Advice Resources
This site is owned by the LSC. Apart from the large database of courses, it has a couple of useful sections to help with careers choice. Career Value Tools helps you to make decisions on the type of career that might be appropriate for you. Job Profiles provides you with more detail about 800 particular jobs.

Rating:

Aimhigher - West Midlands
This website was produced to show the progression opportunities that exist depending on the subject area that you wish to follow: It also has links to courses that can be taken to enable you to progress in your career. The courses are only available in the West Midlands, but this is still a useful site because of the information that is provided, including sector profiles, job descriptions and progression opportunities.

Rating:

Direct Gov
Direct Gov is a Government website that has a good section on Work and Careers. There's a good section on Planning Your Career and another on Finding and Applying for your First Job. This includes information on finding a job, the skills you might need, CVs, application forms and interview skills. There is also a link to another part of the site called What type of work would suit you? When you are in work, there is another useful part of the site on Your Rights and Responsibilities at Work. Overall a good site to start.

Rating:

Breakinto.biz
This site was established by the Council for Administration (CfA) to provide information on the various jobs that are available in the field of business administration. The job information includes pay rates and the sort of work that you would be doing in a typical day. It also provides advice on the qualifications that can be gained from differing starting points. What it doesn’t do is show what job you can go into with a particular qualification - you will have to look at the requirements for each job described.

Rating:

Careers Gateway
This site is produced by Careersoft, a careers software company. Career Links has a good A-Z of jobs with large numbers of links to various organisation associated with a particular job or profession.

Job Seeking is a good section on job searching which includes CVs, application forms, self assessment, interviews, etc.

Rating:

Careers Websites
This site is part of Edinburgh University’s site but it has huge number of links to other careers information sites and is well worth a look if you are seeking additional infomation on a particular career. Although it is aimed at graduates, the information, with links to professional bodies and representative organisations for various sectors, is of use to all those seeking to further their careers.

Rating:

Channel 4
Channel 4’s main site is called Brilliant Careers. There are some useful sections on applying for jobs, a toolkit to help with your career decisions and notes on presenting yourself. If you look around the site you will find some useful links, including one article on how to become an MP? Although the site looks good, there are parts that hang and fail to connect and it is not currently being supported.

Rating:

Connexions
In 2008 the Connexions service underwent significant changes. The service was devolved to local authorities, although there is still a national presence and Connexions Direct still exists to provide on-line information, as shown at this website.

There are two relevant sections for careers advice on the website:

Connexions Careers
This site has information for various age groups to provide advice at the various stages of compulsory education. There is also a section on Careers Resources with downloadable publications for the decisions at the different age groups.

Jobs4U
It has a section on Job Families that provides a list of jobs in various groups, for example, Building and Construction. By selecting the job group, it then provides a fuller list of jobs in a particular area. These jobs can be further examined to show the typical wages, hours and type of work performed. There is also an A-Z search routine if you know what job you are looking for. There are useful links in the General Info section on Apprenticeships and the new Diplomas.

Both sites are certainly worth looking at, although the information available has been reduced since the changes to Connexions.

Rating:

Icould
Icould is a new site, still in its beta stage, which was established to inspire young people to think differently about their futures, by giving them an insight into the working lives of real people in real jobs.

It provides those peoples’ career stories as short video clips. If you search on ‘apprentice’ you will find lots of examples of people who started their careers as an apprentice. It also provides information relevant to those going to, or thinking about going to university.

It looks to be a very good resource with over 1,000 articles/video clips and with a target of 3,000, so it’s well worth viewing.

Rating:

Learn Direct
Besides providing on-line learning materials, Learn Direct also provides careers advice in this section. You will also find help with CV writing, completion of application forms and help with interview skills.

The Job Profile section contains over 700 job profiles as well as the job descriptions, entry requirements, training needs and links to relevant sites. The website also provides an e-mail facility for personal advice from a careers advisor.

There is also a telephone support line (0800 100 900) that offers advice to individuals, regardless of age.

Rating:

Monster
This site is well known for its job vacancies, but this link will take you to a very good career guidance page. One especially good section is the Virtual Job Interview,which steers you through some of the questions that you may get asked. You can research different occupations with the Career Snapshots page and there is a Career Benchmarking section where you can compare salaries and other related matters in a particular career.

Rating:

NHS Careers
As the title suggests, this site explains some of the many occupations that exist in the NHS. Each job type is subdivided into particular roles with job descriptions and links to relevant professional bodies. Some sections list appropriate institutions offering relevant courses. There is also information on jobs and rates of pay. An excellent site if you want to work for the NHS or the private health sector.

Rating:

Prospects
This site has been established to help graduates to find work. If you are undecided about what you could do with a degree qualification, this link will provide you with some of the alternative job options that you would have with a degree in a particular subject. The rest of the site is also worth looking at.

Rating:

Others
In addition to these more general sites, there are many others available offering advice within specific sectors. A good way to start is to go to the relevant Sector Skills Council website. You can find a list, including who they represent if you click here.

Another site that lists pages of other sites relating to careers advice can be found here. Although a lot of the sites mentioned are those of professionals wanting you to pay them money for advice, but there is still a lot of free stuff that will be useful.