Careers guidance

The Oxford University Careers Service offers tailored support to help Oxford students develop their skills and put themselves in a good position for entering the jobs market or progressing their career.

Whatever career you are interested in, and whichever degree you are taking, the Careers Service is here to provide expert advice, events and resources:

• Annual careers fairs, across a range of sectors, so you can meet employers and explore your options
• Events and workshops on a wide range of career-related topics, run by employers and careers advisers
• 1:1 careers advice appointments for students with our expert careers advisers
• Our internship programmes including the Summer Internship Programme - exclusively for Oxford students
• A range of vacancies advertised on our website by employers who want to attract Oxford students
• Our exclusive skills programmes to help you develop and build employability skills across a range of sectors
• Access to Career Weaver, our web-based app, to help you identify your skills, strength, preferences and motivations
• Continued careers support after graduation.

Oxford graduates go into many different sectors:

Source: Graduate Outcomes Survey 2022 (data collected 15 months after graduation)

Today’s competitive and global job market means that work experience and employability skills are increasingly important to early career success.

Here are eight of the employability skills we focus on here at Oxford and believe it’s important for students to develop:

• Business awareness
• Initiative
• Communication
• Creativity
• Planning
• Leadership
• Self-management
• Teamwork

The Careers Service offers lots of ideas for developing these skills both within and outside of the university setting. We also run a number of skills programmes to help you develop these:

• Insight Programmes to give you a greater insight and understanding of a range of sectors such as Strategy & Management, Publishing, Teaching, Medicine, Start-ups and Pharma/Biotech.
• The Future Leader Innovation Programme is a skills development programme from the Oxford University Careers Service
• EnSpire Oxford is for students who want to gain skills, knowledge, and positive behaviours to innovate and drive change in the future.

And don’t forget there are also hundreds of societies, teams or clubs to take part in. Apart from being a lot of fun and a great way to make friends, this can also help you develop employability skills such as time management, leadership and teamwork.

Our Internship Office provides research and professional work experience placements exclusively to Oxford students. Our two largest programmes are:

• The Summer Internship Programme
• The Micro-Internship Programme.

We also offer an internship programme dedicated to supporting our Crankstart Scholars.

Read more about the exclusive internships available to Oxford students.

The Careers Service offers tailored support and access to a variety of careers and employability resources to Oxford University alumni.

All alumni can:

• Search our job vacancy board on CareerConnect
• Meet employers at our careers fairs
• Attend tailored events such as our ‘Career Management Strategy Masterclass Webinar’ and the ‘Alumni @ the Fair’ sessions
• Sign up for the termly Alumni Careers Newsletter
• Access our comprehensive online resources.

Recent alumni can also access one-to-one careers advice appointments. Those within two years of their course-end date can book an advice appointment outside term-time with an Oxford careers adviser for personalised career support.

Read more about how we support alumni.