Welcome to Careers at Holy Rood RC High School

We are Skills Development Scotland (SDS). SDS is the national skills agency, supporting the people and businesses of Scotland to develop and apply their skills. As part of this, we deliver Scotland’s career service. Working with our partners, we aim to ensure every individual has the skills and confidence to get a job and progress in the workplace, achieving thier full potential, and that employers have the right skills at the right time in high performing, fair and equal workplaces.

Our careers advisers are professionally qualified experts and they are in every state secondary school in Scotland. We provide one-to-one and groupwork career information, advice and guidance, alongside teachers and Developing the Young Workforce to support your young people make the best career choices.

We have a network of SDS centres across the country for people of all ages to visit and our advisers will help people at all stages of their careers.

We can help people with:

• Career choices and changes
• Developing and using their career management skills
• Creating CVs and interview preparation
• Information on apprenticeships
• Help with redundancy situations

We also have a national helpline, open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm on 0800 917 8000. We are also behind Scotland’s career website, My world of work. All of this is with the aim of helping you make the best decisions at the right time.

Apprenticeships Scotland

Kick start your career with an apprenticeship!
See what apprenticeships you can do, which employers you could work with and the qualifications you will gain.

Skills Development Scotland

SDS is Scotland’s national skills body. Contributing to Scotland’s sustainable economic growth, we provide services that deliver the very best outcomes for Scotland’s people, businesses and the economy.

Support Offered by your school appointed SDS Adviser

How do we help your young person in school?

We start by introducing young people early on, in their school journey ensuring that they are confident in making informed choices at later stages of school or at critical points such as option choices. We never tell young people what to do but will work with them to help them discover what is right for them and everything they need to know to achieve this. SDS advisers work in the school almost every day just like a regular member of the teaching staff and see pupils in group sessions, one to one appointments or a drop in times.

In first year (S1), your young person will be part of a group session that will help them get to know their careers adviser and understand the kind of support that they will receive. It is at this point that we will start to talk about career management skills.

Guided by the previous Career Theory, Sector skills evaluation and psychology reviews career management skills are skills for life. They are the keys to help people make and take ongoing career decisions as the world of work and learning change.

They come under the four themes Self, Strengths, Horizons and Networks.

• SELF – is about understanding what you like, your interests, values and what is important to you
• STRENGTHS – is about understanding what you are good at and being able to develop this further and learn from different experiences
• HORIZONS – is about understanding what routes, pathways and options might be available to you
• NETWORKS – is about understanding who can help you and how they can help support your decisions and actions

By understanding and developing their career management skills your young person will be encouraged to think about who they are and what they would like to do.

This will help them think about questions such as:

• What inspires me?
• What gets me excited?

If you people feel confident that they have identified, developed and can use their career management skills then they will be much better equipped to explore and consider their career ideas and pathways.

This will help them take action now and create a brighter future.