About Careers Explorer
Careers Explorer has been designed to be used by schools, colleges and universities to provide information and support to learners and their careers advisors regarding the future of the labour market.
There are four stages to using Careers Explorer:
Stage 1: Explore
In the search bar on the home screen enter an interest or subject and click on search. Careers Explorer will then match your words to a job or occupation described in the UK Standard Occupation Classification (SOC).
The SOC is made up of a list of codes and groups jobs together in terms of their skill level and skill content. It is used by people who want to get a job, employment agencies and the government to develop labour market policies.
To find out more and see a full list of occupations and their codes please click here and then go to ‘summary of structure’ on the right hand side in the downloads section.
Careers Explorer uses the SOC code to link together many different sets of government data to return easy to understand and useful charts, graphs and information about that occupation. Users can explore the future prospects and requirements of selected occupations by regional demand, estimated pay (dependant on experience), unemployment levels, job type (full time, part time, self employed), percentage of males or females in work, qualifications and associated tasks and activities.
This section also provides information about where to study in the local area by providing information on Further Education, Higher Education and Training Providers.
Stage 2: Courses
As Careers Explorer includes course data (national or specific to the client), this section allows the user to explore options relating to courses, linked to the selected career or occupation, on offer in their area or at the client institution. National course data is based on the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) course directory and the HESA Unistats data and will therefore include the following course types: 16-18 years; adult further education; adult community learning; apprenticeships; and undergraduate courses.
If a course looks suitable then the user can click through to the course page on the institutions website to view more details and apply, if appropriate.
Stage 3: Apprenticeships
Once the user has identified careers or occupations they are interested in and understood the type of prospects they want, this section of Careers Explorer provides information on using an apprenticeship to start a career. Linked directly to the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) database this section provides an alternative progression route to further and higher education.
After first reviewing the labour market information in the explore section Careers Explorer will allow the user to investigate the following:
- Apprenticeship vacancies released in the last 30 days
- Job descriptions
- Weekly pay
- Closing dates
- Location and travel distance
Using the simple search box users can quickly see which vacancies are available to support their job and career aspirations.
If a vacancy looks suitable then the user can apply for it straight from the system.
Stage 4: Vacancies
The final part of Careers Explorer connects the labour market information contained within the Explore section with the live job market.
Once the user has identified suitable occupations and considered different progression routes the vacancy search area helps test what has been learnt against the labour demand in the area. Identify real time vacancies that can be investigated further or applied for straight from the system.
Job vacancies can be searched and analysed by:
- Job type, title and description
- Location
- Salary
- Job type e.g. Full time, part time, contract etc
Careers Explorer contains data powered by LMI for All. All jobs are taken from Indeed.com which is the #1 job site worldwide, with over 100 million unique visitors per month, the vacancies appear in order of publish date. Nearly all online job postings are collected through Indeed.com including private and public sector vacancies such as those posted on the direct.gov website.