I went to university because, like most learners, I was on autopilot. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn't know what I didn't know; I couldn't ask the right questions because I didn't understand myself. I was in the wind, which left me feeling very lost for several years after graduating.
This approach to university is prevalent today, with learners citing the social benefits of going as a key deciding factor. They give themselves to the unknown and revel in it - it's beautiful, until time runs out and the need for employment presents itself.
In the absence of having embarked on a journey of self-discovery, grounded in purposeful strategic enterprise education, the learners risks holding the hollow words of a generic CV - and their breath.
It is apparent that the majority of learners don't have a career focus, let alone a strategy, and few believe there is anything out there for them at all. Confidence is lacking. This isn't something a careers team can fix alone because confidence is the result of a strategic process, a process that takes years and should begin in a learner's first year. Cue enterprise education.
Running a business is not for everybody, but enterprise education is. Enterprise is about taking action - the application of self; moving forward with intent and purpose, the result of which develops skills, qualities and attributes that lead to knowledge and understanding through lived experience: evidence. It is this evidence that lives in the CV.
Evidence built through experience holds the stories that reveal who we are - how we think, operate and manage. Evidence with feeling is a CV with a heartbeat, and that is what employers are listening out for.
We treat confidence as something the learner should already have by the time they reach careers. But confidence isn't the starting point because it's built on evidence - on action. Get that sequence working upstream, and the careers conversation becomes much more purposeful. The learner stops arriving as a last-ditch attempt and starts arriving with something to say.
An effective careers team assesses not only what a learner can evidence, but what they can connect with - through a strong understanding of themselves, their place in the world, and a sense of the opportunities available to them. So the two teams need each other far more than they admit. Careers assess and direct the evidence, and enterprise generates it. Just as importantly, builds the learner who believes it means something. In most institutions, these two sit in different departments, on different budgets, barely talking, and the learner falls through the gap between them.
The CV is not the problem. The feeling underneath it is. Connect the team that builds that feeling to the team that assesses its output, and you stop sending underconfident learners into rooms that can only ever judge what they bring. You start sending them in ready.