Clear Career Guidance for 2nd Level Students
Career Connex is a career guidance service for secondary school students who would benefit from additional help in identifying third level courses that they might be interested in and suited to. Due to current public health guidelines around Covid 19, appointments have been taking place via Zoom. The feedback from students and their families has been very positive as most students have become much more comfortable with this platform since March 2020. All future appointments will continue by zoom from September 2022.
List of individualised CAO courses: Students will leave the appointment with a list of third level options that have been explored and which are specific to their individuals interests at Level 6/7 and 8. This will reduce the risk of a student not liking the course that they are offered the following August and dropping out during their first year.
Clarity and Motivation: Students leave feeling clearer, motivated and empowered around their future career direction and about their university and college options. It also reduces the risk of a making a basic selection mistake when filling out their CAO forms.
Parent(s)/Guardians will also feel more empowered too. This includes having an understanding of codes/points /colleges/universities and where potential course are in the National Framework of Qualifications.
Knowledge: At the end of an appointment, students (and their parent(s/guardians) in 4th (TY), 5th and 6th years to have the knowledge to know where to go to get additional information about courses, if they need it.
Such knowledge can cover
Higher education Level 8 courses
Higher education courses through Level 6 & 7
Further education course (QQI-FET) through PLCs in Ireland.
We can also direct you to resources to use to research possible college options overseas in the UK and across Europe (course through English only).
Some tests can be useful and with this in mind we use a light Career Profiling tool which asks the students (through multiple choice questions) about their areas of career interests and about their perceived personality traits. This is done in advance of the session through a link.
This profile can help to inform, rather than make the decision about possible third level courses.
