School Leavers Toolkit

Practical skills for life

Advice and resources for finding your way after leaving school in NZ:    Toolkit

10 most searched for jobs

Jobs from pasture to plate

You might love programming robots, working with animals or protecting the environment. Check out Growing NZ which looks at career opportunities for you within NZ's food & fibre industry. This covers about everything from growing quality food, wood and wool through to making those things into products like ice cream, burger patties, pizza boxes and clothing for fashion stores. 

Job of the Month

Free job hunting ebook and where to after school

👉 A beginners guide to job hunting

👉 Where to next

Where to from school?

Download this ebook, Where to from School? Explore your study and job options.

What skills do I need to have to get a job?

Employability skills Framework

Need to write a CV?

 Create a login on Careers NZ or try Resume

What to study or what career?

Youth Guarantee

Career Quest & IT jobs for the non-technical of us

Career Quest - find a job based on your interests

Jobs in the IT industry that don't mean you need to be a coder.

Remember to keep checking careers.govt.nz for lots of help in deciding what you can do.

Top jobs of 2015

Top jobs link

Good time to check out careers info

http://www.careers.govt.nz/

A check of your online content

 Use Simple Wash to scrape through your Facebook and Twitter accounts. It will tag your content as it's compared with a list of objectionable vocabulary.  It offers a chance for you to see your online presence from another point of view - and it gives you an opportunity to tidy things up before applying for that new job.                                                        

Just the Job - career videos

Just the Job - browse, discover and enjoy watching over 270 different videos that show the career options in New Zealand today. 

NZ Career choices information apps

                                 Occupation Outlook

         App on iTunes                             App on Google Play            

The Occupation Outlook is designed to be one of the first places you should look at when making a decision on career options. It provides a snapshot of 50 key occupations in New Zealand, highlighting the cost of study, income potential and job prospects.   

Learn free

 Free online learning at GCF - tech, maths,
                                                                        reading, science ...

Bulls Eye - helping you find degree, career and job options

bulls-eye is an online tool that helps you identify your career options. 

Focusing on occupations that are available in the New Zealand employment market, bulls-eye matches your interests and aptitude with potential careers and provides information about different industries, job sectors and learning pathways. 

Easy-to-use and 100% confidential, bulls-eye offers low-cost career planning to help with the challenge you face – working out what you want to do and how to get there.

The bulls-eye experience starts with two questionnaires. The first of these, focus on me, builds a profile of your interests, aptitudes, skills and personality. The second questionnaire, focus on my future, creates a picture of your vocational aptitudes and the kind of career you might be interested in.

The results of these questionnaires along with career matches are then provided for review and investigation. bulls-eye members can also update their profile and goals over time.

Talk to employers

During the week of the 28th July, SchoolConnect is offering a New Zealand first for secondary school students. Live chat online with some employers (Opis, SIT, BCITO + more) or watch the videos. You need to register if you want to take part in the chat sessions - you submit written questions. The timetable and video links are on the website. I do recommend you take a look.

Our lonely mobile lives

Learn to write code - it's the future

Hey Kids! Learn to Write Code, It's the Future!

February 26, 2014 by Doug S, Abridged LinkedIn Article.

My first attempts at coding were with a tiny Radio Shack computer that hooked up to a cassette player and the TV. I think it took me hours to write the Basic program to get “Hello world!” to display on the screen. Years later I’d work in the world of web marketing and design and work with HTML, JavaScript and CGI every day. Well that’s nothing compared to what’s coming! Top leaders in the tech world are encouraging kids to start learning how to code now, for the future.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey all recently threw their considerable tech weigh and credibility into Code.org’s video “What Most Schools Don’t Teach.” The clip stresses a growing worldwide shortage of coders, and that only 10% of American schools teach any kind of programming. Since Computer Science is the best paying college degree in the U.S., learning a little coding makes financial sense. But what’s it gonna cost YOU up front? In many cases, only time and effort!

Image courtesy of Code.org

Code.org is a “non-profit whose goal is to expose all students to computer programming. We believe that computer programming is a liberal art; it's something EVERY student in the world should be exposed to at some point in their childhood.”

Code.org offers options straight from its homepage for students to start learning code, or for teachers to start bringing code to their schools. The amount of resources available for FREE to learn code are vast and overwhelming. Who needs college? Bill Gates didn’t!

Code.org’s online learning options include Scratch where you work on some lines of code in a left pane, and see the results on the right. Also offered are links to sites where you can learn coding online. At Code Academy, you can learn to code for free. Khan Academy’s “resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.”

Code.org offers links to apps to teach kids coding set within games for Android with apps like LightBot, RoboLogic for IOS, or Kodu for Windows, and even xBox. Other online tutorials affiliated with Code.org include Lynda.com and Udemy. Lynda.com offers thousands of online courses and tutorials and offers programming tutorials on core languages like Java, C#, and HTML5. Universities are affiliated with Code.org as well. Coursera offers “free full university courses online taught by real professors.” You’ll also find resources to learn web programming, mobile app programming, and even resources to write code for robots!

So that you know where to go, what should you learn? Well, you’ll need to hone your math and basic computer science skills. When you work up to it, what programming languages should you be learning? Well, jobstractor.com did an overview of the most sought after programming languages.

Here they are in order:

PHP
Java
Objective C
SQL
Android (Java)
Ruby
JavaScript
C#
C++
ActionScript
Python
C
ASP.NET

Well…what are you waitin’ for? We gave you the links. Most of the course are FREE. We even gave you a list of what to learn. So, get out there and start learnin’ some code. Make Mr. Gates and Mr. Zuckerberg happy and maybe you’ll enter the world of all night hackathons, high paychecks, no sleep and free lunches! Good luck!

- See more at: http://www.geeks.com/techtips/community/hey-kids-learn-to-write-code-it-s-the-future.html#sthash.88tjsMQ2.dpuf