On the right course

PERSPECTIVE FIRST: Before making a decision about which course to study, Roya Azadi planned to spend six weeks in India, volunteering at a primary school. PHOTO/CHRIS SKELTON

When the cost of doing a degree at university or polytech runs to a five-figure sum, there's every reason to feel pressured to choose subjects that will lead directly to a job.

But the word from careers advisers and employers is, don't be overly prescriptive in charting a course through tertiary study, and don't abandon your personal interests.

Selecting subjects on the basis of future job prospects alone won't do much for your motivation. Nor will it necessarily produce the results employers are looking for.

Roger Peak, a regional manager for Career Services, a government agency which provides free careers advice, says structuring a degree is a matter of weighing several factors.

"If you imagine the careers process as being like a funnel, at the wide end you put in your interests, your skills, what your aptitudes are, things to do with your environment ... all those go into the mix, with interest being one of the key ones.

"Then you churn those around a bit through knowing yourself, matching up to the opportunities in the world of work, and make a decision.''

Experience shows that combining interests with a dose of the real world produces the best decisions, Peak says. Career Services helps set people on the right course by finding out what their interests, skills and "job values'' are.

Values are something employers also consider. Rather than specific qualifications and top grades, work values are a key criterion in how Vodafone recruits. Una Ryan, the telecommunications company's general manager of culture and capability, says Vodafone wants passionate people.

"When we're recruiting graduates we're really looking for the attitudes they bring, that they're up for learning for life,'' Ryan says.

"Their degree indicates certain things to us but it's not the be-all and end-all.

"We're a values-based organisation and we're really committed to our customers. It's about having the right people who can give that customer experience.''

Peak says if interests are sacrificed entirely for the sake of accumulating subjects which might look good on a CV, problems can ensue.

"The argument is that if you're doing something you're not interested in, the motivation isn't there.''

There are ample opportunities at universities and polytechnics to structure courses for personal and employer gratification. A university course such as a bachelor of arts, for example, has enough flexibility to accommodate both. Peak says a student whose greatest interest was English literature could readily major in that subject while also studying papers in a more career-focused area.

"Although you may major in English literature, you've got enough room in there to put in several other papers and, for example, some of them could be computing. So you end up with a degree that was not only strong in a language but also in terms of technical skill.''

Peak says far from being a waste of time and money, studying English is a bonus for any job, such as in IT, where sound communications skills are required.

A bachelor of science degree allows similar flexibility.

"These are degrees that start off quite general, allowing you to do a lot of different papers. You can then top it up with a post-graduate degree that is more specialised.''

General degrees are a good entry to jobs such as teaching or policy analysis; topped off with post-graduate study, they open the door to careers like social work.

Peak says there are other ways of tailoring a university or polytechnic degree to ensure it has ingredients that appeal to potential employers. One way is to incorporate practical components.

"That can be in the shape of a project or even a relationship with an employer where you have to solve a problem for them.''

Practical course elements are particularly relevant in design degrees, which may be in computer graphics or interior and industrial design, Peak says.

"Often they do contain things in the nature of projects or longer term activity that have a connection to the real world. If you get one of those in your CV you can then argue you've done some real-world thinking.''

Another means of combining study of subjects that have personal interest with those that will enhance your job prospects is to do a double major. Peak says double majors are increasingly popular, if more demanding, than majoring in a single subject. But they enable mixing the academic with the practical. That kind of flexibility of approach is another of the qualities Vodafone looks for.

"We want agile thinkers,'' Ryan says. Even for technical roles, evidence that a job candidate has an appetite for learning will weigh more heavily in their favour than a close qualification match. Although in a technology-driven industry, the company will hire sociology or psychology graduates, if they demonstrate the other qualities the company values. "We believe we've got our success from being very deliberate about who we recruit, and their attitude, and giving them the best opportunity to grow beyond what they came in with,'' Ryan says.