40 minute read
CAREER WEAVER: SUPPORTING ONLINE CAREER REFLECTION University of Oxford
empcast:
MAKING A NOISE ABOUT EMPLOYABILITY
RISH BARUAH, previously Careers Consultant at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), introduces empcast, NTU' s employability podcast, which was originally designed to involve students and graduates in conversations about job hunting, selfemployment and the effects of the pandemic on the graduate labour market. [With additional contributions by SETH JENNINGS, Employability Adviser, and HENRIETTE STOKES, Podcast Producer]
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 that since the switch to online learning, higher education institutions have faced significant challenges around engagement.
ENHANCING OUR OFFER
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. A few staff put themselves forward as presenters, with experience including TV, theatre, radio and podcasting (and a few others 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 (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 Henriette Stokes (aka Producer Henrie), initially as a graduate intern and now a part-time member of staff. Henrie does sterling work contacting the guests beforehand to discuss topics and themes, writing scripts and structures, and producing and editing the podcasts.
WHO ACTUALLY LISTENS?
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 great comments: “It makes you feel like you are not alone and that there is help in the university available if needed. ”
Our aim is to embed empcast into the student and graduate employability experience, eventually integrating the podcast into 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.
EMPCAST GUESTS TO DATE
Amongst others, we have heard from:
A ceramics graduate who rushed home from Australia as lockdown hit, and set up a business selling illustrations via Instagram.
An MSc Business graduate who volunteered with a Nottingham tech start-up, and is now their Chief Growth Officer (despite being based in the US).
A broadcast journalist sharing her tips for online interviews and a career in radio.
An economics graduate who has started her own thriving business, and has been nominated for multiple categories in the 2021 Innovation Awards. Forthcoming episodes will feature students talking about their experiences around disability, non-traditional education, and other perceived barriers relating to NTU’ s Success For All (WP) agenda.
We have already planned a student-led Let’ s Talk About… series. We are also toying with the idea of live podcasts, tying in with flagship events, such as our jobs fairs, and exploring ideas for content related to specific subject areas.
This has been a really enjoyable experiment, and it has been a delight to find a new way of engaging with our students and graduates at a time of high career anxiety. We are truly excited about the potential for podcasting to become integrated into our delivery strategy.
seth.jennings@ntu.ac.uk
anchor.fm/empcast
@careersrish
embracing technology:
SUPPORTING STUDENTS TO BE CAREER SMART
DANIEL MITCHELL, Careers Consultant at the University of Reading, outlines how efforts to embrace technology is helping to move the career thinking of students forward so that they are more prepared to face the challenges of the graduate recruitment process. Here, he reflects on the positive impact of Career Smart, one of the initiatives that forms part of the award-winning RDGgrad programme.
Our RDGgrad programme encourages final year undergraduates to engage with careers. Having launched three years ago, student engagement has now increased by 217% and we have developed a wide range of bespoke activities and initiatives to support our students as they enter the world of recruitment.
In June 2020, our efforts were awarded the AGCAS Supporting Student and Graduate Employability Award, being recognised as a
“bold and ambitious ” project. But all this started by identifying a larger issue within the student body, so I’ll start from the beginning.
2018 THROWBACK
In the 2017-18 academic year, we registered less than 1,800 hours of engagement with students who were about to graduate. There were concerns that students were leaving their career decisions too late and that a good proportion were missing out on, and ultimately not prepared for, the earliest graduate recruitment deadlines. As well as this, most of our structured careers initiatives aim to target students at an earlier stage in their degree. Given these challenges, and that at the time the use of technology within the careers service was also limited, funding was sourced to create the RDGgrad programme.
This programme aimed to raise the ambitions, skills and ability of students whilst tracking their overall job search status. Ultimately, we hoped that this would lead to students making more informed decisions earlier in the graduate recruitment cycle.
To achieve the large-scale movement in career thinking that we wanted, we knew that we had to embrace technology. Specifically, the kind of technology that targeted students well beyond the usual reach of those engaging with the careers service.
The University of Reading has a team focused on the development of online courses and, since 2013, has attracted more than one million users to its academic courses. With their support, and in collaboration with the careers service at the Henley Business School, we decided to develop our own online course, Career Smart.
Hosted on the FutureLearn platform, creating an online course ensured that our content was accessible 24/7 and was new and enticing to our target audience. Students were in complete control of their learning, being able to choose how and when to engage with the course, which they could work through at their own pace.
BEYOND THE USUAL REACH
SHIFT IN THINKING
The course is made up of four parts, starting with an introduction to the graduate recruitment timeline before the focus shifts to what students want from a job, the applications process and then action planning for the future. Within the course, students hear from members of the careers service, graduate employers and alumni whilst engaging with a range of activities and digital content, including online tools, podcasts, videos and webinars.
To support students with this shift in thinking, Career Smart opens during the summer before they start their final year. Given this timescale, we were able to target our efforts around making improvements in three further areas:
1.
2.
3. Increasing student confidence when taking next steps after university Growing student knowledge of how the graduate recruitment process works Ensuring students feel ready and more prepared to apply for graduate jobs.
" At the beginning, I had no knowledge nor confidence with anything relating to life after university. This course has completely changed that and now, instead of feeling nervous, I feel ready to tackle graduate applications head on, knowing what to expect and how to prepare" Student
AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT
Skip forward to 2021 - Career Smart has now run twice. In year two, more than 750 students took part, recording over 2,250 hours of learning. Participants logged more than 3,000 comments and 100% of course completers agreed that they would recommend Career Smart to a friend.
Students taking the course complete a pre- and post- survey with the data highlighting that there is significant growth in each of our three identified areas of improvement. These trends are also supported by our Careers Registration data, which indicates that students completing the course are more likely to be both narrowing down their career options and pursuing graduate opportunities at an earlier stage.
Our guidance has also evolved in response to this new technology, with our careers consultants supporting students throughout the course. This has included responding to comments and questions but also by addressing concerns and encouraging students to clarify their thoughts further.
With Career Smart, we have created an innovative techenhanced initiative that has not only helped us on our way to moving students ' career thinking forward but has also allowed us to integrate new technology within our practice.
We are now preparing for our biggest intake of the course this summer, with more than 1,000 students expected to join us. This would represent 33% of our finalist population and shows how far we have come in three years. Looking forward, we will be focusing our efforts on how to address the following issues:
Driving forward participation, ensuring all students have access to the content Encouraging full engagement with the course, aiming for an increased completion rate Improving take up with students from ethnic minority backgrounds.
THE HUMAN ELEMENT
Career Smart shows how technology can be used to resolve issues, but one important point has remained clear throughout. The success of this form of guidance still relies on the ‘human ’ element, demonstrated by the interactions on the course and through the increased number of participants seeking a one-toone guidance appointment after completion of Career Smart.
Investing in and embracing technology should not be seen as a replacement to one-to-one guidance but instead an important partnership to achieve success by working together.
d.mitchell@reading.ac.uk
Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
from idea to industry:
THE VALUE OF IP EDUCATION IN A VIRTUAL SPACE
ROXANNE PETERS, IP Education Specialist at the University of the Arts London, outlines the conception, design and launch of an e-learning creative rights resource, which aims to support students and graduates to consider intellectual property when creating, managing and sharing content.
Educators and creatives adjusted rapidly to new ways to connect digitally in 2020, whilst continuing to support creative practice –from exchanging ideas, planning final showcases and building relationships with industry.
Intellectual property (IP) plays a vital role in developing our creative students ’ future selves. An understanding of its value will help ensure their voices are heard, their skills are respected and their contribution to society is recognised.
Within education, IP is still largely reserved for those pursuing a legal career or those starting a business. The value of IP within a university context is often solely measured by commercial knowledge exchange outputs; it has rarely been considered within a creative, practice-led space that encourages critical thinking and human-centred approaches for real-world scenarios.
IP plays a vital role in developing our creative students' future selves IP aligns with our commitment to support our students and graduates to develop their creative professional identity
CONNECT AND REFLECT
Collaborating in ever more interdisciplinary and global spaces, it is important that students and graduates feel confident when negotiating job opportunities, working on shared initiatives or starting a business from the ground up.
I am responsible for helping creatives recognise the value of their IP and respect the rights of others within their practice and in industry. Based in the Careers and Employability Team, IP aligns with our commitment to support students and graduates to develop their creative professional identity. Like other areas of professional development, understanding the role of IP is a vital life skill but is not a mandatory focus of the curriculum. In an emerging field of creative education, I aim to demystify IP in a relational way. I am informed by how our creatives think and what motivates them to self-reflect to develop their identity.
One of the biggest challenges I face is how to reach 20,000 international students across 230 courses working in interdisciplinary ways. My sessions range from discipline-specific topics, such as gaming design and fashion psychology, to wider sessions on creative enterprise and projects championing women in leadership.
Recurring themes emerge such as recognising the difference between inspiration and imitation, what to think about when collaborating and co-creating and how to navigate the challenges of sharing work on social media.
DYNAMIC AND DIGITAL
One silver lining of remote working is that it encouraged me to reflect on potential opportunities for e-learning and how I might draw on my experiences to date, taking into account the way I engage with creatives as well as how our IP education is driven by practice.
With a strict three-month deadline and a blank page, I was tasked with creating an online IP education resource. I was keen to work with people with a shared vision and complementary experience. Central to this decision was thinking about our users and how we might best connect with them. It therefore proved invaluable to work with a UAL graduate to help provide insights into how to approach engagement, tone of voice and draw on real-life peer stories.
We worked with an e-learning developer using software that reflects UAL’ s commitment to experiential and inclusive teaching and learning. We also encouraged feedback from students and staff before launch.
INCLUSIVE AND VISIBLE
When we started scoping and visualising the module, I had three primary aims: to keep it simple, to make it relatable and to ensure its accessibilty. Drawing on my practice-led experience, I had a clear vision of what to create to appeal to both synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning (the module can be used alongside live sessions).
The core of my methodology and basis of the module centres on five interconnected areas:
Creating
Protecting
Managing
Using
Sharing
© Roxanne Peters, 2021
We used the software to combine IP principles with relevant examples, creating interactive elements incorporating graduate experiences (soundbites and videos), scenario-based questions and reflective space to encourage critical thinking around selfvalue. Students, graduates and staff can access the non-linear resource on a central internal platform and complete it in its entirety (80 minutes), or focus on specific sections. While the module is still in its infancy, beyond being a standalone e-learning resource it has already become the cornerstone of our IP education offer.
The primary challenges we face are:
how to measure the impact of IP education when it affects individuals at different touchpoints how to compete with pre-existing commitments in the curriculum understanding the best time to engage with students and staff during the academic year and once creative students graduate.
We have already identified areas to develop, such as:
a tool to support staff and embed it into curriculum design a basis to develop future modules such as IP and ethical engagement, IP and creative enterprise a digital space to bring shared thinking and communities of practice together a model to encourage best practice and recognition of IP education sector-wide.
At a time when it is easier than ever to create, communicate and collaborate in a digital space, there has never been a more vital time to position IP education at the heart of the curriculum and into creative practice.
We have a tangible offer, but now the work really begins. We will continue to seek effective ways to engage with all stakeholders in a digital space. Our aim is to empower students and colleagues to feel confident in the responsibility they have, and the decisions they make, where IP thinking and healthy ethical engagement are central to sustainable professional practice.
r.peters@arts.ac.uk
@roxrocks4
Connect with Roxanne on LinkedIn
practitioner views:
Tom Staunton, Lecturer in Career Development at iCeGS, the University of Derby, reports on higher education practitioners ’ experiences of using digital technology during the pandemic. With a view to the future, he examines what careers services can learn from developing hybrid digital delivery models in a (hopefully) post-pandemic world.
Digital technology has had a profound impact on higher education (HE) careers work long before the pandemic occurred. Careers work has been subject to trends throughout the HE sector, which has seen technology become prevalent in both the delivery of learning and teaching and the management of the same.
Despite these pre-existing trends, the pandemic has presented a Pandora ’ s box moment for digital engagement, as HE practitioners ’ interaction with students, employers and their teams have been disrupted for over twelve months.
Throughout the last academic year, I have researched the experiences of careers practitioners using digital technology as part of their role. I have had the privilege to conduct in-depth interviews with 16 participants across the UK HE careers sector. This involved talking to practitioners working across a number of student, employer and staff-facing roles, as well as those with management responsibilities for careers services.
This research has focused on how practitioners adapted to the pandemic and how they feel about hybrid delivery in a postpandemic university.
The research has particularly focused on the idea that things will not return to the previous ‘ normal’ ; there are new expectations from students and, as a result, new avenues for careers delivery. Many careers services are now looking at moving to a hybrid digital delivery model from the autumn.
Three of the main themes from the research, which will be expanded upon in the future, look at access, context and embodiment. These themes show how practitioners experienced delivering digitally during the pandemic, but also create signposts for future practice.
ACCESS
The participants I talked to almost exclusively described technology leading to more students accessing their services. Most said this was for one-to-one work with similar numbers for central workshops as well. This was in terms of the number of appointments but also more qualitative comments, such as students being able to access services in a more convenient way. For example, students with caring responsibilities or those with disabilities benefitted from accessing services remotely, without the need to come to campus.
This was echoed by practitioners who discussed being able to facilitate greater access between employers and students. They were able to use employers in the curriculum and workshops by ’‘Zooming them into sessions. These reflections on access are significant for careers services, both in terms of meeting institutional objectives and offering a service which is genuinely ‘for all students.
What was crucial for careers services was understanding if this access would continue after the pandemic. Was the increased involvement the product of easier access or the need for more support because of the reduction of careers options during lockdown? Careers services will need to pay close attention to how students, and which students, access their services using technology post-pandemic.
CONTEXT
Respondents talked about the importance of context in terms of their delivery. We can sometimes think about professionals as automatically deploying their skills in a robotic manner no matter what their situation is. But one thing we have learnt from the pandemic is that context matters. Some (not all) participants talked about the drain of being stuck on video conference calls all day while everyone commented on the benefits of working in their home environment. However, they also lamented the downside of not being physically present with their team or other university colleges. As universities consider developing hybrid services in the future, it is vital to think about how career consultants can be supported to not feel isolated, and how the benefits of homeworking can be balanced by developing effective teams.
EMBODIMENT
Finally, one of the key aspects of delivery that was discussed was careers guidance as an embodied activity. All practitioners recognised the importance of developing a strong working alliance with clients (especially in one-to-one work, but in groups as well).
Some participants talked about eye-contact, reading body language and sharing space as part of how they developed strong alliances in physical environments. Not having these interactions was challenging, often made worse when (for a variety of reasons) clients had their camera turned off.
What was interesting was a split between participants who had developed alternative strategies for not being present with students, while others who focussed more on missing face-to-face delivery. Partly this points to the need for effective CPD to share best practice and encourage practitioners to adapt. But it also raises another question about these narratives – what actually makes a difference to clients? There are a number of key themes for university careers services to consider as they develop future hybrid models. Services will need to consider and monitor how students want to access services. There are also the challenges of developing contexts that professionals can operate in, and the skills and strategies needed to be present and engage with students.
I hope to continue to develop these findings as part of an ongoing project, but I think at an early stage it shows the need for careers services to think across a number of different levels in order to understand student needs, develop appropriate digital strategies and consider the contexts of teams and individuals.
A number of practitioners reflected that being physically present may not be better for clients, just a projection of their own values. This points to the need for more research in this important area.
FUTURE MODELS
t.staunton@derby.ac.uk
runninginaforest.wordpress.com
@tomstaunton84
Career Weaver:
SUPPORTING ONLINE CAREER REFLECTION
HUGH NICHOLSON-LAILEY, Careers Adviser at the University of Oxford, outlines how the creation of a novel web-based application is helping students reflect, identify and articulate their personal career drivers.
Soon after the country went into the first lockdown, Oxford University Careers Service (OUCS) launched Career Weaver, an online application for self-led career reflection and discovery of users ’ core career drivers. It is a flexible, intuitive tool that helps students identify and articulate clearly what they love, what they are good at and why they do it.
PROGRAMME FOUNDATION
The idea to create a platform offering students a suite of simple and quick exercises to stimulate careers reflection was sparked by a ' values sort' exercise included in Ignite, a career confidence programme developed by OUCS for schools and colleges. A successful bid to the Oxford University IT Innovation funded the development work.
We started by translating existing paper-based tools into gameplay concepts, which we tested and developed through workshops and focus groups. Many of the OUCS careers advisory team contributed to this work, providing a user interface and collecting and collating feedback from students to inform the UX work. Our testing went beyond undergraduates and Master ' s students to include PhDs, and both research and administrative staff.
FOLLOWING THE THREADS
Designed to be accessible and intuitive, Career Weaver offers a variety of exercises to help everyone uncover, explore and articulate their personal career drivers. The dozen exercises employ a variety of methods of play to embrace differing work styles, sustain interest, and give users the structure and language necessary for independent reflection on values, preferences, strengths, skills and motivations. ‘ path’ to follow. It is deliberately non-directive and built to encourage users to explore; to log in and simply start to play, and uncover the exercises that intuitively appeal to them. While users don ’t have to complete every exercise to uncover valuable and actionable insights, the different exercises can reveal complementary ideas that reinforce each other, or prompt reflections to challenge current thinking and assumptions. As careers advisers, our experience tells us that a single insight can be enough for some people to generate direction and momentum, while others need more time and input to build a more holistic understanding of their personal foundations. We feel that Career Weaver supports both styles, which has been reflected in students ’ feedback.
REVEALING A PATTERN
Career Weaver
’ s reflective exercises also embrace elements of action planning; it supports goal setting and the development and self-evaluation of a user ’ s best examples, which they can use in applications to demonstrate skills and contributions. Lastly, for students who want to work to ‘ an endpoint’ , the Reveal my Pattern exercise walks users through the process of crafting a personal branding statement or elevator pitch from the insights and reflections they have captured.
Most exercises need only a few minutes ’ work before the student is adding their own thoughts, reflections and insights, and we recommend Career Weaver is used over a number of visits. In the first year, we have seen 1,600 active users make over 4,000 visits to Career Weaver. More than half of these visits are long enough to complete at least one exercise, whilst one in eight have been longer than 30 minutes, suggesting a much deeper engagement across several exercises.
LOCKDOWN LAUNCH
It was a lucky coincidence that this new, online, mobile-friendly self-assessment and reflection tool was available for students at the start of lockdown. Careers advisers were quick to recommend Career Weaver to students working remotely, being familiar with its underpinning concepts and having helped with its design.
Initially conceived for use in advisory sessions with students, Career Weaver is now integrated into OUCS employability programmes, and required as pre-work for some skills programmes to promote discussion and learning. We have also extended access to alumni and university staff, acknowledging Career Weaver ’ s potential to support on-going self-evaluation, career thinking and personal development for everyone.
hugh.lailey@careers.ox.ac.uk Connect with Hugh on LinkedIn
AGCAS training 100% online for 2021/22
Giving you the opportunity to learn, hone and augment your knowledge and skills, and extend your professional network.
BRAND NEW FOR 2021/22
Bridging the Gap: Demystifying, exploring and challenging trends in talent acquisition, recruitment ethics and practices priced at a lower, pilot price from £380 AGCAS WORKSHOPS – two-hour long intensive sessions on focussed topics, from just £40. Writing for Impact training. [Online is] more suitable as I did not have to make a business case for travel expenditure. [Observed] interviews felt more natural as webcams were off and muted, so it felt more realistic and comfortable.
All the trainers were fantastic and very approachable. It was clear they had really thought about how to adapt the content for online delivery. The breakout rooms were extremely enjoyable; they were a great way to connect. Also the activities and discussions were extremely beneficial.
Participant, Work Related Learning in HE These complement our existing training portfolio which includes:
One-day introductory and refresher courses such as Introduction to Advice, Leadership Refresher and Guidance Refresher. Two-day courses feature the opportunity to practice 1-2-1 interview techniques with real students in a confidential and supportive environment. You will also receive both tutor and peer feedback. These are Introduction to Guidance Interviewing and Employability Advice. Longer, more in-depth training on a range of topics from Group
Work, Work Related Learning in Higher Education Employability and Career Development Learning
and
to Guidance Skills (Advanced), Management of HE Careers and Employability Services and Technology-based Career and Learning Provision.
These courses are also modules of the AGCAS/University of Warwick Careers Education, Information and Guidance in HE (CEIGHE) postgraduate qualifications, but are open to all – registrants and non-registrants; AGCAS members and non-members. Full programme coming soon. For further details view Training and Conferences or get in touch with Erica Imhof, AGCAS Professional Development Manager.
employer engagement knowledge exchange:
ADOPTING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
With the growing need to embed employer-related activity and labour market intelligence (LMI) into the curriculum, and the rise of targeted employer engagement across the higher education sector, it is now paramount that universities effectively manage their institution-wide external engagement. HANNA LUETKEMEIER, Employer Engagement Manager, and LOU RONTREE, Industry Engagement Manager, outline how Nottingham Trent University ’ s (NTU) Employability Team have utilised a customer relationship management (CRM) system and adopted a commercial approach to employer engagement.
Many external relationships exist across an institution the size of Nottingham Trent University (NTU), ranging from alumni contacts to research partners. These relationships are not visible to the Employability Team and our relationships are not visible to the wider university. Whilst the Employability Team uses bespoke careers systems – InPlace and CareerHub – we identified the need to hold our engagement in one place, and to track our lead generation activity. The aim is to attempt to improve employer engagement by increasing transparency and reducing the chances of employers being contacted multiple times by the team, and the university.
We decided to adopt the university ’ s customer relationship management system (MS Dynamics CRM), which is primarily used for student recruitment. To date, we have seen significant benefits. It has improved the visibility of existing relationships and engagement activity, increased our ability to cross-sell and enhanced our collaborative working approaches. By working with colleagues in Digital Technologies, we have developed bespoke dashboards and management reporting capabilities. This more sophisticated use of the system has enhanced user experience and buy-in from colleagues.
CUSTOMER JOURNEY
The Employer Engagement Team is comprised of over 20 externally-facing employer engagement professionals whose primary role is to develop new business, such as identifying placement and graduate opportunities, attracting employers to events, and encouraging employer involvement in initiatives, presentations and webinars. The team are aligned to specific industry sectors and projects; some colleagues have specific employer engagement remits, such as international employer engagement.
The team initially mapped out the customer journey and configured the system according to our specific needs. For example, identifying the origins of leads, tracking conversion of leads, management reporting and creating both target call lists and marketing lists.
We have created a way to monitor whether the employer is interested in placement or graduate recruitment and, most recently, specific interests such as diversity and inclusion. This enables us to create a target group of employers for bespoke initiatives.
LEAD GENERATION
The system enables the management team to have visibility of an individual' s and whole team ’ s lead generation performance. This has enabled managers to identify pressure points and use the data on the system to manage and direct daily operational activity. We created bespoke dashboards to track progress against individual targets and against specific project deliverables.
The system also allows us to track referrals to the Employability Team by other departments, such as Alumni Relations, and we can report on successful lead conversion. This process has enhanced our internal stakeholder relationships. We can also track our website and external marketing activity (inbound activity) versus how well we have proactively reached out to employers (outbound activity).
Utilising the leads and opportunities within the system gives us the ability to track the employer journey from the starting point of engagement to full enrolment on to an externally-funded project, of which we have several. Through the system we can track enrolment through to all claimable project outputs, such as hours engaged and costs associated (recorded per interaction) throughout the lifecycle of the project. The opportunity to create bespoke dashboards for each project has given us a clear indication of monthly performance against targets, as well as the ability to track and report engagement across multiple levels, such as location, local council, industry and size.
DIRECT MARKETING
We can also use the system to generate and send mass-mailers, using a simple classification tool to group employers together. We can search by sector, size and location to create industry-specific business development lists, which is really helpful when we want to identify a group of employers to engage with or to invite to a particular event. For example, we can target Nottingham-based SMEs or create specific lists of employers for each of our recruitment fairs. Adopting MS Dynamics CRM has not been without its challenges. We are using a system which is primarily used for student recruitment and adapted its customer tracking functionality with little knowledge of how the back end of the system works. We developed an automated data feed from other employability systems into the CRM platform, as our aim is to ensure it presents an accurate and real-time picture of our employer engagement. This is still a work in progress due to resource restrictions within the centralised CRM team.
Whilst the CRM platform is the approved system used by the business development team, we still face challenges with the wider Employability Team using the system. To combat these challenges, we have produced training guides and videos to support new members of the team. We have built bespoke dashboards to demonstrate visually how the tracking of leads can benefit manager ’ s decision-making and help colleagues direct their activity. We are also in the process of creating an interface tailored specifically to the Employability Team, which ensures unused features will no longer be visible.
We continue to work together to share the benefits of the system, such as knowledge exchange, with our internal stakeholders and with employers. It will be an ongoing journey of process improvement; we acknowledge that any system is only as good as the information we put into it.
hanna.luetkemeier@ntu.ac.uk
lou.rontree@ntu.ac.uk
ensuring your event is
VIRTUALLY UNMISSABLE
FAREEHA ADNAN, Employer Engagement Officer at Royal Holloway, University of London, shares what she has learnt from delivering and attending virtual events over the past 18 months and highlights key points to help elevate online delivery.
As a result of the pandemic, we are now more experienced in attending and delivering webinars than ever before. I became interested in what elements make for a positive experience after watching countless webinars, speaking to event professionals in a range of sectors, and delivering my first few virtual events.
In a physical event, we are used to seeing reactions from students and colleagues - nodding heads, smiles and sometimes confused faces - all of which give us an indication of how well our message is being received and understood. In a virtual world where your audience is often a blank screen, it’ s infinitely harder to gauge a reaction to your content. This is where non-verbal engagement tools come in. Many of the platforms we are using (MS Teams, Zoom, etc) have capabilities to help us gauge real-time feedback from our audience. Activities such as posting polls or posing questions in the chat throughout the presentation offers more nervous or introverted students the opportunity to contribute thoughts and ideas to the discussion.
Prepare to be agile and flexible in the delivery of your event, so that it doesn ’t come across as a scripted, recorded presentation. Refer back to student responses to show you give importance to their opinion, you understand their concerns and can offer relevant advice. If you ’ re confident in your material, and can divert to a question or comment and then navigate back to your event seamlessly, the webinar will flow much more naturally.
KNOW YOUR TECH
Questions like “Can you hear me?” , “Can you see my slides?” ,
“Is that working?” gives your presentation a weak start and risks losing your audience before you ’ ve even begun. At the start of the pandemic, this was understandable as we were all getting used to new technologies and platforms. Now though, being fully prepared will allow you to control the virtual space in the same way you would command a physical room. As well as hosting your audience, you are also a host to your panelists and speakers. To ensure they are comfortable and fully prepared, it’ s helpful to ‘ meet’ them virtually beforehand – particularly as they are often entering into an unknown virtual space.
ENGAGING YOUR AUDIENCE REAL TIME FEEDBACK
I ran a debate style event on MS Teams called Marketing In-house vs Agency: Which is Right for Me? Alumni from both in-house and agency roles talked about their experiences and students were able to hear the pros and cons of each type of role and company. At the beginning of the event, I used polls to ask the audience whether they wanted to work in an agency, in-house role or if they didn ’t know yet. Nearly 65% of attendees responded that they didn 't know. At the end of the event, I posted the question again. In contrast to the poll at the start, all students either voted in-house or agency and no one selected that they didn ’t know. Asking these questions provides reassurance that the students our careers service aims to target are getting the support they need.
AVOIDING VIRTUAL FATIGUE
Fewer words on slides means students are less likely to suffer from virtual fatigue and more likely to listen to what you are saying. Display key words or pictures in a fun and creative way to demonstrate what you are trying to portray. For example, when describing teamwork, don ’t go for the typical in-the-boardroomsitting-around-a-table image, but maybe use an image of ants working together in a colony?
While none of these points are revolutionary or new to careers events, it’ s worth remembering that a lot of the key elements for a successful physical event translate into the virtual space too.
Fareeha.Adnan@rhul.ac.uk
Connect with Fareeha on LinkedIn
digital careers planning
FOR PHYSICISTS
DR ANDREW HIRST, director of the White Rose Industrial Physics Academy (WRIPA) at the University of York, outlines a digital approach to improving the outcomes of physics graduates.
The White Rose Industrial Physics Academy (WRIPA) is a collaboration between business and the university physics departments of Hull, Leeds, Nottingham, Sheffield and York. WRIPA’ s mission is to provide physics students with the opportunity to gain skills, knowledge and work experience that will better prepare them for graduate-level work. WRIPA was recently awarded funding from the Office for Students ’ Improving Outcomes for Local Graduates Challenge Competition. The funding has enabled WRIPA to focus on increasing the number of physics students that are in graduate-level employment in the Yorkshire, Humberside and East Midlands region.
NEW DIGITAL FUTURE
Physics students have the right skills to be valuable in the new digital future. Current graduate labour market data indicates that opportunities for physicists in areas such as programming, data science and software development will remain or grow. However, in the post-pandemic world, many physics students lack the ’‘translation skills to digitally market themselves, develop online professional networks or find work opportunities.
In response to the pandemic, WRIPA has re-imagined how it will support physics students to navigate their new virtual professional world, make better-informed career decisions, and connect with employers. The WRIPA website, to be relaunched in autumn 2021, will be an innovative and accessible physics career development platform, offering information on career pathways, business connections and relatable role models. Using a desktop or mobile device, physics students will be able to access embedded career readiness resources, including a Physics Discovery Careers tool to learn about the types of roles that physicists go on to, and connect with compatible employers or WRIPA physics alumni.
ASPIRATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES
The tool will help to break down misconceived stereotypes of physics-related job roles by introducing students to a range of diverse role models. With thanks to all staff who contribute to the central delivery of WRIPA.
Longer term, we hope to develop a Physics Pathfinder digital tool to support students to better understand regional graduate labour markets by matching their career aspirations to potential job opportunities. This will help students build a more accurate picture of regional work opportunities that fits their academic interests and desired location of work.
CAREER CONVERSATIONS
Other digital toolkits will focus on a diverse range of themes, including ‘ recruitability ’ (such as interview skills) and creating a LinkedIn profile. WRIPA is also collaborating with the Institute of Physics to create a digital Wellbeing and Personal Resilience guide, which will outline strategies to help students build and maintain resilience in the face of change. WRIPA has started to develop inclusive online content and resources that will resonate with different student cohorts and can be embedded within the physics curriculum. We also plan to develop a podcast series based on career conversations with alumni, covering topics such as changing career paths and how to deal with failure. This content will highlight to students the non-linear career paths of physicists and how to view career progression as a developmental activity.
TALENT POOL
Increasingly, employers are delivering their student engagement events and content digitally in order to connect with a larger number of students across multiple universities. WRIPA’ s website will link up a regional talent pool of physicists with technical employers. This will offer SMEs and lesser-known employers improved connectivity with an undergraduate physics audience. We also plan to curate sector or role-specific content in collaboration with employers or professional bodies, to sketch out career pathways and develop inclusive digital content.
WRIPA has been able to draw on a cross-university interdisciplinary team with expertise in marketing, web development, student careers support, business engagement and teaching and learning. Through the digital tools and resources that have been produced to date - and those that are planned for the future - we hope to empower and inspire physics students as they transition out of university and into the workplace, and continue to support their future career development.
andrew.hirst@york.ac.uk
Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn
@WRIPAinfo
career conversations:
STUDENT CONCERNS, PRACTITIONER APPROACHES AND PROFESSIONAL CHALLENGES
Dr Julia Yates, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Psychology at City, University of London, and Professor Wendy Hirsh, share the findings from a recent research project that sought to unearth students ' key support needs during one-to-one careers interviews.
Career guidance training courses and text books cover a wide range of techniques and approaches to support clients, but it’ s important that we keep asking ourselves whether we are teaching the right stuff. To answer this question properly, you really need to have a good understanding of where students get stuck with their career planning. There is very little academic research on this and the papers published are all fairly old and not based on UK data. So, last year, we set to work to find out some of this information for ourselves.
We found 59 generous higher education careers advisers from varied institutions across the UK. Each kept a record of the nature of every one-to-one careers interview they conducted during the course of a week (quick queries, CV checks, long interviews and anything else). We collected details of 600 career conversations from July 2019 – March 2020 and followed up with in-depth interviews with 22 careers advisers to explore our findings in more detail.
Advisers found that each student they saw had, on average, four elements that were holding them back. These could be cognitive, emotional or behavioural, or a combination of all three.
Exactly 85% of the one-to-one conversations centred on a lack of information, with more than half of the students asking for help with job hunting. Careers advisers noted that, very often, the request for a CV check came alongside a number of other issues; students often use a focus on CVs as a displacement activity (instead of engaging with career planning) or as a gateway to seeking advice (a safe, tangible starting point).
WHERE DO STUDENTS GET STUCK?
The next most common group of difficulties were to do with anxiety. Advisers reported that students found the uncertainty of the process particularly difficult to cope with.
PRACTITIONER APPROACHES
Advisers spoke about the importance of developing a strong relationship (lots of empathy, rapport-building and authentic care and interest) and the value of a loose flexible interview structure, which nearly always involved some contracting at the start and some action points at the end. They used an impressively wide range of techniques to address students ' specific emotional, cognitive and behavioural issues.
For the most part, the advisers
strategies mapped quite well on to the students ’ difficulties, but there were a couple of areas that seemed to be less well covered.
We didn ’t hear much from advisers about how they helped students to generate ideas for job options, nor how they described the process of career development to students. We wondered whether there could be a place for further research here, to get some deeper understanding of effective ways to generate job ideas, and to find ways to present career development theories or descriptions of the career development process in a more usable form.
We were also interested to see how views differed on the topic of information-giving, with some advisers rarely giving labour market information (LMI) and others feeling that informationgiving should be a core part of any career conversation.
Advisers generally felt that they were quite well equipped to support the students. Where they felt a conversation to be challenging, this was usually associated with a concern about leaving the student disappointed.
The hardest things were coping with students who had unrealistic career plans (expecting to walk into prestigious graduate jobs with ease), or a specious view of the role of the career adviser (imagining that the adviser will be able to wave a magic wand and tell them what do to). Some students also had very complex practical or psychological needs, including low self-confidence.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Drawing on our findings, we identified four ideas that services might want to consider:
1. An enhanced focus on peer learning. It seems very sensible to capitalise on the existing wealth of expertise in services with peer reviews, case conferences and formalised opportunities to share ideas.
2. Using our
Where do students get stuck?‘ ’ model. To help advisers to more readily identify where their clients are stuck. It could also be shared with students in workshops to help them reflect on their experiences. 3. Training. This could include approaches that are tailor made for specific aspects of our model. For example, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or Solution Focused Coaching to help students with emotional issues, and Motivational Interviewing and goal-orientated coaching to help propel students towards action. 4. Clearer explanations. Of career decision-making and the role, within this, of oneto-one sessions. This could help to allay students ’ anxiety about the process and might help to make students more realistic about what to expect from a careers interview. Research always seems to generate as many questions as it does answers. We wanted to leave you with a few final questions to mull over:
Is existing career theory good enough for our purposes as practitioners? Could we teach theory in a more useful way?
Should we, as a profession, have a clearer and more consistent approach to integrating information in guidance?
How can we use careers education activities in HE to help make students feel less anxious and more ready for their own planning?
Is the non-directive, counselling approach the best approach for students who just want to be told what to do?
Finally, we want to thank the participants for their time and effort. We found the project fascinating and really appreciated the generosity of everyone who took part.
Do get in touch if you would like a copy of our full report, a PDF of our model, or to discuss any of these findings further with you as individuals, or in your teams.
Julia.yates.1@city.ac.uk
Behavioural
Engage late Focus disproportionately on CVs Reluctant to take ownership
Emotional
Anxious Lacking in confidence Where do students get stuck? Cognitive
Limited understanding of: Themselves Relevant labour markets Process of career development Careers service offer
