I’m Rebecca Darby, Careers Adviser and Regional Coordinator for the Southern Region, based in the Nottinghamshire area. I am responsible for providing students with one-on-one careers advice and guidance and working with careers leads to deliver their careers programme in school. This can include delivering workshops and assemblies and attending parent events. My regional role is to support advisers and network with others to drive the success and service offered by Progress Careers.
The role and importance of career guidance
Career guidance is essential in an ever-changing job market, ensuring people understand the opportunities and have the career management skills to move forward. I love being able to empower and enable students to make informed decisions about their future, feel confident about their future pathways, and know that a career is a journey and it’s okay if you change your mind or need to find an alternative route!
Here are some examples of the impact of careers guidance on student feedback:
“Helpful in making me feel more confident that the steps I was taking were positive towards my post-18 intentions, and she answered all my questions very clearly. I also can’t thank her enough for going above and beyond.”
“I can’t speak highly enough of how she was; I really feel as though she has explained everything I struggled with. Absolutely brilliant.”
I started my career working part-time in fashion retail, progressing through to Store Management and leading teams. During this time, I also achieved my BSc degree in Nutrition. I originally wanted to become a Dietitian, but I realised that Science was not my passion, but my desire to help people remained.
I thoroughly enjoyed training and developing others, which inspired me to become an assessor/ trainer for apprenticeships and traineeships.
Having a young family, I wanted to achieve a work-life balance, and time was important for me, so I looked for a role within schools to be with my children in the evenings, weekends, and holidays. During this time, I worked as a pastoral assistant and academic mentor, mainly with post-16 students. However, I felt I had more to give and wanted to further develop my own career; I decided that putting all my experience together led me towards the careers sector, and I gained insight into the advisor roles whilst working in the school. I saw the opportunity with Progress Careers, which was willing to invest in me so that I could achieve my L6 qualification whilst working full time and maintain the term time working to fit my personal life.
My main satisfaction comes from supporting students to identify their strengths and skills and thinking about how they are developing these through their subjects, hobbies, and circular activities, relating it to the employability skills that employers are looking for and what they may need to focus on further to achieve their goals, very often they need help to realise what these goals may be!
As advisers, we work independently, usually with a day per week in our allocated schools; building effective relationships within the schools is so important. Every effort is made to make progress careers a team and family; we hold review days twice yearly where the whole team comes together to celebrate our achievements, along with a well-being day and regular CPD opportunities to support our practice. We also attend the Progress Group conference which is a great way to network and focus on the wider aspect of the group. We pride ourselves on delivering the core values and recognise each other regularly through feedback and our unsung hero awards.
Communication is essential. We work in regional teams, and there is an open-door policy from the leadership team, so you are never alone!
