and because the request is small and has a clear end.

Preparing. Read their profile and their organisation's recent news, so you don't ask what you could have looked up. Write five open questions: ones that start with what, how or why rather than inviting a yes or no. Good questions cover their path into the role, what the work is really like, the skills that matter most and the advice they'd give someone in your position. Have a short version of your elevator pitch ready, because they may ask about you first.

Running it. Thank them, confirm you have twenty minutes, and keep to it: watch the clock and offer to finish on time even if it's going well. Listen more than you talk, take brief notes, and follow up interesting answers rather than racing through your list. Near the end it's fine to ask, "Is there anyone else you'd suggest I talk to?" Don't ask for a job. If there is a vacancy they'll often mention it, and anything you learn about how they hire is a bonus.

The follow-up. Within 24 hours, send a short thank-you that names one specific thing you learned and anything you agreed, such as an introduction or a link they offered to send. If they suggested someone, contact that person, and later tell your first contact how it went: people like to know their help mattered.

Keeping in touch. A relationship needs more than one conversation. Keep a simple follow-up log: who, when you spoke, what was agreed and when you'll next be in touch (in a month or two, or when you have news). Later contact needs no excuse beyond being useful or kind: congratulate them on a new role, share an article that connects to something they said, or tell them when you've acted on their advice. Giving back matters too. You may not have much to offer yet, but you can introduce two people who should meet, or help someone a step behind you. That is what makes a network work for both sides.

A selection process is the set of stages an employer uses to decide between applicants, from application to offer. The common stages are an application form or CV, online tests, a recorded video interview, a live interview (by phone, video or in person), an assessment centre and then an offer. Not every employer uses all of them: a small organisation may go straight from an application to one interview, while a large graduate recruiter may use every stage. Some stages, such as online tests, often come before any person reads your application in detail.

Each stage is testing something different. The application checks that you meet the essential criteria. Online tests measure reasoning and judgement across many applicants quickly. A recorded video interview shows how you communicate and gives first evidence of the competencies. A live interview goes deeper into your evidence and your motivation. An assessment centre watches what you actually do across several exercises. Knowing this tells you what to prepare: there is no point rehearsing a STAR story for a numerical test, or cramming facts for a group exercise.

Behind most stages sits a list of competencies: the skills and behaviours the role needs, written down so that assessors can score evidence of them. They usually come straight from the job advert's essential criteria, which you matched to the eight employability components in Module 1. Assessors typically have a score sheet with each competency, a rating scale and space to note the evidence they saw. Two things follow. First, you are scored on evidence, not on charm or confidence alone. Second, the same competency is usually tested at more than one stage, so one weak moment rarely decides the outcome.

To find out an employer's process, read its careers site (many have a "how we recruit" page), the advert and any information sent with an invitation; ask people you've met through networking; and ask the recruiter if anything is unclear. Look too for the employer's rules on AI and outside help. In the Institute of Student Employers' 2025 survey, 46% of employers had no problem with candidates using AI at some stages, mostly for CVs, cover letters and application questions, while undisclosed AI use in interviews was the misconduct employers reported most often. Rules differ and change: follow the employer's own guidance, and where there is none, treat tests and interviews as your own work. Module 2 covers scoring software and your rights.

The same thinking works inside an organisation. Many employers use interviews, tests and even internal assessment centres for promotion, so someone in work seeking a step up maps the stages in exactly the same way.

Online tests fall into two families. Ability tests have right answers and a time limit: numerical reasoning (reading tables and charts and working out answers), verbal reasoning (deciding whether statements follow from a passage), and diagrammatic or logical reasoning (spotting the rule in a sequence of shapes). Preference measures, such as personality and work-style questionnaires, have no right answers, only honest ones: they ask how you usually behave, and employers use them to see how you might fit a role. Both are psychometric tests: standardised, and scored against a comparison group of people who have taken them before.

A situational judgement test (SJT) sits between the two. It describes a workplace scenario, such as a colleague missing a deadline or an unhappy customer, and asks you to choose, rank or rate possible responses. Your answers are compared with what the employer considers effective, so the best preparation is to read the employer's values and the role description, and to answer as a sensible new starter in that role would. Read each question's instructions closely: some ask for the most and least effective response, others for a ranking. Some employers also use game-based assessments, short games that measure things like attention or how you handle risk. You can't revise for them, but knowing the format helps you stay calm.

Ability tests reward practice, and the reason is not that you become cleverer: you become familiar with the format, faster at the routine steps and calmer under the clock. Free practice tests are available from test publishers and university careers services. Do them timed, in a quiet space with a reliable connection, as you would on the day. Then the part most people skip: review every mistake and note why it happened, whether misreading the question, a slip in the arithmetic or running out of time.

For numerical questions, use four steps. Read the question first, so you know exactly what is being asked (a percentage or an absolute figure? which year?). Find the rows and columns you need and ignore the rest of the table. Estimate the answer roughly, which often rules out options straight away. Only then calculate, and check your answer against the estimate. Use a calculator if the test allows one.

Finally, the rules. Many employers say tests must be your own work, with no help from other people or AI tools, and some use time limits and question banks to make outside help pointless. Using help also defeats the purpose: if a test gets you through to a stage you're not ready for, you'll meet the same skills again in person.

In a recorded video interview, questions appear on screen and you record answers within set limits, for the employer to watch later. Formats vary: expect preparation time, a maximum answer time, and sometimes a practice question or a retake. Look into the camera, not your own image; keep notes minimal; test your camera, sound, light and background a day or two before. A live interview, by video or in person, adds follow-up questions and a chance to build rapport.

What the interview is for. Andrew Hirst's Interviews Tutorial starts from one idea: an interview is selection, not deselection. The interviewer hopes you're the person they need. They want a human conversation and a feel for you; to "kick the tyres" and check that your CV is real; to ask about specific tasks and behaviours; to test your understanding; and to explain the job. Your stories, told with STAR or PAR, are the tool for almost every question.

The obvious questions. Always prepare these: Why this job? Why you? What do you know about us? What do you bring to the team? What training do you feel you need? How does it fit with your studies or your career so far? And "Can you give me a time when…", about each competency. Andrew's Skills vs Questions grid goes further: common questions down one side, such as "Tell me about you" and "Describe a complex problem you solved", and the employability components across the top. Tick the components each question tests and name the STAR story that answers it. The grid shows which stories carry most weight and which components have no story yet.

Behind every question sit Andrew's three questions every interviewer wants answered but never asks: will you do the job (motivation), can you do the job (evidence) and will you fit in. Use your Career Planning Canvas's purpose for "Why us?". Body language and voice matter too, but don't believe that they are most of the message: that claim misreads the psychologist Albert Mehrabian's 1960s experiments on judging feelings from single words, not interviews. Your evidence is what gets scored.

Your questions for them. Andrew's guide How to get a grad job… Quick! (2018) advises preparing about three, from four kinds: the interviewer's own experience; how to succeed in the role; the team and your development; the organisation and where people progress. Sam prepares "What's your favourite part of working here?", "If I joined, what would you most want me to focus on in my first few months?" and "Where have people who started in this role moved on to?"

Practise by recording yourself, then score it against one competency: is the evidence there, told in "I"?

An assessment centre is a half-day or day of several exercises, each observed and scored against the role's competencies. It may be in person or online. Typical exercises are a group exercise (a few candidates discuss a problem and reach a decision), a written or in-tray exercise (working through emails, documents or a short report under time), a case study, a presentation and one or more interviews. Informal moments, such as lunch, may happen too: be friendly and professional, without worrying that every word is scored.

The group exercise is where people most often prepare the wrong thing. Assessors are not counting who talks most; they note behaviours against the competencies. Behaviours that score well: listening and then building on someone else's idea; summarising the brief so the group starts together; suggesting a timekeeper or keeping an eye on the clock yourself; using the information in the pack; bringing a quieter member in ("What do you think?"); and helping the group reach a decision in time. Dominating, interrupting or ignoring the brief scores badly. Other candidates are not your rivals: several of you can do well.

The written task tests organisation and written communication under time. Read the task first, decide what matters most, plan briefly and leave a few minutes to check. Practise once against the clock, such as replying to an email or ranking a list of tasks. The presentation is usually short and often set in advance, though sometimes on the day; it is taught in depth in Module 5.

Reasonable adjustments. Under the Equality Act 2010, employers must make reasonable adjustments in recruitment for disabled candidates, so that you aren't put at a substantial disadvantage. Disability here means a physical or mental condition that has a substantial, long-term effect on your day-to-day activities; it can include mental health conditions and specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia. Examples in Acas guidance include giving more time for a written test, making sure the interview room is accessible for a wheelchair user and providing a sign language interpreter; the Equality and Human Rights Commission's guidance gives more. An employer only has to make adjustments if it knows, or could reasonably be expected to know, that a candidate is disabled and likely to be put at a disadvantage, so ask: ideally when you're invited to a stage, saying what the barrier is and what would help. Employers should use the information only to arrange the adjustment. This is general guidance, not legal advice; other countries have their own rules.

Afterwards, offer or not, note what each stage tested and what went well, and ask for feedback if it's offered. That reflection is your preparation for the next one.

Every good presentation starts with two questions, and neither is about slides. Who is the audience? What do they already know, what do they care about, and what will they be listening for? At an assessment centre the audience is the assessors, who know the business well, so you needn't explain what they already know; Andrew Hirst's feedback to student teams makes the same point: remember that the audience has some prior knowledge. What should they think or do afterwards? Agree to a trial, remember your project, choose you. If you can't say, the audience won't be able to either.

Then write your key message: the one sentence you want them to remember and act on. Write it before anything else, because everything else is there to support it. If a fact, story or slide doesn't help the key message, it goes, however interesting it is.

Build the rest in three parts. The start sets the scene and says where you're going: why this matters to this audience, and what your points will be. Your opening is a pitch with a purpose, like the introductions you prepared in Module 1 and Module 3: short, specific and about them. The middle makes up to three points, each with its evidence: a fact, an example or a short story. Three is enough to persuade and few enough to remember. The end summarises the three points in a sentence and closes with what you want the audience to think or do. Andrew's advice is to start and finish well, because those are the moments people remember.

Between the parts, signpost: tell the audience where you are ("My second point is how it would work"). It feels obvious to you, but a listener can't flick back a page.

Andrew's presentation marking criteria give you a test for the finished plan. Structure: is there a clear start, middle and end? Clarity: are the language and tone right for this audience? Uniqueness: is there something that makes it yours, such as a story only you could tell? Non-verbal communication: will the way you stand and look support what you say? This lesson gives you the first two; the rest of the module works on the others.

One of the tips in Andrew Hirst's feedback to student teams is that less is sometimes more. Slides are there to help the audience follow you, not to hold everything you know. A good slide carries one idea: a short title, then a picture, a diagram or a single number. If you want the audience to see a result, show the one figure that matters and say what it means, rather than a table of figures. As Andrew put it to student teams, summarise the financial issues; don't put up the spreadsheet. If the brief allows, you can use no slides at all: a well-planned five minutes of you talking is better than three crowded slides.

Keep the detail in your notes, not on the screen. Speaker notes work best as prompts, not a script: a script tempts you to read, and reading kills eye contact and your voice. A prompt card holds your opening line, your three points as keywords, the evidence for each in a word or two, and your closing line. Most people find they need far less on it than they expected.

Using AI honestly. An AI tool can help you draft a structure, suggest a simpler wording or tidy a slide's layout. Treat what it gives you as a first draft: check every fact, cut anything you couldn't explain if asked, and make the words your own, because you will be questioned on them. Employers' rules on using AI in assessment tasks vary, so read the brief, and if it says nothing and you're unsure, ask.

Accessible slides help everyone, not only people with a visual impairment. University guidance, such as Cambridge's Centre for Teaching and Learning's, recommends plain sans-serif fonts, large text (it treats 18 point as the absolute minimum, and bigger is better in a large room), strong contrast between text and background (projectors wash colours out), and never using colour alone to carry meaning. Say aloud what's on each slide, so that nobody has to read and listen at once. If you share your slides afterwards, give each one a title and describe the pictures.

Check the room and the equipment. Andrew's tip was to check the room and bring a pen drive; today, bring your slides in two ways (on a memory stick and as a file you can open from email), and know what you'd do if neither worked. Online, test your camera, microphone and screen sharing beforehand.

Your voice works better warmed up. In the session Making yourself heard, Paddy Turner (Sheffield Hallam University, 2016) describes four parts working together. The body gives you posture and power. The breath powers the voice. The larynx, in your throat, holds the vocal cords that make the sound. The mouth (lips, tongue, jaw and palate) shapes that sound into words. When you're nervous, all four tighten, which is why a nervous voice sounds thin, quick and shaky.

Release tension first. Stand with your feet under your hips and your knees soft, not locked, with your head balanced on top of your spine. Lift your shoulders and drop them, roll them, and gently turn your head from side to side. Then breathe. Put a hand on your lower ribs, breathe out fully, and let the air come back in by itself; then breathe in for a count of five and out for seven, eight, nine. Wake your voice and face. Hum ("mmm") and feel it buzz on your lips, then open the hum into vowels: mmm-ah, mmm-ay, mmm-ee, mmm-oo. Chew an imaginary sticky toffee, then say a tongue twister or two ("Six thick thistle sticks"), slowly and then faster. It takes about five minutes, and works quietly in a corridor or a car.

Projection means making your voice carry by using breath, not by straining your throat: aim your words at the back wall. Articulation means finishing your words with your lips and tongue. Pace: speak slower than feels natural, and use the pause. A pause before your key message makes people listen; a pause after it lets it land; and a pause is far better than "um".

Andrew Hirst's voice and emotions exercises use a few lines of Rudyard Kipling's poem "If—" (first published in 1910). Read a line in different roles (a news reporter, a builder on scaffolding, a parent talking to a child) and with different emotions (happy, worried, angry, shy), and listen to how much your voice can do. The poem ends "you'll be a Man, my son"; if you'd rather, use any short text you like.

Your body speaks too. Stand balanced and look at different people around the room in turn (if steady eye contact is hard for you, look between people's eyes or at the front row). Andrew's advice is to "go big": move, but walk to a spot and talk, and make your gestures larger than usual rather than small and fidgety. On camera, put the lens at eye level, look into it for your key points, sit facing the light, frame your head and shoulders, and bring a little more energy than feels natural, because the screen flattens it.

Almost everyone feels nervous before a presentation, including people who present well. Nerves are adrenaline getting your body ready: a racing heart, a dry mouth, shaky hands. The audience usually sees far less of it than you feel, and the same adrenaline sharpens your attention and gives your voice energy. The aim isn't to get rid of nerves but to use them.

One technique has interesting evidence behind it. In a study by Alison Wood Brooks (2014), 140 students prepared a short persuasive speech on camera. Just before speaking, half said aloud "I am excited" and half "I am calm". The "excited" group felt more excited (though no less anxious), and independent raters judged their speeches more persuasive, confident, competent and persistent. The idea is that nerves and excitement feel alike in the body, so relabelling them is easier than calming down. A 2025 replication (Poynter and Pasqualini) found the same change in feelings, but observers rated the two groups' speeches no differently. So treat anxiety reappraisal as a promising, free technique for how you feel, not a guaranteed improvement in how you come across. (You may also have heard of "power posing". Its claimed effects are contested: a larger study didn't find the hormone changes first reported, so this module doesn't rely on it.)

Other things help. Paddy Turner suggests avoiding extra caffeine and sugar, sipping water, and burning off spare energy with a brisk walk or by shaking out your hands. Andrew Hirst's favourite is to think of three reasons why your audience will enjoy your presentation.

Rehearsal is where confidence really comes from. Rehearse aloud, standing up, timing every run, at least twice. If you're over time, cut, don't rush: remove an example or a detail rather than talking faster. Know your first 30 seconds so well that you can say them however nervous you are, because once you're under way it gets easier. And remember Andrew's rule: the presentation starts when you enter the room and finishes when you leave. The way you walk in, set up and say thank you is seen too.

Questions are a chance to show what you know. Listen to the whole question, pause, then answer briefly: a point and a reason. If you don't know, say so, and say what you'd do to find out; assessors respect that far more than a guess. Afterwards, while it's fresh, note what went well and the one thing you'd change.