I want to work in ..... a different way.

Time out, working for yourself, part-time and voluntary work and ways to avoid the rat race.
Also see our Working for a Charity page

Ethical Careers and Employers lemmings

Surveys have found that almost 90% of graduates consider high ethical standards in a company to be important when making a decision about whether or not to work for that company.

The following websites help to provide information about careers and employers of interest to graduates who are concerned about the ethical, social and environmental responsibility of graduate recruiters.

Books:

Corporate Social Responsibility

What is CSR?

CSR -  Corporate Social Responsibility - covers a wide range of issues emerging out of business activities and their impact on society, the economy and the environment including:

 

CSR concerns the measures a firm or organisation takes to make the world a better place. This can be at a local level, such as funding nearby youth schemes or community projects, or on a national or even global scale such as donating money to selected charities or funding specific aid projects in the developing world. And with increased fears over climate change and the need to cut back on carbon emissions, firms are facing a wake-up call over their environmental responsibilities.

Careers in CSR


Graduates wanting to specialise in corporate responsibility can choose to work in an in-house CSR unit (larger organisations often have their own in-house CSR department and dedicated staff)or in a consultancy specialising in advising other firms or organisations on CSR initiatives.

Even if job titles or departments don’t have CSR in the title – perhaps instead called community outreach or charity support – they are likely to reflect social responsibility values and policies. Roles in CSR demand strong business people, strategy and technical skills, and staff can be involved in all parts of an organisation’s dealings as well as responsible for setting up and running individual projects. It’s crucial that CSR personnel are good communicators and can manage the delicate balance between a business’s needs and profits and its charitable or community-orientated goals.

Entry into CSR as a profession can depend on previous experience – sometimes existing staff members are drawn from human resources or specialised departments – but it’s also possible to join fresh from university. In most cases a qualification in CSR isn’t necessary, although the subject is covered in some business degrees as well as in post-graduate courses such as those noted below, which can all help with landing a job.

Previous work experience or an internship in a CSR department can be an advantage, as is evidence of commitment to helping others through charity or volunteering work. Look at the many CSR-orientated websites (see below) to get started, and you can also directly approach firms you’re interested in.

Courses

Useful links

Alternative Work Styles

Call centre staff normally work from prepared scripts and have little control over their work which is very routine. For these reasons annual turnover of staff is typically about 35%.

Some progressive firms are now introducing "homeshoring": staff work from home with calls routed to their home phone. There are no no scripts to follow and call times are not monitored. In these companies productivity and job satisfaction are much higher and 80% have degrees: double the normal percentage in traditional call centres. There are also no recruitment costs as prospective employees come to them and customer satisfaction with the callls is also much higher. For more about this read "Drive" by Dan Pink and our Happiness at Work page

The following resources may be helpful for students who, through choice or through force of circumstances, are unwilling or unable to follow a "conventional" working pattern, who are seeking a satisfactory work-life balance or who simply want to avoid the rat-race.

Organisations are nowadays becoming flatter and less hierarchical. Sideways promotion is increasing, and staff are developing their skills without necessarily climbing the corporate ladder. (Skills for Graduates in the 21st Century - AGR)

Flexible Working

Working For Yourself

For advice on self-employment see www.kent.ac.uk/careers/selfemployment.htm

Practical jobs

Matthew Crawford in his book The Case for Working with Your Hands thinks people aren't happy at work because jobs have become too specialised: you can't see what difference you are making, for example selling things to people that they don't really need. He opened a motorcycle repair shop and found he was happier, also surprisingly more intellectually stimulated. A tradesman has lots of variety, and you have to be practical, but also work out solutions to complex problems: you have to to improvise and adapt. In jobs such as gardening, you have a clear purpose. See our page on practical, outdoor and active careers.

Other Ways to Avoid the Rat-Race

Portfolio Careers

"We learn who we are - in practice, not in theory - by testing reality, not by looking inside. We discover the true possibilities by doing - trying out new activities, reaching out to new groups, finding new role models, and reworking our story as we tell it to those around us. What we want clarifies with experience and validation from others along the way. ...To launch ourselves anew, we need to get out of our heads. We need to act."

Herminia Ibarra

Students often feel that they have to decide on a career path for life, and that once decided, this can't be changed, so they feel frozen into indecision. The reality is that you will have a variety of paths to choose from in future: as one door closes, others will open. there is ample room for trial and error and most people will make mistakes in their career path. Career plans are rarely as precise as those laid out in books and opportunities will open up that they didn't even know existed.

What is a portfolio career?

A portfolio career is about doing two or more different jobs on a part-time basis with different employers that when combined are the equivalent of a full-time position, instead of working a traditional full-time job. Portfolio careers typically focus on your skills and interests, though managing your career yourself is the key element.

These jobs might be complementary or unrelated and could include

 

Portfolio careers are often thought of as the preserve of artists, designers, writers and performers and there is certainly truth in this. A study found that 48% of art, design and media graduates had portfolio careers 6 years after graduating, often combining employment with self employment such as freelancing, study or developing creative practice.
Portfolio careers, though, are much more widespread than this. Many professionals, such as accountants, nurses, consultants, teachers, human resource managers and IT specialists, also work on a portfolio basis. In fact, the authors of “And What Do You Do? 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio career” state that “We have yet to find a job or profession that cannot form part of a person’s portfolio career”

In his book, Job Shift: How to Prosper in a Workplace Without Jobs, William Bridges states that “all jobs in today's economy are temporary”, referring to the lack of job security in the current economic climate.

However, graduates have traditionally moved around between employers to develop their career – even those who begin their career on a “traditional” graduate training scheme. A survey from Milkround.com in 2008 found that:
  • 10% of graduates plan to leave their first graduate job before a completing a year.
  • Nearly 30% expect to look for another role between a year and two years while a quarter claim two to three years will be the time to go.
  • One in five predicts they will last three to five years; just 17% intend to be loyal for five years or more.

Advantages of a portfolio career

Disadvantages

Skills needed to build a portfolio career

“Career planning should be based on four main factors: skills, interests, values and personality. If you have a wide range of skills and interests, then a portfolio career is likely to work better”
Graham Nicholson, former president of the Association of Graduate Careers and Employability Services

 


The Portfolio Careerist www.portfoliocareerist.co.uk blog about portfolio careers that gives insights, tips and further reading on creating an ethical, sustainable portfolio career may be a good starting point for those considering this option. The author combines owning a digital media agency with a variety of education and communications roles.

See our Employability Skills pages www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/skillsmenu.htm for exercises that will help you to analyse these four factors.
Establishing and managing a portfolio career is not easy: you have to carefully consider the types of jobs you want and make careful plans. See www.portfoliocareers.net for more information’ – the site includes a self-assessment quiz to help you assess your suitability for a portfolio career http://portfoliocareers.net/tools

Our pages on Self Employment www.kent.ac.uk/careers/selfemployment.htm may also be useful

Time Out

Many students think of "taking a year out" after they graduate, but this needs to be carefully planned. Otherwise, you run the risk of spending a year stuck in the same sort of unchallenging job that you did during your vacations, gaining little in the way of skills, experience or satisfaction. The resources listed below will help you to avoid this trap, but first a couple of questions to ask yourself:

Think first - why do you want to take time out?

What can you do?

Almost anything! but these are some of the most popular options:

- and a question which students often ask careers advisers:

"Most recruiters look favourably upon people who have taken gap years, if they are able to draw on their experiences and show an employer how they might make them more effective in the role they are applying for" Carl Gilleard, Association of Graduate Recruiters

"When looking for jobs I found it very easy to handle the questions on employers' application forms as I had gained so many skills from my gap year teaching English in China: teamworking, initiative, problem-solving and leadership to name just a few"

 

What will future employers think?

A lot will depend on what you have done during a gap year and how you present it. If you have spent a year backpacking around the world, your applications should show how you planned and organised the trip; how you dealt with any problems you met along the way, how you funded it and what you learned from the experience, rather than just listing all the exotic countries you visited.

If you are using a Gap Year Organisation to organise your placement see our Checklist of Questions to Ask Most placements go well, but there is a significant minority where students feel that the experience was nothing like that promised in the glossy brochure. So before you pay out lots of money make sure you know all about the project.

Further Information

If you are using a Gap Year Organisation to organise your placement see our Checklist of Questions to Ask Most placements go well, but there is a significant minority where students feel that the experience was nothing like that promised in the glossy brochure. So before you pay out lots of money make sure you know all about the project.

Volunteering UK

Volunteering Abroad

Gap Year

See also our web pages on Working Abroad www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sitesint.htm

Books:

All available for reference from the Careers Service Helpdesk

Last fully updated 2012