VOCATION, VOCATION, VOCATION

PROGRAMME 3: AMY LEE

Amy Lee is 17 years old, lives in Sunderland and is in post-16 education. She is intelligent, bubbly and confident, and has two main career ideas that she needs help with. Amy Lee describes herself as a very 'girly girl'. She loves fashion and make up and is interested in working in fashion marketing. She sees this as being a glamorous job because of the lifestyle that might go with it, such as travelling and meeting glamorous people.

However, one of her subjects at school is law, a subject she loves. She thinks that being a barrister might be a good career option for her as well. She sees law as being well paid and interesting because she would meet lots of different people from different backgrounds.

In describing her choices, she says it is between 'my head and my heart', seeing the law as a sensible, well-structured job that requires a great deal of intelligence, whilst fashion marketing is her 'dream job'. However, she has very little experience in either field, and needs to find out about the reality of working life for both these options.

Amy Lee is helped by a life coach and a careers specialist who set her a series of challenges to help her decide what to do next.

PROGRAMME AIMS

• To illustrate how to make a decision between two options
• To show how vital it is to match students' career ideas with their personality and skills
• To help students understand the difference between getting a job and having a real vocation they feel passionate about
• To highlight the importance of talking to people who are actually working in the job or on the course that a student is interested in
• To demonstrate the advantages of job sampling in order to test out job interests
• To emphasise the importance of up-to-date careers information
• To stress the role of individual careers guidance.