CAREERS NEWSLETTER 2018-19
The summer holidays will soon be upon us and we are already looking forward to receiving reports of exciting work placements our Lower Sixth students have set up. These experiences go a long way in helping decisions about Post 18 options, as they will discover tasks and environments they do and don’t like.
ISSUE 16 – Friday 14 June 2019
PREPARING FOR A COBOTICS WORLD Dr Nalayini Thambar, Director of Careers and Employability at the University of Nottingham, closed the recent My Future Choice conference on Artificial Intelligence with a perky assessment of the rosy climate for current undergraduates looking for initial employment after their studies. Her take on the generic skills employers were seeking today and 30 years ago was spot on – nothing much has changed! Employers have always wanted a workforce to be motivated, excellent communicators, tenacious, persevering and team-players as well as show management skills and make informed decisions. Language, though, may have evolved, so it is now common to hear terms like resilience, influence and commercial awareness added.
AN OBE FOR ROSIE We congratulate another dynamic former pupil Rosie Tressler on being awarded an OBE in the Queen’s 2019 birthday honours, for her outstanding work as CEO of mental health charity Student Minds. As well as being an excellent academic at Bablake, Rosie was a fine actor, key musician in many of our charity concerts and enjoyed student journalism. During her English and History degree at the University of Nottingham she took a sabbatical year with the Student Union as Equal Opportunities and Welfare Officer.
What has certainly changed are key trends affecting the world of work, so Dr Thambar mooted students should consider environmental sustainability, urbanisation, increasing inequality, political uncertainty, technological change, globalisation and demographic change. She encouraged students to be adaptive, prepare for multiple career-planning over their lifetime, adopt power skills and have a growth mindset rather than a fixed one. Other speakers had excited the delegates with a range of roles awaiting students of all disciplines in AI and the ‘factory of the future’ – a cobotics world - where humans will collaborate seamlessly with robots. Yes, the mathematicians will be very well placed for specialised roles, but employers will always want historians, artists, linguists and graduates from other disciplines. COO of UKIE Dan Wood offered an exhilarating summary of the exciting, broadly varied opportunities for young people seeking employment in the games industry; coverage of esports was especially eye-opening. See the following @bablakecareers tweet thread for more information from the conference: https://twitter.com/bablakecareers/status/1138388079968956416?s=20.
See www.studentminds.org for more information.
@BablakeCareers