Your career pathway
Your career pathway is the unique route you choose, from the many routes available, to reach your career goals.
Your career pathway will involve you completing formal and informal learning, developing your skills and experiencing education and training, community and personal life.
Hints to help you along the way include:
Education and training pathways
In Australia, the qualifications you gain at schools, vocational education and training providers and universities can be linked up in different ways, so that you can reach your career goal by many different pathways.
Recognition of prior learning (RPL) allows you to get credit for your existing knowledge and skills, such as your:
- life experience (e.g. voluntary work, hobbies, sport)
- work experience (including unpaid work)
- previous study (e.g. courses at school or college, adult education classes, training and professional development programs at work).
Go to the Australian Qualifications Framework website to find out about the way qualifications can be linked, and about RPL.
Community pathways
Urban, rural and remote communities can do a lot to support informal learning. Some of the best learning happens when people think and act together:
- across age groups
- inclusive of men and women
- using existing networks
- with employers
- with local learning leaders
- with community owned and managed organisations.
Community organisations can tell you about services and programs that exist to help you take your next career step.
Make the most of community pathways and partnerships as you work towards the career you want.
Personal pathways
To plan a personal pathway, you need to know:
- what you like
- what’s important to you
- what you’re good at
- who the people in your personal network are.
You need to consider your past decisions and experiences, your existing skills, your ambitions for the future and any information or advice you’ve discovered about your desired career.
Pathways intersect
Personal, community and educational pathways often cross and influence and each other.
For example, community activities you’ve been involved in, such as volunteer community radio broadcasting, can influence educational choices you make—the school subjects or further education courses you choose. And you would have built up a valuable personal network while at the radio station, too.
Opportunities, new experiences, barriers and constraints you encounter as you move along your career pathway can make a difference to the direction you take at any point where there is a choice.
The more actively you explore the different routes you can take towards your goals, the more choice you’ll discover.
A careers advisor can help you, if you’re having trouble seeing how your education, community and personal pathways interrelate, and what your choices are.
Navigate with care
Following your career pathway means making some choices. Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learnt from my life experiences that I want to use in my career?
- What career fields am I interested in?
- What pathways could I take to get to those career fields?
- Do I need to take a course at a tertiary institution (a private college, TAFE or university)?
- What are the entry requirements for those institutions?
- When I finish the course, what jobs will I qualify for?
- Who do I know who can help me?
- What resources and networks does my community have to offer?
- How can I use my personal networks of family, friends and associates to build my career?
Base your career and educational choices on who you are today. You can always change the course of your pathway in the future, as you yourself, and your desires, change.
Find out more
Youth Pathways
Youth Pathways helps young people who have left school, or are thinking about leaving school, to find work, further education or training.
Aboriginal and Islander Career Aspiration Pathways Program (AICAP)
This site provides up-to-date information for students, caregivers, school and support staff on traineeships, cadetships and apprenticeships, and training providers.
Dusseldorp Skills Forum
This independent, non-profit association aims to stimulate innovative educational developments, to promote the importance of the workforce in Australia’s continuing development, and to encourage the formation of skills and personal effectiveness, particularly by young people.
