Using a range of relevant literature (both academic and professional sources), identify and discuss a ‘Future Path’ you are interested in pursuing, evaluating the contribution of this Future Path

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Your portfolio should showcase your own career research and reflections on the module activities and counts for 100% of the marks on this module. The word limit for your portfolio is 3000 words (-/+ 10%), excluding references and supporting evidences.

You will need to develop your portfolio as you attend the module workshops and engage with Moodle resources. If you leave writing up the portfolio until the end of term, you will not have collected adequate evidence to develop a good quality submission.

There is no exam on this module.

Detailed description of portfolio assessment

Your portfolio should be structured according to the headings below. More detailed guidance on each section will be provided in the Assessment Briefing video recording on Moodle (Week 4) and your ‘Assessment Surgery’ workshop (Week 5). You will collect the evidence for your portfolio as you complete the workshops, so you build up the portfolio as you go along.

A reminder also that the portfolio assessment has been designed to be flexible, enabling you to tailor the content according to your preferred ‘Future Path’ and also your own short, medium and long-term career plans (e.g., a placement year, summer internship, graduate development programme, a promotion with your current employer, self-employment / enterprise, joining your family’s business, postgraduate study, etc.).

Planning your Future Path (40% weighting, 1400 words)

Using a range of relevant literature (both academic and professional sources), identify and discuss a ‘Future Path’ you are interested in pursuing, evaluating the contribution of this Future Path in the context of your short, medium and long term career plans. This is worth 40% of your overall portfolio grade and should be 1,400 words.

1. Provide a clear introduction to your planned ‘Future Path’. You are also welcome to highlight if you are focusing on the UK, your home country or elsewhere. This section should be 300 – 400 words.

You can use the following as a guide for what you may include in this introduction section:

Placement year / summer internship / graduate position

• A clear description of your chosen placement year / summer internship / graduate position including the specific role and employer, job description and person specification.
• A brief profile of the target company.
• Main features of the wider industry/sector, e.g., competitors, customers, products/services/brands, international reach (where applicable); current trends and recent changes.

Enterprise / self-employment

• A brief outline of your core business plan and a description of your specific remit.
• Main features of the wider industry/sector, e.g., competitors, customers, products/services/brands, international reach (where applicable); current trends and recent changes.

• Main features of the wider industry/sector, e.g., competitors, customers, products/services/brands, international reach (where applicable); current trends and recent changes.

Postgraduate study

• A clear description of two postgraduate courses you are interested in.
• A brief overview of the target university/ies.

1. Discuss and evaluate how this ‘Future Path’ contributes to your short, medium and long term career plans. You should include a copy of your completed Career Planning template with a supporting discussion around your specific short, medium and long term plans. Your discussion should incorporate a combination of professional body viewpoints, published academic studies (journal papers) and other relevant, credible material. This section should be 600 – 700 words.          (I have a template for this section)
2. Provide a concise conclusion, indicating your ‘next steps’ and an alternative ‘Future Path’ you may consider if necessary (i.e., a ‘Plan B’). This section should be around 400 words.

Please remember this is an academic portfolio so it is important that you to use a variety of data and literature to gain a higher grade. Note: Your portfolio will be assessed not only for content but also for language, presentation and Harvard referencing; this is built into the marking criteria.

Your Employability Profile (40% weighting, 1600 words)

The second part of your portfolio requires you to select four development experiences from the module this term. You should provide a structured reflection based on each of these experiences, in terms of how these experiences have supported you in working towards your chosen Future Path. It is expected that your reflections are supported with relevant academic sources. This is worth 40% of your overall portfolio grade and should be 1600 words (400 words per reflection).

As this portfolio is personal and reflective, you are welcome to choose any four development experiences, meaning you can focus your Employability Profile according to your intended Future Path and career plans. We recommend that you select experiences that have had the greatest impact on your personal and professional development this term.

Please also note it is expected that you directly relate your reflective discussions to your intended Future Path. For example, if you plan to start your own business and you choose ‘relationship management’ as one of your four development experiences, you should highlight how learning about relationship management and developmental networks will support you in your future role as a business owner. Similarly, if for example you plan to pursue a placement year, you should directly refer to this within your Employability Profile reflections. How have your development experiences placed you in a better position to secure a fulfilling placement year aligned with your wider career goals?

You are also welcome to refer to external activities you have engaged in that are relevant to your chosen development experiences. For example, if you choose to reflect on CV and cover letter writing, you can also discuss a BSEO CV writing workshop you may have attended. However, the main focus of your reflections must be the INDU1166 activities as outlined in Table 1 below; reference to additional related experiences is supplementary.

You can use the following as a guide for structuring your reflective statements, these should be 400 words each. You are welcome to use a reflective model to structure your reflections if you wish, e.g., Gibbs or Kolb. However, this is not compulsory.

• Brief description of the chosen development experience;
• Why did you choose this experience?;
• What has been the impact of this experience on your pursuit of your chosen Future Path?;
• How will you use your learning moving forward?

For each of your four reflections, you need to provide a piece of evidence to confirm your engagement with this experience. A list of the accepted evidences is provided below (see Table 1).

The supporting evidences do not form part of the 400 words for each of your reflections, i.e., they are excluded from the word count.