icould is about inspiration and encouragement. The idea is to help you make the most of your potential and talent, by showing how others have used theirs.

Thinking about work can be exciting, confusing, daunting and just plain scary. Opportunities may also appear scarce, especially at the moment with the doom and gloom messages about the recession. This is why inspiration and encouragement are particularly important, so you can act positively, creatively and with optimism.

We’re not seeking to replace face-to-face support, but if you are a:

  • student
  • career starter
  • career developer
  • career changer
  • careers’ professional
  • parent
  • teacher
  • employer

…we believe that icould is  an important resource for you.

icould gives you the inside story of how careers work. The icould storytellers relate, in their own words, their real life career journeys. There are nearly 1000, they are easy to search, they are very varied and each is unique. From telecoms engineers to police officers, from landscape gardeners to web designers, from engine drivers to zookeepers; they talk about what they do, what it’s like, how they came to be where are and their hopes for the future.

There are a few stories from well-known people too – ‘icatchers’, as we call them. Like all of the other icould storytellers, they talk of the times they’ve messed up, had difficulties and set-backs. They also talk about their opportunities and experience of achievement and success. The stories – as well as articles – talk about real issues, such as problems at home, taking a year out, failing exams and coping with redundancy. So it’s not just career ideas that you’ll find on icould.com.

We’re hoping to grow our library as your career journey moves along and we’re looking forward to hearing your comments and views.

Searching icould

icould’s powerful film searching is unique, and may take a little getting used to at first. Here are some tips to help you get started:

Quick search

Available on every page on icould:

  • You can enter simple ‘keywords’ like ‘A-levels’, ‘dyslexia’ or ‘creative’ in the bottom right-hand ‘Search icould stories’ box, then use the arrows for more results.
  • There’s no need to include words like ‘and’, ‘the’, ‘jobs’ or ‘career’ – icould is all about careers and jobs so every page may be offered to you!

Advanced search

Careers are about the bigger picture, all elements of our life, not just the job itself, so with icould you can build your own searches combining multiple keywords.

Advanced search allows you to search using up to two of the following tags:

  • Sector stories from people whose jobs are all in the same sector.
  • Theme clusters of stories where a particular topic, issue or influence has played a significant part in the storyteller’s career journey. You may need to watch some way into each film in order to hear the part of their story that is relevant to theme.
  • Working lifestyle is no longer just ‘nine to five’, there is increasing flexibility in the way that people work. For instance, working at ‘weekends’ or ‘shifts’.
  • Interaction with others different jobs need different ways of relating to other people. For instance, some jobs require that we ‘work in teams’ or ‘help the public’.
  • Personal influences things that affect career choices and the storyteller’s career journey, like ‘love of sport’ or ‘parents’.
  • Jobs that involve being… we are not all the same, and different jobs need different skills and attitudes, like being ‘creative’ or ‘being organised’.
  • Job type information technology has led to many changes in how we work, where we work and even when we work. For instance, we may ‘work from home’, or be ‘freelance’.
  • Qualifications different jobs require different levels of qualifications and experience. For instance, some jobs need ‘lots of qualifications’, some need ‘experience’, others need both.
  • Education/work pattern careers hardly ever go in straight lines, for instance we may go straight from ‘school to employment’, or from ‘university/college to employment’ or perhaps into higher education as a ‘mature student’.
  • First job influence storytellers are often quite clear about what influenced their very first career decision, like their ‘parents’ or an ‘inspiring teacher’.
  • Education level this may have changed during a storyteller’s career, for instance they may not have got a ‘degree’ or ‘FE qualification’ until later in life. It may have a direct influence on the job they currently do or indeed, it might now seem almost irrelevant in their current work.
  • Job location you can search stories by geographical area, like near where you live, but please remember that a story from another area of the country could contain useful and relevant information.
  • Gender self explanatory, but we have included this because for some people gender still does influence career options.

We also offer the opportunity to search by employment sector or by life theme – things that have happened in a storyteller’s life which have impacted upon their career decisions.

 Finally, you can use our unique tag map, to search dynamically across all of our themes.