CareersCast Ep1

Welcome to Careerscast. This is the part of the WOW show where you get to ask the questions. We've lined up a great team of experts, so let's go to our first question. I was wondering is it better to go to uni or do an apprenticeship? Well the first thing you'll miss out on is all of that lovely uni debt. If you don't go to uni you won't have the uni debt, but some people do enjoy the university experience, uni life. Also some people like to get uni kind of done and dusted within the three to four years as opposed to the four to five years that would take if you were doing a part-time degree or an apprenticeship degree. I would say for me it really has always been about working with people and being able to see on a day-to-day basis the difference I can make. People who come for radiotherapy treatment have got cancer illnesses so you can imagine that they can be quite nervous and quite worried and so my job is to be supportive and kind and caring and reassuring and you can see directly the difference you can make. I'm also using treatments to help cure people of their cancer illnesses and if unfortunately they're not going to get better from their illness then we can make those times a little bit more comfortable and ease the symptoms they may be suffering so it's extremely rewarding and I think anyone you speak to who is a therapeutic radiographer would probably share that view. In addition to that the other added bonus is that we get to work with some absolutely fascinating technology, we get access to a whole host of skills and experience, you might get to work in project management or research, you may go and specialise in some of the really fascinating ICT software or technology that's used within our job, some people go on into senior healthcare management and so they get business skills. I for example had a great opportunity to work overseas because our qualification allows that so I trained in the UK but I've got that experience so I guess fundamentally you've got all these portfolio skills as well as doing your frontline clinical work and the great news is as of September 2020 if you want to train as a therapeutic radiographer or a diagnostic radiographer you could access the £5,000 bursary that's now being offered and also an extra £1,000 because our particular roles are considered as scarce so there's some wonderful funding opportunities available now. What can I be doing to develop my soft skills to make me more employable? One of the soft skills mentioned was emotional intelligence, what is this and how can I improve it? So we describe emotional intelligence as the way that you understand over your own emotions but the emotions of people around you and how you work with them to achieve the best result. Employers love emotional intelligence because no matter what job you're doing or where you're doing it you're most likely going to have to work with other people at some point and being able to do it well is absolutely key. These skills are important but can often be quite hard to learn as they can't be taught in a classroom environment, you need to go out there and get some real life practice. I would suggest doing this by taking part in work experience, doing some volunteering or attending workshops and allow you to build on them. A visual mention to the course and importance of creative industries, are there any of these in the North East or will I need to move to London? There are a lot of organisations and companies that are based outside of London and the South East, so to give you an example about 25% of the creative industries operate out of London and the South East which leaves 75% of them being beyond and outside those areas. We can look to the successes of Game of Thrones in Belfast, we've got obviously the Channel 4 move to Leeds, something that we have also done with our Centre of Screen Excellence that's now opened in Leeds and there are hubs like Cardiff and Bristol. Cardiff is very well known for drama production and Bristol obviously has the brilliant natural history unit and so there is a lot of activity that does exist in the creative sector beyond London and the South East. Location or geography shouldn't be a barrier to you finding your way in. So within the Royal Navy there are a lot of world-class fitness, sports and health facilities available. For an example, the Ruby Union team, they are tweaking them every year. The Football Association team toured Australia last year. On all naval bases and all ships there's a range of world-class facilities such as CV suites, weight gyms and also five-side football pitches and different netball pitches, things like that. Any sort of sport that you can think of from jiu-jitsu to boxing to netball, if you have an interest in civilian life and in sporting activities, you contact your local AFCO, they'll be able to give you more information on this and we'll be able to accommodate any need. Well now just to make clear, heritage construction is a form of construction on buildings that were built before 1919 and some modern day buildings that are seen to be quite rare and worth being protected. Now on the heritage side there is a brand new trailblazer apprenticeship that's being brought out. It's a specialist apprenticeship program which specializes just on heritage but in the heritage side there are also different craft occupations that somebody can train up in. We have hard and soft materials roofing, we have roof slating and tiling, we have heritage stone masonry, so there are many different routes and different roles into the heritage field. I was wondering will there still be any jobs in the future or are robots going to take them all? The rise of robots and artificial intelligence will definitely have an impact on our jobs of the future but don't worry they won't be taking them all. Of course some jobs such as warehouse workers or frontline manufacturing staff may be at risk simply because large parts of their jobs could be taught to robots. The key thing to remember is that robots can't be taught emotional intelligence but jobs that require human to human interactions such as mental health workers will always be needed. This is why it makes it even more important to constantly improve your emotional intelligence and soft skills. To apply for a medical apprenticeship whether you are doing a four or five year university degree in medicine, you can apply in your first or second year. Dependent on what year you apply in, in the final three years you'll get a full paid salary and you'll also get your student fees. As of the 1st of September 2019 the salaries are as follows so your first year will be over £16,000, the second year over £17,000, the third year over £20,000. Also you won't have to pay for any student fees they will all be paid for, you wouldn't want to do that. When you're looking at platforms to put your content out on you need to look at the demographics that use those platforms. You then need to think about how your audience might use those platforms. Do they go to YouTube and search how do I or do they spend half an hour on TikTok because they like to be entertained? Fit your potential audience that you want to reach with the platform that they would use and you find that by thinking like your audience first and when you've done that you edit per platform so the content fits the platform you're going to try out and then you test those results. You go in, you look at the information and see if it works and you repeat until you find a really good balance between your content and reaching the people you want to reach. Thank you again everyone, we hope we've answered your questions and given you some useful links and places to find out even more and don't forget to look out for our next show. Bye!