This leaflet outlines the role of the progress file as a tool for you to
use in your life within and beyond higher education. It offers advice on
how the progress file may help you to get the job you deserve.
What is a progress file?
The term progress file includes three elements:
-
A transcript.
This is a record of your learning and achievement. It includes details of the modules or units you have taken throughout your course. Its format will be determined by your institution - contact your student union or course leader to see what your institution is doing. -
Personal and Development Planning (PDP).
This is a structured and supported process, which
will help you think about your own learning and achievement and plan for your education and career development. -
Personal Development Records.
Progress reviews and plans are used to help clarify your goals and can provide a resource from which material is selected to produce personal statements (eg CVs) for employers and others. They include written records of your PDP.
It is impossible to pin down exactly what your experience of the progress file will be like. Even within a university different subject areas might be offering different types of PDP. However, whatever the process, it should give you the advantages outlined in this leaflet.
Preparing for employment
PDP is a good opportunity to practice the self-management skills you will need when you begin full-time employment. This means that it must be an active process. It doesn't need to take up much of your time, but it does need you to engage with it.
If you treat PDP as merely a paper exercise, you will get nothing from it. Try using it as a way to work out what you want, and how you are going to get it, and you may find that it is a very helpful tool. It is about becoming responsible for your own learning, about seeing how your learning relates to a wider context, and about improving general skills for study and career management.
In a competitive working market, being able to use the skills you learn during PDP will become invaluable.
Job application forms and questionnaires
You will have encountered application forms in the past, and know the types of questions you are expected to answer. All application forms will contain questions on basic information, education, personal details, work experience and so on. It is also common for application forms to include some open-ended questions and it is with these that you may find the progress file helpful.
A survey of application forms, used by major employers as part of their graduate recruitment schemes, reveals a pattern in the type of questions asked. The following aspects were revealed to be the most common:
- overcoming difficulties and sticking to a task;
- description of your 'most significant achievement';
- teamworking and organisation of others;
- reasons for applying and career interests/aspirations.
These questions all demand a certain amount of thought about yourself and the work you have previously done. The progress file may help you answer such questions in a number of ways. The process itself will help you become more reflective about the work you are doing, both within your higher education programme and outside it. Reflection can help when considering such things as describing your 'most significant achievement'. It can help you 'think outside the box' and give an original answer, which will make your application form stand out. The written information will also help jog your memory about the types of things that you have been doing in your course.
Another common recruitment tool for the larger employers is that of using closed multi-choice questions, a kind of personality questionnaire. These ask you to rate a number of statements in order of their relevance to you. You may be given a choice of four descriptors and asked which one is most representative of you. Employers want honesty in these, and second guessing them is ineffective as they have in-built tools to check for consistency. Being prepared to think about the type of person you are, therefore, is vital and the progress file can help you do this throughout higher education.
Assessment centres and interviews
As a graduate, you will be faced with a number of choices when you leave university as to what to do next. Whatever the choice you will almost certainly have to undertake a number of interviews before you get where you want to be. If you decide to follow a graduate recruitment scheme, it is likely that you will also have to attend an assessment centre.
Employers use assessment centres to see how you will respond to different environments. They typically include tools such as interviews, presentations, group exercises and role-playing.
To do well in any of these, it is important that you develop the ability to think quickly to relate your previous experiences to different situations. The concept of transferable skills is about using your existing skills in new areas. The interviewer, or assessor, will be looking to you to provide practical examples of where you have gained the skills that they are looking for. The progress file, through PDP, can help you identify your strengths, and help you gain insight into where you have already used them.
A survey of a number of employers has shown that the following competencies are viewed as important by them:
- flexibility, adaptability and the capacity to cope with and manage change
- self-motivation and drive
- analytical ability and decision-making
- communication and interpersonal skills
- teamworking ability and skills
- organisation, planning and prioritisation abilities
- ability to innovate
- leadership ability
The progress file can help you determine which of these skills you already have, and which you need to develop. It can also help you know your strengths so that you can focus upon these throughout the recruitment process.
Continuing Professional Development
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is the work-place equivalent of PDP. You will almost certainly come across it, possibly in the material that is included with an application form for a job.
'The public now take it for granted that professionals should keep their skills up-to-date by undertaking continuing professional development throughout their working lives.'
(Recertification for the Dental Profession. What it means for you…General Dental Council www.gdc-uk.org)
Graduate recruitment information shows that employers will expect you to take charge of your own CPD from the start:
'We are very serious, however, about investing in both your professional and personal development. We aim to equip you with up-to-date valuable skills…So, from the start, your early development will be self-managed…Regular, open discussions and appraisals with your line manager will revolve around your progress to targets, areas of improvement and new challenges .'
Further information
The following organisations are working in joint collaboration to help higher education institutions and academics develop progress file policies and practices.
QAA - www.qaa.ac.uk
SCOP - www.scop.ac.uk
Universities Scotland - www.universities-scotland.ac.uk
Universities UK - www.universitiesuk.ac.uk
Higher Education Academy - http://www.heacademy.ac.uk
Additional information may be found at:
Centre for Recording Achievement www.recordingachievement.org
Or try your own student union web site to see what is being offered in your institution.
Top