KEEPING IT REAL (REEL?) A few staff put themselves forward as presenters, with experience including TV, theatre, radio and podcasting (and a few others
empcast: MAKING A NOISE ABOUT
who just really enjoy talking).
We are client-focused at NTU, so wanted to create something that would appeal to our diverse student and graduate population. To this end, it was important that we did not just make the podcast that we wanted, so canvassed some of our student employability champions and younger members of our team
EMPLOYABILITY
(which includes current and recent students). We decided to emphasise conversation, engagement and storytelling, rather than simply teaching students how to get a job.
BUSTING MYTHS To create a podcast, a good producer is far more important than fancy technology. You also need enthusiasm, great guests, a bit of planning and a little TLC. Recording is easy – just set up a meeting on MS Teams, click the red button and that’s about it! The really hard work happens before and after the recording. We employed
RISH BARUAH, previously Careers Consultant at
Henriette Stokes (aka Producer Henrie), initially as a graduate intern and now a part-time member of staff. Henrie does sterling
Nottingham Trent University (NTU), introduces empcast, NTU's employability podcast, which was originally designed to involve students and graduates in conversations about job hunting, self-
work contacting the guests beforehand to discuss topics and themes, writing scripts and structures, and producing and editing the podcasts.
WHO ACTUALLY LISTENS?
employment and the effects of the pandemic on the graduate labour market. [With additional
As of March this year, we have surpassed 1,000 listens, which isn’t bad in just a few months. Just as importantly, we have had some
contributions by SETH JENNINGS, Employability Adviser, and HENRIETTE STOKES, Podcast
great comments: “It makes you feel like you are not alone and that there is help in the university available if needed.”
Producer] Our aim is to embed empcast into the student and graduate employability experience, eventually integrating the podcast into Let’s take it as read that we have all moved heaven and earth to keep providing services to our students. As employability staff, students are the lifeblood of our day-to-day activity; we know
our delivery strategy. In the meantime, the podcast gets publicised via staff and student communications, and is even embedded in a VLE widget for many courses.
that since the switch to online learning, higher education institutions have faced significant challenges around engagement.
We decided to emphasise ENHANCING OUR OFFER
conversation, engagement
At Nottingham Trent University (NTU), we quickly harnessed technology to deliver a full range of employability services when Covid-19 hit. Amongst other things, we adopted live chat triage, an online drop-in service, and synchronous/asynchronous delivery of curriculum-based and extracurricular sessions via Teams. However, this was more or less replicating the face-toface delivery that was no longer possible. We wanted to enhance our offer and decided to try podcasting, creating a digital resource that didn’t involve staring at a screen. That’s how empcast was born.
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and storytelling
