Edition 61 - How to write a Careers Newsletter

Welcome to this second-to-last edition of Pondering Careers for 2025 (scary, hey?) where we're going to get super practical and talk about how to write a Careers Newsletter.

Normally this is where I say something like 'I'm not an expert...' but in this case, I feel like I might actually be qualified to speak authoritatively about the topic. 😆

We've been publishing a weekly Careers Newsletter on a Monday morning since 2006.

That's almost 20 years.

For context, that's the same year Facebook launched to the general public.

In that time, we've published almost 1,000 newsletters, and while we've made a few tweaks, they're in pretty much the same format as they were back then. And that's because they still work, even with the rise of social media and now Gen AI - you can't really beat a newsletter for putting all the info you need into the one place.

So, I'm going to share a bit about our own newsletters, and my tips for writing a Careers Newsletter for your students or clients, whoever they may be.

We started with a newsletter...

Each week, we send out the newsletter in a Word Doc to all our member schools. It's still super popular, and on the odd occasion when it doesn't land in someone's inbox by 7am Monday (for whatever reason), we've usually heard about it by 7.05am.

It's pretty simple, at its core - it's a Word Document with a heading and the date, then a list of upcoming events relevant to the school's location, a stack of scholarships, competitions, and work experience opportunities, then some longer format articles broken into a couple of sections (entrepreneurship, study skills, wellbeing etc.), and finally we finish each week with a Job Spotlight.

Why do we still use Word? Because the majority of our schools reformat these newsletters to suit their schools, and Word is super easy to edit.

Sometimes our schools simply add their own details to the newsletter, export it as a PDF, and share it on, but they also copy articles and events to share in their school newsletters, in their message boards and learning management systems, or even on their social media accounts.

In the past few years, we've added more to the newsletter, and made it even easier for people to pick and choose from the articles and events we publish. We now have a Newsletter Creator on our Dashboard, so people can either download the latest Word Doc version, or copy and paste individual items, whichever they prefer:

In writing this article today I've been thinking about the fact that I so rarely talk about this newsletter on LinkedIn, yet it's probably the most central part of what we do at Study Work Grow - it's like it's become such a part of the furniture that I just assume everyone knows about it!

Now, I'm not suggesting that everyone else should be using Word to create their newsletters - far from it - but I am saying that you need to find what works for you and your audience, and use the right tool for the job. In our case, that's an online platform and Word Documents, but you might want to use another tool entirely.

Steps for creating a Careers Newsletter

If you keep these things in mind, you should be onto a winner:

Step 1 - Identify your audience

Before you do anything else, take a moment to think about who you are writing for.

In many cases, this will feel pretty obvious. For example, if you're in a school, your newsletter will be first-and-foremost for your students.

Once you've got the easy bit out of the way, think about who else will be reading your newsletter. There are a whole host of other people who are not in your main audience, but who will also be consuming (and benefiting from) your content, and you should really be considering their needs as well.

That's because these other people are likely to be influencing your main audience. Going back to our school example, your teachers should also be reading your newsletter, as will your students' parents and kin.

Cristina Santos, PhD shared a post this morning on this very topic - parents and family are incredibly important in a young person's journey, and our newsletters give us a great way to engage them in the conversation. I wrote a report on the topic a while back if you're interested in learning more about engaging parents.

When crafting your newsletter, we need to have ALL of these people in mind - not just our main audience.

Step 2 - Work out the 'where', 'when', and 'how often'

This may also feel like it's obvious, but I assure you it's not.

Where are you going to share the newsletter? Will it go out via email, or through your social media channels? Will you be printing copies for people who have limited access to devices? Will you be publishing your newsletter as a section in a wider publication? And will you be uploading it into an online portal?

Ideally, you'll use some or all of these methods to share your work, but starting out by knowing which channels are available to you will help you decide what to actually put into your newsletter. We want to take the newsletter to them in the places where they already are, rather than hoping they will seek us out, so getting this right as you kick things off is important.

You also need to think about when you'll be sharing your newsletter, and how often you want it to go out.

We share ours weekly for a couple of reasons; first, we put a lot in our newsletters, and trying to cram 2 weeks worth of news into one newsletter is going to be overwhelming. Ours are usually between 20-30 A4 pages each week, for context. We also choose weekly because that means we can add in the inevitable last minute (yet highly valuable) opportunities that arise as they come in, which makes our newsletter more timely.

But weekly isn't right for everyone - to start with, it's a lot of work, plus your audience may not want to hear from you all that often, so think about what's going to work for you. My advice is to start with fortnightly or monthly while you get going, and you can always move to weekly down the track if you choose.

As for when you send it, think about when your key audience is ready to read. Monday morning works for us because our Career Advisors can skim the news when they get in, then send it on to whoever needs it, so they're always up to date, but you might find that your audience is different. Young people might prefer to read things after school, or on a weekend, so you might want to schedule yours to go out later in the week.

Step 3 - Decide what to include

If you want people to keep reading then you need to make sure the content is relevant. We include two types of things in ours; opportunities, like events to attend, scholarships to apply for, or work experience, and in-depth articles that cover a range of career-related topics.

You could include:

• Upcoming events (open days, workshops, expos)
• Key deadlines (scholarships, applications)
• Opportunities (part-time jobs, internships, apprenticeships)
• Resources (websites, guides, or tools)

You might find that your audience is really just interested in upcoming local career events, so you focus on those, or you might feel that you've covered those kinds of opportunities in another way so you want to focus on more in-depth content instead.

There's no right or wrong, provided that you make your newsletter relevant.

My suggestion would be to start out with a range of different things in your newsletter, then fine-tune as you go, and listen to feedback from your readers along the way.

Step 4 - Be consistent

Choose a reliable and consistent structure for your newsletters, and make sure you release them on a regular schedule. This way, your readers will get to know what to expect, which makes it easier for them to consume your content quickly each time you publish.

You can choose whatever format works for you, but once you've started try to stick to it for a while before you make any changes, and if you do make changes, make them slowly and gradually. Here's an example format to get you started:

1. Highlight of the Week: Share one standout opportunity they won't want to miss, or a success story from a student or client
2. Upcoming Deadlines: What's coming up soon?
3. Opportunities and Resources: Links and details for jobs, events, and scholarships
4. Quick Tip: A short piece of advice or an article about a relevant topic
5. Local Job Spotlight: Inject a bit of LMI with a spotlight on a local job or industry that's relevant to your audience

This also helps you break your newsletter into clear and recognisable sections, so it's easier to skim.

Step 5 - Help them take an action

Your newsletter shouldn't be the finish point of their journey - instead, it's a window to a whole host of opportunities and ideas they can go on to explore once they've finished reading.

Everything in your newsletter should link to the next step (or, in marketing-speak, a 'Call To Action').

• For events and opportunities, this could be a link to the event itself
• For articles, make a suggestion for something they can do right now related to the article

From our experience, we know that people tend to only take one action from a newsletter, but being able to go straight on to the next step is super important because it makes your newsletter really useful.

Extra point: You also want to make sure you give them just enough information, but not too much. They should be able to work out from what you've written if the opportunity is relevant to them, but they should still need to visit the source to find out more. For example, if you're sharing information about an event, tell them who it's for, what date it is on, and where it is generally located, but don't give them enough information that they could turn up without checking first with the sources.

This is important for a couple of reasons - first, things change, and event providers have a long track record of changing dates, times, and locations after you've published your newsletter. If you've made it too easy for your reader, and they haven't needed to check with the source, they might miss important changes or other information. Next, as newsletter writers we need to recognise that we're but one cog in the machine, and that we want our readers to feel confident exploring a range of sources of information (and not just what we provide).

And a final tip - Make it your own

Starting a newsletter is a great idea but also a big commitment.

There will 100% be times when you don't get it out on time, or something goes wrong and you don't write it at all, but in general once you start you're going to be writing this newsletter for a long time to come, so it's got to be something that you enjoy writing, and that reflects who you are.

You can share your own insights and stories, create your own sections, and innovate however you like - you could even invite your students or clients to contribute with their own stories - and this is what will make your newsletter stand out, and have your readers coming back time after time.

Inevitable sales pitch

Obviously, we've been supporting our members with pre-written Careers Newsletters for quite some time, and I'm led to believe we're pretty good at what we do. I'm also terrible at asking people for money, and we're a Social Enterprise, so it costs the exact same today to subscribe to our newsletter membership as it did in 2009.

All of this means that if you'd like a little bit of a head start in writing your own Careers Newsletters, just let me know, and I'll hook you up.