Student career indecision: why self-awareness comes first

When asked what matters most in graduate recruitment, employers say enthusiasm for the role (68%) and transferable skills (55%). Yet many students arrive at university without clarity about their career direction - coming specifically to find out their passions and explore different careers, according to recent Wonkhe research with 150 students. Students cannot demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for a career path when they don't understand what actually interests them.

This isn't an information problem. When students don't know what genuinely interests them, every career path looks equally plausible or equally wrong. When they haven't explored their values, they can't tell which jobs would energise them versus drain them. Without self-understanding, more information just creates more noise.

9 minutes

Written by Johan van den Bos.

In this article we cover:

Why do students arrive without career clarity?
What causes career indecision in students?
What do employers look for in graduates?
Why can't appointment-based services solve this?
What actually works: structured career discovery
How technology scales career discovery
Moving from optional exploration to systematic discovery

Why do students arrive without career clarity?

Research with UK career practitioners published in October 2024 found that students' limited understanding of themselves creates anxiety about career planning and leads them to postpone engaging with careers services until late in their university journey. Without self-awareness as a foundation, career exploration feels overwhelming rather than clarifying.

The assumption that students arrive at university with clear career plans doesn't reflect reality. Many enter higher education specifically to explore what they might want to do, hoping the experience will provide answers. Research highlighted in Wonkhe notes that students often struggle because they lack "a real understanding of who they are and who they want to be" along with "clarity about what they really want to achieve in their lives."

This lack of clarity isn't laziness or indifference - it's a natural stage of development. But universities often respond by providing more career information when what students actually need is structured self-discovery. Giving someone uncertain about their interests a list of 100 career options doesn't reduce their uncertainty - it amplifies it.

The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) Student Academic Experience Survey 2025 revealed that 68% of students now undertake paid work during term time, up from 56% in 2024. Students juggling study, work, and financial pressure need efficient pathways to self-understanding, not open-ended exploration that assumes they have unlimited time to "figure it out."

Emotional

"students don't feel they can deal with careers" - specifically anxiety and low confidence

Cognitive

"students don't know how to make career decisions" - unrealistic or limited understanding of themselves, of the labour market, of career choice processes

Behavioural

"students are reluctant to take ownership of their own career development" - engaging late, with disproportionate focus on CVs

These aren't separate issues - they feed into each other. A student who doesn't understand what interests them feels anxious about making the "wrong" choice. That anxiety leads to avoidance. The avoidance means they arrive at final year still unclear about direction. One career practitioner in the study observed that "a lack of understanding about the process of career development can make students feel anxious about the uncertainty of the process, whilst a lack of confidence could lead a student to under-estimate the skills that they may have to offer an employer."

Wonkhe research on future careers services noted that in 2022,

"students are less likely to engage with careers support, and build connections with employers, even at a time when employers are keen and motivated to bring in graduates to their organisations."

The research identified that factors such as disability, lived experience of inequality, or poor mental health could be impacting students' internal beliefs about the degree of agency they have - and consequently, their ability and confidence to engage with careers provision.

But underneath these structural barriers lies a more fundamental challenge: students who don't understand their own interests, values, and motivations cannot engage meaningfully with career opportunities even when those opportunities are presented to them.

What do employers look for in graduates?

The CBI Economics/University Alliance Survey from August 2024 revealed what employers prioritise in graduate recruitment:

● Enthusiasm for the role applied for: 68%

● Transferable skills like communication: 55%

● Relevance of subject studied: 52%

● Vocational experience during degree: 42%

● Which university attended: 8%

The emphasis on enthusiasm isn't about performing excitement in an interview; it's about genuine interest in the work. Employers can distinguish between candidates who have done self-reflection about what they want and candidates who are applying because the job exists.

But you cannot develop genuine enthusiasm for a role if you don't understand what aspects of work genuinely interest you. You cannot target applications effectively if you don't know which working environments suit you. You cannot make informed career decisions if you haven't explored what you value in your work beyond salary.

This is where the self-awareness gap becomes a career outcomes problem. It's not just that students feel uncertain, this uncertainty prevents them from engaging with the very activities (work experience, networking, targeted applications) that would improve their graduate outcomes.

Why can't appointment-based services solve this?

The appointment-based model creates a structural challenge when addressing self-awareness gaps. When students book appointments without foundational understanding of their interests or values, advisers spend significant time on exploratory work that could happen through structured self-assessment beforehand. This limits capacity for the complex, contextual guidance where adviser expertise matters most.

The October 2024 research with career practitioners found that students often engage late with career thinking, with one practitioner noting that

"an unrealistic assumption that it was going to be easy to get a job, or a sense of anxiety about the process might lead to a student postponing a visit to the careers service until late in their time at university."

This creates a capacity problem. Advisers spend appointment time on exploratory conversations that help students understand themselves, when this is work that could happen through structured self-assessment before the appointment. This limits how many students can be supported and means the most uncertain students (who need the most support) either never engage or engage too late to benefit fully.

The bottleneck isn't just about hiring more advisers it is also about recognising that self-discovery work needs to happen before students reach the appointment stage.

What actually works: structured career discovery

The Career Development Institute's Framework, referenced in government statutory guidance, identifies "grow throughout life" as the first core learning outcome, explicitly focused on developing self-awareness and managing personal development. This isn't coincidental. Career development theory recognises that self-awareness must precede career exploration.

Contemporary approaches emphasise Career Construction Theory and career adaptability, which includes four factors:

● concern (planfulness and intention)

● control (decisiveness and organisation)

● curiosity (exploration and learning)

● confidence (self-efficacy)

But all four factors depend on a foundation of self-understanding. You cannot be planful about your career without understanding what you want from it. You cannot explore meaningfully without knowing what resonates with you.

In practice, leading institutions use strengths-based approaches to help students understand themselves. The University of Edinburgh Careers Service distinguishes between skills and strengths:

"Strengths are the skills you have that you actively enjoy using and are naturally good at. The difference between skills and strengths is that we usually feel energised when we use our strengths."

This distinction matters because it shifts students from thinking about "what they can do" to "what they genuinely enjoy doing" - a crucial insight for career decision-making. A student might be capable of many things, but understanding which activities energise them versus drain them provides essential data for career exploration.

Over 30 UK university careers services use psychometric assessment packages, according to Graduate Futures Institute (formerly AGCAS) guidance. Tools like Realise2 assess 60 attributes across realised strengths, unrealised strengths, learned behaviours, and weaknesses. These structured approaches give students frameworks for understanding themselves - providing language and concepts to make sense of their interests and preferences.

Canterbury Christ Church University demonstrated how this translates to measurable outcomes by using Career Pulse, a self-assessment tool that helps students understand their employability profile. Over eight months, they achieved a 16% learning gain in students' career confidence. This wasn't abstract confidence-building - students gained concrete understanding of their capabilities and development areas, which gave them a foundation for meaningful career exploration.

When students complete structured self-assessment, they move from "I don't know what I want" to "I understand what interests me and what I need to explore further." This shift means they can actually get something from careers support.

How technology scales career discovery

The appointment bottleneck won't solve itself through hiring more advisers - most institutions face budget constraints that make significant staff expansion unrealistic. Technology offers a different approach: helping students do the self-discovery work before they book appointments, giving them the foundation for more productive conversations when they do engage.

Self-assessment tools can help students explore their interests, values, working style preferences, and motivations in ways that feel exploratory rather than high-stakes. When students complete structured assessments, they gain specific insights about themselves. Instead of arriving at appointments saying "I don't know what I want to do" they can say "I've discovered I'm interested in creative problem-solving and prefer collaborative environments - what career paths might suit that?"

This changes the nature of adviser interactions. Rather than starting from zero with exploratory questions, conversations can focus on interpreting assessment results, connecting self-understanding to career options, and strategic planning. The foundational self-discovery work happens through technology, while advisers concentrate on the complex, contextual guidance where human expertise matters most.

Manchester Metropolitan University embedded career development into their final-year curriculum using Access Careers Centre as part of coursework assessment. This integration achieved 82% completion and 25,000 activities in a single week - reaching students who would never have opted into standalone careers activities.

Career discovery needs infrastructure, not just interventions. When institutions build systematic pathways for students to explore who they are and what they want - supported by technology that provides immediate insights and tracks development - engagement follows.

Moving from optional exploration to systematic discovery

The challenge facing careers services isn't that students don't care about their futures. It's that we've built systems requiring students to self-select into career exploration before they have the self-awareness to benefit from it. We offer career fairs and sector talks to students who don't yet know which sectors interest them. We provide one-to-one appointments to students who don't know what questions to ask.

As Martin Edmondson, CEO of the Graduate Futures Institute, notes in Wonkhe,

"Contemporary careers and employability requires academics embedding employability meaningfully into learning, scalable work-based learning opportunities, aligned systems and student support."

But it's not just about making career activities mandatory - it's about sequencing them correctly. Career discovery must come before career exploration. Students need structured opportunities to understand themselves before they can meaningfully explore options.

This means:

● Making self-assessment available from week one, not final year

● Sequencing activities so self-discovery happens before career exploration

● Tracking growth in career clarity and confidence—not just login numbers

● Freeing advisers to focus on interpretation and strategy, not basic exploration

● Building career discovery into existing student touchpoints, not creating separate opt-in activities

Technology cannot replace the expertise of careers professionals - but it can extend your reach to students who are paralysed by not knowing what they want. It can provide the foundational self-discovery work that makes subsequent conversations productive. And it can generate evidence of real development in career clarity that demonstrates your impact to institutional leadership.

The question isn't whether self-awareness matters for career development - the evidence makes that clear. The question is whether your institution has the infrastructure to help every student discover who they are and what they want, or whether career discovery remains something only decisive students pursue.

Find out more about how career discovery tools can transform student clarity and adviser capacity.

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Johan van den Bos is Marketing Manager for Access Careers Centre within the Access Learning team, passionate about supporting organisations in their mission to enhance employability and career development.