Running a Career Readiness Week in School
Running a Career Readiness Week in School
A career readiness week lives or dies on the schedule. This page covers running one across a year group: what to put on each day, how to prepare mock interviewers, what students bring with them, and what to do with the ones who already have an offer. Grades 9 to 12.
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The teaching problem
Why Career Weeks Underdeliver
The content is rarely the problem. Someone always has a resume worksheet. What sinks the week is that thirty adults end up running sessions they did not write, in rooms with different equipment, for students whose starting points range from a signed apprenticeship to no idea at all. By Wednesday the strongest students are repeating an exercise they finished two years ago and the ones who most need help have quietly stopped participating. Planning has to solve that spread before it solves for content. The visitor schedule is the other pressure. Employer volunteers cancel, and a day built entirely around them collapses when two do. A week that survives contact with reality has a fallback session behind every external slot and a written brief for every adult in the building.
A sequence that works
A Five-Day Plan That Holds Together
One day per theme, each with a whole-group opener and a rotation. Sessions are written so a non-specialist can pick up the pack an hour beforehand, and every externally staffed slot has an internal alternative.
- Monday: Where Am I NowStudents audit what they already have: grades, experience, certificates, a draft resume. The audit produces a personal target for the week, which is what stops the strongest students coasting.
- Tuesday: The Written ApplicationResume and cover letter surgery in small groups, working on the student's own material rather than a fictional applicant. Staff use a common feedback sheet so the advice does not contradict.
- Wednesday: Talking to EmployersPhone manner, workplace email and the questions worth asking on a site visit. This day carries the visitor slots, with a scripted alternative session ready if a speaker drops out.
- Thursday: Mock InterviewsEvery student sits one interview and observes two. Interviewer briefs and a simple rubric mean volunteers with no training can give feedback that is useful and reasonably consistent.
- Friday: Presenting and Next StepsShort presentations on a chosen role or pathway, then each student writes three dated actions for the term ahead. Tutors keep a copy for the next review point.
Where it goes wrong
Making the Week Count Afterwards
The failure mode is not a bad week, it is a week with no afterlife. Students go back to lessons, the folders go in a drawer, and the interview feedback is never read again. Build the record in from the start. Each session produces one page for a single folder, and the Friday action sheet names a date and a person rather than a good intention. Two planning errors are worth naming as well. Booking every visitor on one day concentrates all the risk, and running mock interviews before the written application day means students get interviewed about a resume they have not fixed yet. If you assess anything, assess the action plan and the reflection, not the interview performance.
What's in the download
Inside the files
Editable Word and PowerPoint plus print-ready PDFs, with answer keys throughout.
- Five day plans with timings
- Interviewer briefs for volunteers
- Feedback sheets and simple rubrics
- Student folder pages for each day
- Fallback sessions for cancelled visitors
- Editable slides and letters home
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
We have no employer contacts. Can we still run it?
Yes. Wednesday and the Thursday interview panels are the slots that normally use outside adults, and both have internal versions in the pack: staff interview students from other classes, and the employer question session runs as a structured debate instead. It is a weaker week without visitors, but it is a real one, and you can build a contact list during the first year by inviting parents to volunteer.
Will this work for students already in an apprenticeship?
They need a different target rather than a different week. The Monday audit routes them onto extension tasks: negotiating a training plan, communication with a workplace supervisor, and presenting their placement to a younger year group. That last role solves two problems at once, since it gives them something worth doing and gives Grade 9 a credible speaker. Materials for those tasks are included.
How much preparation does it take?
The pack removes the writing, not the logistics. Expect a couple of hours to adapt the day plans to your timetable and room list, plus the time it takes to brief staff, which is one short meeting with the interviewer briefs in hand. Letters home and the student folder pages are editable Word files, so the administrative side comes down to filling in names, rooms and dates.
Plan the Week, Not Just the Worksheets
A career week works when every adult knows their brief and every student leaves with a dated plan someone will check.
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