CareerLAB
Get seen. Get ready.
Get your career moving.
CareerLAB is a seven-step career sprint. Across 35 guided activities, you build a professional identity that is genuinely yours, get job-search-ready, and grow the relationships that carry a career long after the course ends.
Course Overview
A career development course built around doing, not reading
CareerLAB combines reflection, practical activities, digital tools, and guided action to help you strengthen your professional identity, improve your job search readiness, and build the relationships that support long-term career success.
The course is broken into seven steps, each consisting of five short pages. Every page gives you one thing to read, one thing to do, and one thing to capture in your career ePortfolio, plus a short video that explains the reasoning behind the task. Nothing is abstract. You work on your own profile, materials, and network from the first page.
Because the work is genuinely yours, what you finish with is genuinely useful: rewritten application materials, a mapped network, real conversations already started, and a portfolio you keep updating long after the course ends.
CareerLAB is not a typical learning modules course. These activities require initiative and participation - CareerLAB is a guided program to help you understand your strengths, activate your network, and build your career ePortfolio.
What You Will Learn
CareerLAB moves from understanding and presenting your unique skills to sharpening your strategy, strengthening your applications, expanding your network, and turning insight into sustained action.
- Build a professional online presence that reflects your real strengths
- Understand how professional platforms shape visibility, reach and attention
- Use profiling tools to identify patterns in how you work and contribute
- Turn assessment results into language you can use in interviews
- Apply structured thinking to your goals, options and next steps
- Use AI tools on your career materials safely and with good judgment
- Rewrite your CV, profile and cover letter for a specific audience
- Build a job search process using categories, alerts and targeted roles
- Map your existing network across five or more areas of your life
- Research target industries using evidence rather than assumptions
- Understand recruitment from the employer's side of the process
- Maintain a career ePortfolio you can use for years
Who Is This Course For?
CareerLAB suits anyone who wants their next career move to be deliberate rather than accidental. You do not need a finished career plan, an existing network, or any prior experience with AI tools.
Students and recent graduates:
Career changers:
Anyone whose career has stalled:
Course Modules
What you will study across the seven CareerLAB steps
Each step contains five pages: four that build something and one that helps you make sense of what changed. That is 35 guided activities in total.
The CareerLAB method:
Every one of the 35 pages follows the same four-part method: a short read that frames the step, The Task you complete, a Portfolio Note that captures what changed, and a short video briefing from your guide. Consistent structure means you always know what is being asked of you.
CareerLAB is not a typical learning modules course. These activities require initiative and participation - CareerLAB is a guided program to help you understand your strengths, activate your network, and build your career ePortfolio.
Hit the ground running
Start by clarifying your story and making your strengths visible. You complete a pre-course questionnaire, learn how professional platforms shape reach and attention, find the people and topics that will become your home base, and then take one genuinely visible action online.
1.1 Start Line · 1.2 Your Ecosystem · 1.3 Your Interests · 1.4 Make a Start · 1.5 Reflect
Make time for what matters
Slow down and understand how you actually work. You schedule real time for the course, complete a strengths quiz and at least two profiling tools, then turn the results into plain language you can use rather than labels you cannot explain.
2.1 Shape Your Future · 2.2 Your Future · 2.3 Your Strengths · 2.4 Your Thoughts · 2.5 Reflect
Structure your thinking
Bring rigour to an ambiguous process. Group the roles and pathways you are considering, set up a secure AI workspace with strong data-safety habits, use guided prompts to test your story, then work out how recruitment differs for each audience.
3.1 Your Ambitions · 3.2 Applied AI · 3.3 Your Story · 3.4 Your Audience · 3.5 Reflect
Preparation creates advantage
Make readiness a habit, not a scramble. You audit your current materials, rewrite one key document in your own voice, turn your categories into real job alerts, then test your CV and cover letter against a live job advertisement.
4.1 Career Catalyst · 4.2 Your Message · 4.3 Augmented Search · 4.4 Your Impact · 4.5 Reflect
People are at the heart of your success
Most people underestimate their network until they map it. You list the communities that shaped you, build a visual map across at least five areas of your life, highlight the people worth building with, then draft outreach you would be happy to receive.
5.1 Your Team · 5.2 Your Network · 5.3 A Fresh Lens · 5.4 Your Voice · 5.5 Reflect
Expand beyond the familiar
This is where preparation becomes practice. You add new contact categories, send a personalised message to everyone on your list, research two target industries using both indirect and official sources, and then map the hiring process from both sides.
6.1 Grow Your Team · 6.2 The Plunge · 6.3 Your Goals · 6.4 Perspective Shift · 6.5 Reflect
Where will you go from here?
Consolidate everything into something you will keep doing. You name what has changed since Step 1, build a posting and follow-up rhythm you will realistically maintain, teach one thing you learned to someone else, then set concrete next actions against your priority opportunities.
7.1 The Finish Line · 7.2 Your Style · 7.3 Your Leadership · 7.4 Your Ambitions · 7.5 Reflect
Your Program Coordinators
The people behind CareerLAB
CareerLAB was built by The Career Collective Project, a Hargraves Institute initiative. These are the practitioners who shaped the seven steps and the thinking behind them.
Allan Ryan
Founder and Executive Director, Hargraves Institute
Allan Ryan is a facilitator, speaker and team strategist who works with managers and leaders in Australia and overseas to unlock performance through collaboration and innovation.
As Founder and Executive Director of the Hargraves Institute, and a former Adjunct Professor at UTS Business School, he brings over 25 years of experience grounded in research from the Australian Graduate School of Management and shaped by his own leadership as a CEO and executive. Allan is known for distilling clarity from complexity, and for helping leaders enable the change that delivers their strategy.
Kate Dodd
Founding member, The Career Collective Project
Kate Dodd is a design thinking and decision science strategist who has led global engagements and transformations for organisations including Google, Bloomberg, Optus and Disney.
Kate is a founding member of The Career Collective Project, a global initiative designed to work alongside communities, schools, universities and careers teams to help young people find their career path and develop the skills to succeed at work.
What's Included
What comes with your CareerLAB enrolment
Everything you need to work through all seven steps, plus the portfolio and the materials you keep afterwards.
- Seven steps, 35 guided activitiesEvery page carries a task, a portfolio note and a success marker, so you always know where you stand.
- 35 video briefingsA short video on every page with the context and the reasoning behind the task.
- Career ePortfolioOne place to capture everything you produce, keep after the course and reuse for every application.
- Guided AI prompt sheetsReady to use prompts for reviewing your CV, profile and career story, with guidance on editing them yourself.
- Strengths and profiling toolsAccess to the strengths quiz used in Step 2, plus guidance on the free profiling tools that complement it.
- Application testing toolMatch your CV and cover letter against a real job advertisement and get specific feedback in Step 4.
- Upskilled student supportHelp from our team whenever you need it, for the length of your access period.
- Certificate of CompletionIssued by Upskilled once you finish all seven steps.
- Access to LinkedIn LearningFree LinkedIn Learning access is included with this course, so you can keep building the specific skills your career plan calls for.
Key details at a glance
- Duration25 to 35 hours, with 3 months of access
- Delivery100% online, self paced
- Structure7 steps, 35 activities
- StartAny time, no set intake
Get recognised for your new career skills
Complete all seven steps, and you will receive a CareerLAB Certificate of Completion issued by Upskilled, delivered in partnership with The Career Collective Project, a Hargraves Institute initiative.
The stronger proof is what you built along the way. Your ePortfolio holds the reflections, the mapped network, the rewritten materials and the record of the conversations you started, which is far more persuasive in an interview than a certificate on its own.
Work Integrated Learning. Your institution may have Work Integrated Learning credits available. Track your time and progress on each task as you go, then approach your Course Director to discuss the options.
CareerLAB is a non-accredited short course. The Certificate of Completion is not a nationally recognised qualification and is not issued under the Australian Qualifications Framework.
Entry Requirements
There are no formal entry requirements. CareerLAB is open to anyone who wants to take a more deliberate approach to their career, whether you are studying, working, or somewhere in between.
To get the most from the course, you will need reliable internet access, a computer or tablet, and a LinkedIn account or the willingness to create one in Step 1. You should be comfortable working in English and prepared to complete practical tasks between sittings, including reaching out to real people in Step 6.
You do not need a finished CV, an existing network, or any prior experience with AI tools. The course assumes you are starting from wherever you actually are.
Payment Options
CareerLAB FAQs
CareerLAB is self-paced and spans 25 to 35 hours of guided activities across seven steps and 35 pages. Most people work through one step at a time and leave thinking space in between, which is exactly what Step 2 asks you to plan for. You have 3 months of access from enrolment.
No. CareerLAB is a non-accredited short course. It is not an Australian Qualifications Framework qualification; it is not regulated by ASQA, and it does not lead to a Statement of Attainment. You receive a Certificate of Completion issued by Upskilled. If you need nationally recognised training, browse the Upskilled qualifications.
Yes. Steps 3 and 4 use AI tools to help you organise your thinking and test your career materials, and they treat digital safety as part of the skill rather than an afterthought. Before you upload anything, you set up a secure workspace, review the data-use policies, and learn how to handle personally identifiable information. The course is explicit that AI outputs must be checked for accuracy before they go anywhere near your CV.
That is the normal starting point, and the course is built for it. Step 1 assumes a passive profile or none at all, and the outreach in Step 6 comes only after five steps of preparation. You draft, review and practise your messages in Step 5 before you send anything.
Some institutions recognise structured, practical career development activity towards Work Integrated Learning requirements. CareerLAB asks you to track your time and progress on each task, so you have the evidence to have that conversation. Whether credit is available is decided by your institution, so speak with your Course Director.
You keep the ePortfolio, the materials and the habits. Step 7 is deliberately built around what you carry forward: an engagement rhythm you will realistically maintain, follow-up conversations already scheduled, and a concrete next action against each of your priority opportunities.