Careers Help for Mature Students

 

Offering advice to "mature students'' as a group is not easy. The term covers students from 21 up to pensionable age, male and female, married, single or divorced, with and without family responsibilities, studying to improve their career prospects or purely for interest in their subject. So please view this as an introduction to topics of interest to many mature students, but follow it up by discussing your own particular concerns with a careers adviser.

Picture of a mature student

CHOOSING A CAREER

Try not to take "the best careers for mature graduates'' as a starting point when making your choices. Rather, you should start by looking for "the best careers for ME'' and then considering how your age will affect your prospects of entering that career. You would not want an employer to look at your age first and foremost before even glancing at your other attributes - so don't do this to yourself.

A good starting point when considering possible careers is PROSPECTS PLANNER www.prospects.ac.uk/links/Pplanner. This helps you to assess your skills, values and interests and links in to job profiles of 600 graduate occupations which include information on mature student entry and prospects.

The AGCAS booklet, “Mature Students – the way forward” is available in the Careers Information Room or at www.prospects.ac.uk/links/Mature

The Careers Information Room holds a reference file (no. 022) of information of relevance to mature students.

TIED TO KENT?

If you are tied to Kent by housing or family commitments, then see our Working in Kent handout and web pages www.kent.ac.uk/careers/kentopps.htm . On these pages you can refer to Kentgrads - a database of local employers who have recruited graduates in the past. It is not a vacancy list but gives a useful overview of employment available in this area. Our online vacancy bulletins at www.kent.ac.uk/careers/jobs.htm can be searched by location to find jobs currently being advertised in Kent generally or in specific parts of the county. Since most of Kent is not heavily industrialised, some careers may only be available if you are prepared to commute or relocate, and so this may play a part in your choice of career.

AGE DISCRIMINATION LEGISLATION

Age discrimination means making a decision about people based on their age. This includes assuming somebody is too old or too young to do a job, or excluding people because of their age. Ageism is about to become as unacceptable as racism and sexism. Age as a selection criterion for recruitment, training, promotion or pay became illegal on 1st October 2006. This outlaws practices such as age limits specified in recruitment advertising (unless there is a genuine occupational requirement) or age-related questions at interviews.

The following sites carry further information on this legislation:

EMPLOYERS' ATTITUDES TO MATURE STUDENTS

Discrimination in employment on the grounds of age is now illegal. A good selection process will look not just at an applicant's age, nor just at their degree class or subject, but will assess a candidate's personal skills and experience, including what your did before your degree course, in the light of the requirements of the job. See below for advice on how to put these qualities across to employers.

PRESENTING YOURSELF TO EMPLOYERS

Mature students may have a lot of advantages over younger students including greater confidence and maturity! They often have more focused aims and once in a career are less likely to want to change career again than a younger employee. They may have demonstrated the commitment to cope with a degree course whilst looking after a home and family at the same time - no mean feat!

However, mature students often undervalue the experience they have to offer employers: whether this is two years of casual jobs that financed a trip around the world between school and university or ten years of the administration, financial management, catering, nursing, teaching, childcare, counselling etc that is commonly summed up as “being a housewife''. Employers may undervalue this too - if its value is not pointed out to them!

MAKING APPLICATIONS

How careers end:

Students are degraded.
Lawyers are disbarred.
Ministers are defrocked.
Electricians are delighted.
Environmental Health Officers are debugged.
Programmers are decoded.
Accountants are discredited.
Barristers are debriefed
Orchestra leaders are disbanded. Artists' models are deposed.
Nudists are redressed.
Office clerks are defiled.
Priests are disgraced.
Electricians are refused.
Judges are disappointed.
Mathematicians are discounted.
Tree surgeons disembark.
Musicians decompose

Age is something that doesn't matter unless you are a cheese - Laurie Taylor, THES

Your job applications should highlight the competencies you have which relate to the job being applied for, using your past experience and personal skills to give evidence of these. Employers will usually set out the personal qualities and competencies they require in the job description and it is important to analyse this carefully. Many application forms – the ones that ask you to “give an example of a time when you worked in a team/solved a problem/persuaded someone of your point of view” - are based around these competencies, and are often easier for mature candidates than for younger applicants. The more life experience you have, the more examples you have to draw on. See www.kent.ac.uk/careers/compet/skillquest.htm for advice on completing these questions.

Smaller employers may ask for a CV and the skills approach is often a good way for mature students to use their past experience in a positive way. An example of a mature student's skills-based CV can be found on our website at www.kent.ac.uk/careers/cv/maturecv.htm . However, some more “traditional” employers, such as law firms, may prefer a chronological outline of your education and experience, beginning with your degree and working backwards. Remember you don’t have to list every job you have ever done or every qualification you have ever taken from O-level woodwork onwards. It’s fine to summarise a group of similar jobs, or periods spent bringing up children, so long as there are no long and unexplained gaps in your CV.

The Careers Service can give help with drawing up CVs and application forms and advise on presenting your experiences in relation to the job being applied for.

QUESTIONS TO MATURE GRADUATES AT INTERVIEW

In the past, mature students have often had to face questions and suppositions related to their age, especially with interviewers unused to assessing older graduates.

Outright questions such as the following are no longer permitted:

However, they may still be in the interviewer’s mind. You may want to take the opportunity that the interview gives you to emphasise your adaptability, tolerance and organisational skills.See our web pages or booklet on interviews www.kent.ac.uk/careers/applicn.htm#Interviews

WHAT DO MATURE GRADUATES DO?

It is possible, to some extent, to generalise about the “best'' employers for mature students - those which value experience, no matter where gained, or personal maturity, or those which have always had high upper age limits for recruitment even before the new legislation.

Many mature students have found that public sector employers have a very positive attitude towards mature graduates and that, within this field, careers such as teaching and social work place particular value on their wider experience of life. This may also be utilised by careers such as law and personnel management, in both the public and private sectors. These also happen to be career areas which are readily available in Kent.

At the other end of the scale, the “worst'' career prospects have traditionally been in fields which are youth-oriented, stressful and highly competitive, such as advertising and those with long training requirements, such as actuaries. The armed forces are exempt from age discrimination legislation.

Beware, though, of lumping all employers in a certain career area together when considering their attitudes to mature applicants. These are all generalisations and a well-prepared mature graduate may, especially now supported by legislation, be successful in their applications to almost any field.

FURTHER INFORMATION

The following books are available for reference in the Careers Service

The Careers Service also runs workshops for mature students where there is an opportunity for discussion.

USEFUL LINKS

TO SUM UP...

Job hunting may be more daunting for a mature student than for the “average'' 21 year old, but the anxiety can be greatly reduced by careful planning and preparation. If you start thinking about your career in good time, ideally early on in your course, make wise use of the Careers Library and are prepared to be flexible then you will stand the best possible chance of achieving your career aims when you leave University.

You are welcome to make use of the Careers Service at any stage of your studies, whether to use our computer guidance resources, to browse the material in the Careers Library or to talk things over with a Careers Adviser.

It may be worth mentioning here that we are open during the vacations, and if you live locally this may be a good time to use our facilities when they are less used by other students.

While we recognise that every student is an individual, the Careers Service staff have considerable experience of helping mature students and we hope that we can be of assistance to you too.

The Careers Advisory Service is committed to equality of opportunity in keeping with the University of Kent at Canterbury Student Charter and the NUS/AGR/AGCAS Code of Practice. Click here to see the University of Kent Careers Advisory Service Equality and Diversity Statement


Last fully updated October 2009