3M Careerwise encourages 11–14 year-olds to think about their interests and motivations. By answering a series of simple questions, they get a personalised profile and are introduced to real 3M employees who share some of their characteristics.

The 3M employees share:

• what they were like at school
• what jobs they've done
• what they do now
• what advice they would give their
  teenage selves.

Leading on to individual activities and group discussions, this free online resource is a great way to get students thinking about the sorts of careers they might like to pursue – and what skills and qualifications are needed to get them there.

The 3M Careerwise resource consists of an online Personality Profile quiz to help students identify their work style and skills. It uses a student's answers to scenario-based questions to build a personality profile, which is then matched to three 3M employees with similar profiles.

Each student is mapped to a mixture of male and female employees with similar personality traits to themselves. Their matches may have very different jobs, but they will have similar capabilities or approaches to their work.

Students are also free to explore the clips of other 3M employees they haven't been matched with to find out more about the variety of jobs available in the world of work and the career paths people have taken to get various jobs.

It is important to recognise that many of the people in the videos didn't know what they wanted to do when they were at school, or have found themselves working in a completely different job from what they initially planned, which we hope will reassure students that if they don't know what they want to do when they leave school, that's OK. Most of the people in the videos worked hard at school and have been rewarded for getting a wide range of skills and qualifications

This resource has a number of aims:

• To encourage students to think about and prepare for their future working lives.
• To offer students a window into the world of work – allowing them to virtually meet real people in real jobs and find out what their workday involves.
• To help students identify career options and understand how their study choices can affect progression towards their careers of interest.
• To encourage students to build their skills profile while in education and keep their options open by choosing subjects like maths, science and languages.
• To help students consider how their personality type and interests will affect the kind of job they will enjoy.
• To show that the working world is changing at a rapid pace and students may end up working in jobs or industries that don't even exist yet.
• To help students appreciate that in a rapidly changing world, job candidates with strong core competencies, a wide skills base and a clear understanding of their competencies have the most desirable work characteristics.