The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17 by The Careers Group, University of London

The Careers Group University of London Yearbook 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201C;17

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

The Careers Group University of London Yearbook 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201C;17

Welcome to the 2016-17 Yearbook of The Careers Group, University of London, celebrating the achievements of member careers services and collaborative projects from across the Group.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Contents Overview 6 Overview from the Director

The Careers Group at a glance

Aim 1: ensure member services have a demonstrable

impact on the success of their students and institutions

Activities and achievements across our member Careers Services

Aim 2: understand, anticipate and prioritise the

current and future needs of stakeholders

Informing practice through research

Leading the way on learning gain

Representing The Careers Group nationally and internationally

Aim 3: ensure we have the right staff to perform at the highest level

The work of the Professional Development Unit

Enabling knowledge exchange

Aim 4: work in partnership to achieve mutually

beneficial outcomes

Shared content and information

JobOnline â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest graduate vacancy site

Collaborating for greater impact 46 Working towards greater sustainability

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Overview

Overview of the year It has been another busy year for The Careers Group as we continue to grow as an organisation and focus on meeting the various parts of our core mission. We developed a new strategic plan in consultation with staff and senior stakeholders in our member institutions and reviewed the core principles of membership of The Careers Group. We also continued and expanded our remit around practice leadership and evidencebased practice. We welcomed City Careers Service as a full member of the Group this year and have all benefited from the enthusiasm, ideas and fresh perspectives of City colleagues as they have embraced our collaborative agenda.

Never has it been more important to ensure that the work we do is research-led, evidencebased and delivered by staff who are experts in their field

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

We have also seen the expansion of activities led, or coordinated, by the Research Unit. The team has expanded in size and successfully delivered year two of our HEFCE-funded research project into Careers Registration as a measure of Learning Gain, as well as continuing to encourage and support a culture of evidence-based practice across the Group, culminating in our second annual â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Festival of Researchâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for staff across the Group.

The Festival was a highlight for me to see some of the diverse ways in which staff from across the Group are engaging actively in research to inform their practice. I continue to be impressed by the innovations that are driven by staff in our very varied Careers Services. Some of these innovations are captured in this Yearbook. The diversity of context represented by our member institutions and their student cohorts provides a range of opportunities for emerging good practice to be shared across the Group, and I have particularly enjoyed seeing occasions when this collaborative knowledge transfer has taken place. We continue to work in a climate in which universities are rightly scrutinised over the work they do to support their students and recent graduates to make effective transitions into work or further study, and to develop lifelong career management skills. Never has it been more important to ensure that the work that we do is research-led, evidence-based and delivered by staff who are experts in the field of student employability, and I am delighted that this Yearbook captures some of the ways in which we are meeting these challenges. Dr Bob Gilworth Director of The Careers Group University of London

Highlights from the year • Development of a new strategy for The Careers Group • Re-accreditation of the Group against the matrix quality standard • Recruitment and induction of an additional 12 careers consultants to work on new projects across the Group, and a 15% overall increase in the number of staff across the Group • Successful delivery of Year Two of the HEFCE-funded Learning Gain research project into Careers Registration including hosting the UK’s first national conference on Careers Registration

• Delivery of the Great Grad Job Hunt project funded by the University of London’s Convocation Trust, resulting in over 90 videos available to students and graduates online • The second year of the Group’s new annual Research Festival attracted over 40 staff • Over 50 different topics covered through the annual in-house professional development programme

15% overall increase in the number of staff across the Group

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

The Careers Group at a glance The Careers Group is a department of the University of London which operates as a not-for-profit, mutually-beneficial membership organisation for 15 institutionally-based careers services, supported by a central team. The Head of each member careers service and the careers consultants in each team are University of London employees. They work alongside staff working in a range of employability roles who are directly employed by the relevant institution. All staff, whether University or institutionallyemployed are considered to be part of The Careers Group. As well as reporting to the Director of The Careers Group, each Head also reports to a senior manager within their institution and plays an integral part in leading or contributing to relevant institutional strategies. The central team supports the work of member services by coordinating recruitment and resourcing, providing training and professional development, supporting research and evidence-based practice, overseeing the creation and curation of shared resources and undertaking special projects on behalf of member services and the Group as a whole.

The Careers Group at a glance: • 15 institutionally-based careers services • Over 230 University and institutionemployed careers staff • Supporting over 114,000 students • In-house Professional Development Unit offering over 90 training courses every year • Accredited against the matrix quality standard for information, advice and guidance • Providing over 26,000 student and graduate job opportunities per year through our shared vacancy initiative JobOnline

Our member Services: • City Careers Service • Goldsmiths Careers Service • King’s Careers & Employability • Queen Mary Careers & Enterprise • Royal Holloway Careers & Employability • St Mary’s University Careers Service • SOAS Careers Service • UCL Careers • Education Consultancy – providing careers services to the following institutions: • The Courtauld Institute of Art • Heythrop College • The Institute of Cancer Research • The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine • The Royal Veterinary College

Supporting over 114,000 students

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

• The School of Advanced Study • St George’s University of London

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Our mission Our mission Our mission is to ensure that each of our member services is the best that it can be strategically and operationally in the context of its institution and to ensure that each service is demonstrably better as a member of the group than it would be if it were not. As a collective, our group will be highly visible as thought and practice leaders in higher education careers and employability, nationally and globally. In turn, the leading edge thinking and practice will enhance delivery in member services and bring reputational benefits to the University centrally and to member institutions.

In a 2015-16 survey of institutional stakeholders:

88% agreed their careers service was closely aligned to the strategic objectives of their institution Our Strategic Aims 1. Ensure member services have a demonstrable impact on the success of their students and institutions through our expertise in employability 2. Understand, anticipate and prioritise the current and future needs of all our stakeholders in order to provide responsive services 3. Ensure that we have the right staff locally and centrally with the skills, knowledge and support needed to perform sustainably at the highest levels

100% agreed that their careers service contributed positively to the overall student experience

4. Work in partnership to achieve valued, mutually-beneficial outcomes which enhance the competitive advantage of member institutions and make the best use of our resources

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Aim 1: ensure member services have a demonstrable impact on the success of their students and institutions

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Review of the Year Members Careers Services

Our mission is to ensure that each of our member services is the best that it can be strategically and operationally in the context of its institution and to ensure that each service is demonstrably better as a member of the group than it would be if it were not.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Education Consultancy

Education Consultancy provides on-site careers services to a range of smaller and specialist institutions of the University of London: • The Courtauld Institute of Art • Heythrop College • The Royal Veterinary College • The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine • St George’s, University of London • School of Advanced Study Additionally, the team provide careers services to non-member institutions Glasgow Caledonian University London Campus and QAHE London and Birmingham, as well as leading on employability projects for the central University of London. The breadth and diversity of the work undertaken by the team across eight different institutional settings is testament to the skill and creativity of the team, which has worked hard this year to further embed employability provision within each institution.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Careers Registration embedded Following on from a successful pilot last year, we embedded Careers Registration, the process to capture data on students’ level of career readiness, into enrolment at St George’s for all students. At QAHE Careers Registration was also introduced for the first time ... but on paper! This summer it will move online, offering a much more streamlined process for capturing and accessing the data.

Heythrop College The Heythrop self-sourced Internship Scheme has secured over £25,000 in funding this year, building on the success of last year when 10 students secured internships in roles including Refugee Worker, Journalist at a London newspaper, Youth worker, intern at the National Spiritual Assembly and The National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders.

The Courtauld Institute of Art We have seen increases in engagement with the careers programme across all our BA cohorts this year, including an increased proportion of final year students accessing appointments from 8.5% to 20%, which we are hoping will have a positive impact on our students’ postgraduation employment outcomes.

The Royal Veterinary College (RVC) This year RVC funded extra time for a careers project focusing on the BSc Bioscience programmes which aimed to encourage students to successfully explore a diverse range of career options, achieve direct experiences that support career exploration, and develop employability related skills. There is now a ‘staged continuum of engagement’ for all three undergraduate year groups: Year One focus - ‘Develop yourself’; Year Two focus - ‘Try something new’; and Year Three focus - ’ Where are you now - personal next steps action plan’ . This has been supported by a new careers conference and activities to support students to develop relevant skills.

We have also focused on building good relationships with relevant employers starting with Christie’s which will be offering the first ever employer open day on site at Christie’s exclusively for Courtauld students.

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine In addition to our usual programme of activities, this year, in response to student feedback, the Careers Service arranged its first networking evening, working together with the Alumni and Events teams. This allowed students to network with alumni from the School in an informal and friendly setting. Both students and alumni loved the event and we plan to run it again next year.

The Heythrop selfsourced Internship Scheme has secured over £25,000 in funding this year

St George’s St George’s has been working closely with medical students on Careers Registration. These students are asked questions each year and again at graduation which capture a sense of how their interest in different medical specialties might change over time in order to understand the influences on these interests and how best to provide relevant support. Dr Saima Shah, the MBBS Careers Liaison Tutor, has presented twice to a GP conference about the project, and we have presented the data back to the Year One and Year Two students themselves to raise their self-awareness around career planning. School of Advanced Study, University of London The Education Consultancy team provide some careers support to students on programmes delivered by The School of Advanced Study at the University of London. The School unites nine internationally renowned research institutes to form the UK’s national centre for the support of researchers and the promotion of research in the humanities. Students studying programmes run by the School received a careers session in their induction for the first time this year and will be able to access GoinGlobal, the online resource for students interested in careers outside the UK, for the first time next academic year.

Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) London Campus The GCU Careers Service is now two years old and this year set up a successful new LinkedIn group for alumni and current students to provide networking opportunities. Careers at GCU also created a relationship with local organisation ‘Dress for Success’. This organisation then partnered with a student society to run a fashion catwalk on campus giving students great event experience and raising several hundred pounds for a local cause. Expansion at QAHE QAHE London funded an additional day of careers consultant time in February, enabling the service to increase its outreach activities by creating a presence on social media, with a regular careers blog and facebook posts reaching up to 342 students. Central Education Consultancy initiatives As well as managing the careers services for various specialist institutions, the Education Consultancy team also lead on certain central projects for The Careers Group. One of these was ‘The Great Grad Job Hunt’, an innovative project following the job hunting experiences of students and graduates through video blogs which are shared on YouTube alongside content from careers professionals. Since the project launched in September 2016 we have published over 80 videos and have a growing audience with over 7,700 minutes watched on YouTube and other social channels. Together with the University of London International Academy (UoLIA) and the Development Office, the Head of Education Consultancy contributed to the first student placements in Singapore, undertaking the selection of students and giving feedback to unsuccessful candidates to support their career learning. UoLIA has now agreed to fund a Careers Consultant to support their distance learning students from 2017-18.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

City Careers

Careers Registration We’ve been busy analysing our first year of Careers Registration data and starting to use it in our strategic planning and student engagement. We also successfully embedded Careers Registration questions into the 2017 graduation process so we will be able to use data on the plans of our graduating students for the first time to inform provision.

Embedding employability in the curriculum This year has been incredibly fruitful in terms of our work to embed employability in the curriculum with new credit-bearing modules approved for 2017/18 launch in Maths, Sociology and Journalism. We’ve also been working on improvements to our existing modules in the Cass Business School and Law School to continue to develop their content and impact.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Professional experience schemes Our strategy to diversify the ways in which students can gain professional experience has seen us launch three new schemes: MicroPlacements, Industry Insights and GradVantage. After a very successful pilot in Law we successfully bid to HEFCE for £100,000 of funding to expand MicroPlacements to seven courses over the next two years. Industry Insights is a new scheme funded through our Access Agreement in which short insight events held at company premises are organised exclusively for City students. GradVantage is our internship scheme for recent graduates who have not found suitable employment which utilises Santander funding. These schemes are all proving to be successful in supporting our widening participation students and complement each other, with two aimed at SMEs and the other focused on large blue-chip graduate recruiters.

After a very successful pilot in Law we successfully bid to HEFCE for £100,000 of funding

Pilot employability award Working collaboratively with various departments at City, this year saw us pilot an employability award. It has proven to be an idea that has merit and we’re now looking to expand it further.

Social enterprise festival In conjunction with the Enterprise Education team at City and Queen Mary Careers & Enterprise, we ran our first Social Enterprise Festival. This consisted of a week of events at City and Queen Mary and was open to City and Queen Mary students as well as members of the public. This innovative event won the award for ‘outstanding engagement with business and the professions’ at our 2017 President’s Awards.

Unitemps Unitemps provides temporary jobs and work opportunities on campus and in local commercial businesses for students, recent graduates and the wider candidate community. It has been a busy year for our Unitemps branch, with approximately 8,500 timesheets for 3,200 bookings processed since October, resulting in around £1.5M in payroll. We also held our first ever Unitemp of the Year award ceremony to recognise the outstanding contribution our Unitemps employed temps make to the university and the great hiring managers and external organisations that we work with.

Ensuring our service meets the needs of our diverse student body Great strides have been made this year to ensure that our service meets the needs of student groups with different needs such as international students, PhD students and our prospective students. This progress includes events such as the Global Series which we ran in partnership with colleagues at Goldsmiths, King’s, SOAS and UCL, which enabled students from our respective institutions to attend a programme of internationally themed events.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Goldsmiths Careers Service

Goldsmiths Careers has seen a year of consolidation and further change. The new student-facing space in our central building has good footfall and we have worked to make it welcoming, as well as taking the service out to different parts of the campus in ‘Career Pop-Ups’, complete with popcorn. While change is an inevitable part of life in higher education, the service has coped well with different leadership, a new internal stakeholder and a re-defined directorate. A particular highlight this year was a meeting to discuss the new institutional Employability Strategy where we hosted 40 colleagues from across the College to discuss employability, in the context of league tables, data and increased student expectation.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Pre-entry advice and guidance Goldsmiths continues to be a sector leader in having dedicated careers consultant time available to work with the crucial preentry cohort, schools and parents. Our MOOC, which helped students consider how to plan their career prior to coming to university, was short-listed for a national award. The College acknowledged the importance of this work by increasing the capacity to one full-time member of staff, increased from two days per week.

Enterprise & skills We support students to think about their business skills in many ways, not least of which are the three enterprise competitions – one internal and two national - that we market. Following last year’s success, five Goldsmiths student groups – ranging from a designer wanting to create female-appropriate tools to use in the film industry, to story-telling through food - were short-listed for the national D-BACE competition. Our Gold (skills) Award comprises six elements and extended its reach to more students. This is also the first year that Goldsmiths students will graduate with a HEAR rather than a transcript, with 100 activities now officially recognised by the College as being validated for inclusion on it.

Work placements and internships Goldsmiths is proud that Santander has increased its donation to the College to increase the number of subsidised internships in SMEs and we are working hard to deliver that number (one of which includes an intern working in Careers on the Santander internships!). The vast majority of departments at Goldsmiths now offer access to an accredited work placement module, delivered in partnership between the departments and Careers.

Employer engagement Students continue to flock to our Fairs and we innovate in finding employers, particularly local SMEs, through outreach work to workspaces and by working in partnership with other Goldsmiths community partners. We were part of The Careers Groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s international series of panel events, hosting the Western Europe evening which attracted students from across the University of London.

Research While we are part of the national HEFCEfunded Learning Gain research project as part of The Careers Group consortium, we increasingly undertake our own research. One key piece of work this year has been to work with employers to understand their views of the HEAR; one impact from this has been to influence the key AGR group to better communicate the HEAR to its high-profile employer members. Additionally, we have secured funding to research how recording activities on the HEAR affects career readiness, using Careers Registration data. Finally, we have researched how workshops on resilience have enabled students to complete the Gold Award.

Technology for career learning Not content with continuing our employability MOOC, we endeavour to push the boundaries in using technology to support our work. Changing processes to use a new Careers Service Management System has not been without its challenges, but the new system will help to provide much better data to inform Service planning and delivery and enable our careers consultants to run drop-in appointments in departments effectively. We will be able to complement The Careers Groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activities in e-learning with our own new learning technologist post, developed particularly to help develop the Gold Award with online portfolio technology and to equip all colleagues to use online techniques in their work.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

King’s Careers and Employability Vision into Action In early 2017, King’s College London launched Vision 2029, a strategic vision of its twelve year journey to the 200th anniversary of its foundation. Its core themes resonate with our strategy and operation of Careers & Employability, both now and looking forward. Educate to Inspire and Improve We, along with divisional partners Quality and Academic Support and under the leadership of Dr Victoria Korzeniowska, are driving King’s move into employabilityled quality assurance. New programme design and approval processes will embed employability within the curriculum, creating equality of opportunity and access for students to develop their employability through their academic experience, and enabling them to connect that experience more effectively to meaningful career success. We are building a new Employability Toolkit that includes frameworks for articulating the employability value of curriculum content, innovations in employability-led learning outcomes and assessment, and examples of best practice in employabilitydeveloping content. We also continue to innovate in other areas, including our e-learning portfolio which has grown considerably in resources for international students, the King’s Leadership and Professional Skills Award, and for the Graduate School. We are exploring new ways for students to connect together their experiences as part of an online student journey tool that enables reflection, exploration and career decision-making.

Research to Inform and Innovate We continue to benefit from the analysis of our Careers Enrolment data, soon to enter its third year. Our ability to measure students’ careers readiness, expectations and interests, as well as the distance travelled by students in different academic and demographic cohorts shapes our provision and measurement of our impact. Deputy Head, Isabel Frazer-Veli, and Head of Employer Engagement, Andrew Wright, presented on the use of this data in our employer engagement strategy at the HEFCE Learning Gain Careers Registration Project Conference, and at the AGCAS Employer Engagement Conference. We can use the data to help employers steer and design their attraction strategies against evidence of student interest, and also build new opportunities such as internships in areas of demand. Serve to Shape and Transform King’s drive to enable and empower its students to serve society already finds an outlet in the focus on leadership and service of our King’s Leadership and Professional Skills Award. Students signed up for the Award gave over 3000 hours of their time, volunteering for organisations as diverse as Foodcycle, Hanwell Homeless Concern, the Bereavement Service at St George’s Hospital and Legal Outreach Volunteers. Our delivery of bespoke career development workshops for the Graduate School has included focus on how postgraduate researchers can take their knowledge and research expertise out to wider contexts for the benefit of others, while also developing a more fulfilling and diverse definition of career success for themselves. Graduate School Careers Consultant Donald Lush was invited to present on this programme of workshops to The Academic Registrars Council Postgraduate Practitioners Group.

In early 2017, King’s College London launched Vision 2029

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

A Civic University at the Heart of London A key focus of the Employer Engagement team has been raising the profile of King’s students within the London employment market. We are developing new relationships with many SMEs across the city through our King’s Internships Programme, developing exclusive opportunities for our students in companies as diverse as social enterprise, biopharmaceuticals, small law and accounting firms and specialist publishing houses. We also have been able to send King’s students into exclusive accredited internship partnerships with the British Museum and Democratic Progress Institute. Local relationships will also become extremely significant as the King’s Business School formally launches in September. In this global business capital, we are supporting the Business School’s development of new relationships with some of the world’s biggest employers and brands through a new Careers Consultant, Kate Woods, and a new employer engagement role. An International Community that Serves the World We continue to develop our focus on global mobility, enabling students of all nationalities to access opportunities for work experience outside the UK. 120 students will be completing overseas internships in the summer of 2017 through our Global Internships Programme, studying in 13 countries from Australia to Croatia, Nicaragua to South Africa. We are also building the King’s graduate brand with international employers such as technology specialists and business conglomerates in the Asian market and public policy employers in the US and Europe, using data to determine individual strategies for key overseas markets relevant to King’s and our students.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Queen Mary Careers and Enterprise Aiding curriculum innovation at QMUL

Awards for enterprising students at QMUL

At Queen Mary a major, cross-discipline curriculum enhancement project – the QMUL Model – is underway, and two of the Careers & Enterprise Team’s awardwinning programmes have been selected to form the basis of exciting new modules. Programme coordinators have worked hard during 2016/17 to adapt our QConsult and QEnterprise programmes to make them suitable for a curricular setting. An incurricular trial takes place in 2017/18 with full integration expected in 2018/19. QConsult provides teams of students (at least half of whom are from low income households) with an opportunity to complete a consultancy project for an East London business or charity; QEnterprise supports students to build their own business.

Our Queen Mary Enterprise Team had a particularly exciting year… We were delighted to support two students into the final of the Mayor of London Entrepreneur Competition (which received over 300 applications). Two of our student entrepreneurs also made it to the semi-finals of the Santander Universities Entrepreneur Awards, with results to be announced shortly. The team co-hosted London’s first social enterprise festival in partnership with City University which included a week of workshops, events and a social enterprise hack. Over 1,000 people attended over the course of the week. Meanwhile a number of our student entrepreneurs also helped showcase the exciting range of public engagement activity going on at Queen Mary by participating in the university’s annual Festival of Communities in East London. The festival welcomed over 3000 visitors over two days.

Supporting social mobility through mentoring Several of the reports released in the last year highlight the importance of role models in raising the aspirations and confidence of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Queen Mary Careers & Enterprise Team has a strategic target to match – annually by 2019 – 300 such students with a mentor. This year we passed our halfway milestone with 186 students matched with a mentor. 67% of these students are from low income households.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Improved resourcing at QMUL A quiet but significant success this year was the transfer of one third of the Careers & Enterprise team’s staff from project to core funding. This reflects the team’s measurable success in terms of achieving outcomes for Queen Mary, and equally Queen Mary’s commitment to supporting student employability. We continue to draw in external funding too – from philanthropic businesses based in East London and from grant funds, with further bids on which we are awaiting outcomes in autumn 2017. We are comfortably on track to meet our strategic target of attracting £1M in external funding to the university by 2019.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Royal Holloway Careers and Employability Student usage of one:one coaching increases by 35%

This year has seen expansion in the range and volume of our activities. We are now ready to capitalise on our transformative move into our purpose-built new facilities in Royal Holloway’s new flagship Emily Wilding Davison building in August 2017.

Student engagement campaigns lifted to new level The appointment of a dedicated Communications Officer (Employability), Leia Farnan, in July 2016 enabled the launch of a series of campus-wide ‘Get Hired’ campaigns which by March 2017 had engaged 1500 students. Get Hired’s core message of “Learn, Decide, Apply” was targeted at finalists who had not yet applied for the graduate labour market. It combined pop up stands with engaging online material developed by Careers Consultant Ed McLean which was accessed by 308 students in October 2016 alone. The innovation of this approach has been recognised by an invitation to Ed McLean and Leia Farnan to disseminate their work at the national RAISE student engagement conference in September 2017. In May 2017 we have launched the ‘Get Hired This Summer’ campaign, targeted at our fresh graduates.

Employability and employer-led events Our newly expanded Employer Engagement team revamped our employer-led delivery of employability events and workshops this year, resulting in 252 sessions over the course of the year, including 128 events held for specific academic departments. Our careers fairs also grew in frequency and scale this year. This growth included our first International Women’s Day Fair in March 2017 which was popular with both students and employers. A record breaking 1000 students attended our main October Careers Fair (an increase of 25% on the previous year).

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Targeted Careers Education & Coaching delivery to academic departments expanded Targeted delivery to academic departments led by careers consultants increased in number and scope (up by 27% to 4,954 interventions from August to March 2017), increasing the reach and impact on students who may not visit the Careers Centre on their own initiative. We delivered in the curriculum, provided targeted coaching to students in their academic departments and supported 128 department-based careers education events, including a growing number of discipline specific boot camps. Examples of good practice include: the dedicated History Careers Day, the Teaching Acceleration programme for English, the growth in science placements for Biological Sciences students, The Next Stage inspirational creative industries events for Media Arts, Drama and Music, and a boot camp for Psychology students which resulted in a 21% increase in reported student self-confidence. We also continue to expand our law careers provision to support the School of Law whose first law students will graduate in 2018.

This increase of 35% (1,827 sessions delivered August 2016 to March 2017) demonstrates the continued demand from students for face-to-face coaching, mainly delivered in 20 min slots, despite our expanding range of online support (1,526 interventions in the same period). Student online booking of appointments was greatly improved by the introduction of TARGETconnect, the new Careers Group careers service management system implemented this year.

Placements and internships We delivered a micro-placement scheme to 12 academic departments in which 430 students engaged (one in three of the eligible students). Placement sourcing is still in progress (70-80 placements projected) but confirmed placement hosts include Conde Nast, Royal Albert Hall, Centre for Criminal Appeals and Gatwick Greenspace. We also ran a successful Santander Internship programme and provided coaching in resilience and application success to the Year in Business programmes in Management, contributing to a doubling of the placement success rate (30 competitive placements secured by Management YIB students by June 2017).

Passport skills award As the Passport Skills Award is now in its sixth year of operation, we conducted a mini-review of the student awareness and uptake of this scheme which identified demand for online sessions as a supplement to the current workshop offer. Implementing this new methodology produced a record number of award winners, 423 Standard and 155 Gold, with 234 streams of activity now awarding Passport points across campus. Our Passport Award Ceremony has now developed into a broader celebration of student success and contribution at which Bonita Norris, alumna and the youngest woman to climb Mt. Everest, inspired our students.

Our Passport Award Ceremony has now developed into a broader celebration of student success The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

St Mary’s Careers Service Investment in the Service

St Mary’s Careers Service has had great success this year. We have received significant investment, performed well in the employability for the Teaching Excellence Framework, established Careers Registration for first years, delivered significant levels of extra support through the new personal tutoring system, improved access and delivery into academic programmes, successfully influenced the market research for new validations to better reflect the needs of employers, strengthened our employer engagement activities and JobOnline vacancy numbers, developed new collaborations with internal stakeholders and supported recruitment events and pre entry guidance, taken a lead role by chairing the Careers Strategy London Heads of Careers Services group, been re-accredited for Matrix, developed a new careers service management system and a student awards scheme (awaiting funding), and are in the process of developing a fuller suite of online resources for current and graduate students.

The Senior Management Team invested significantly in the Careers Service in the last budget round and this led to a year of recruiting and training four new permanent staff and four other fixed contract roles. The team is now made up of five careers consultants, a head of service, an employer engagement officer and an office coordinator. In addition we have benefited from collaboration with a new volunteer officer and short term boosts to projects around improving data analysis, database cleaning and online material development. We expect to start to reap the rewards of these new staff in the coming year as the new team is enabled to focus on specific audiences.

Careers Registration Having piloted this HEFCE funded project with the Screen Media programme in 2015-16 we have now rolled it out to our first year students via the new personal tutoring system. We have captured the responses of approximately 10% of the student body now and are developing other new routes for collecting this data across all years via a number of preexisting surveys.

Teaching Excellence Framework We took a key role in helping the University with its TEF submission by receiving only positive flags on our Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education surveys and being able to provide the historic data to support the institution’s written submission. The institution was awarded silver in the exercise.

The Careers Service has been awarded the Sir Henry Walpole prize for collaborative work

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Personal tutoring We have improved Careers Service access to many hard to reach students by not only encouraging them to undertake Careers Registration, but also by delivering multiple group work support sessions for programmes with poorly performing destinations results. Our intent is to grow this new approach in the year to come to ensure small groups benefit from targeted support in their first year of study.

Employer engagement

Embedding employability into academic timetable delivery and programme validation Continued work with programme and academic directors has paid off, with more programmes opening their doors to Careers this year. Notable new engagement has been created within Theology, Creative Writing and Education and Social Science.

Having employed a full time staff member to focus on this area in December 2016 we have started to see growth in employer engagement activities on campus with excellent feedback from employers, students and staff alike. We have hosted four fairs on campus, seen a growth in relevant vacancies on JobOnline and had higher numbers of employers coming to the University offering employment opportunities to students ‘on the spot’. We have just become a Santander internships partner and will be receiving their sponsorship for our annual Careers Show in 2017-18.

We have also been invited to take part in validation planning meetings for the first time this year. This has resulted in a redesign of the market research stage of the programme approval process which now includes significantly higher levels of employability research and benchmarking than was undertaken previously. It has been especially important to create this change in light of the employability KPIs the University has set itself for 2025 (80% in graduate level employment).

Careers Strategy London

The Careers Service has been awarded the Sir Henry Walpole prize for collaborative work done with our drama programme this year. We have also started to work closely with the newly staffed alumni office and are working on plans to offer continued support to graduates via the alumni network. We are awaiting announcements regarding funding of a further Careers post to ensure the best support can be offered to students postgraduation with the hope to boost our outcomes in DLHE, TEF and LEO. We have also worked with the student recruitment team on eight events this year where we have offered the best pre-entry advice to students interested in studying within higher education.

The Head of Service was voted in as the new Chair of the Careers Strategy London group. This is a group of 24 Heads of Careers Services across London where matters of strategic importance are discussed and guest speakers invited to present. In addition, the Head of Service was the catalyst for the first meeting of Academic PVCs in the Cathedrals Group. The meeting led to an enhanced relationship between the Careers Service and the PVC Academic of the University and led to the development of a key proposal for a new student awards system at St Mary’s.

Matrix, TARGETconnect and online education The Careers Group and St Mary’s was successfully re-accredited against the matrix quality standard in 2017. We have also moved to a new Careers Management System called TARGETconnect, which has been developed by in-house staff to provide bespoke support for our context. It has also been adopted by our key collaborators on employment, the Centre for Workplace Learning. Our objective is to unify our employer engagement platforms across the University to provide a more professional approach to work with third parties. Lastly, we have recently begun a project to improve our online learning tools in Moodle and hope to have this ready for new students enrolled into the 2017-18 academic year.

New collaborations

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

SOAS Careers Service

New space, new ideas The Careers team moved to the new Paul Webley Wing in Senate House ready for the start of the academic year. We have fully embraced the ethos of Careers Registration and the stages of career thinking, and so have structured our physical space around these stages. Our Director, Baroness Valerie Amos, formally opened the new space in May 2017, at an event attended by many SOAS staff and academics as well as guests from the world of Careers, including Stephen Isherwood, Chair of the Association of Graduate Recruiters who spoke of the need for students to make informed career choices and to start their thinking early.

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Ref l ect and review

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Careers Registration continues to develop

New ‘drop in’ service a hit with students

We have continued to develop our wholeService approach to Careers Registration, which captures data from students on their perceived stage of career thinking and which sectors of employment interest them. The data is used at SOAS for two main purposes: supporting efforts to raise our students’ awareness of career planning earlier in their time at SOAS; and reviewing student career thinking at cohort level to inform work with academic departments and institution-wide strategy.

As part of the ethos of offering students the best possible experience on their first contact with Careers, we have decided to offer drop in sessions in the mornings and booked appointments in the afternoons. We have a three person team on our front desk comprising information professionals and Careers Consultants and for the latter part of the year have had two SOAS Graduate Interns who shared the triaging activity as well as running their own projects. This new approach has enhanced our service to students who wish to find out information or have a quick chat about their options without needing to book in advance. Feedback from students has been very positive, and we will continue to develop this part of our service over the coming year.

At the individual level, each student receives a tailored email back from the Careers Service with some ideas for actions they can take which relate to their stage of career thinking and an invitation to visit the Service. This approach dramatically increased our ‘walk in’ visits at the start of the year. At the strategic level, our IT team has designed a Careers Dashboard, which, with input from the Planning team, has enabled every staff member at SOAS to view any cohort’s current or historic career thinking and sector interests alongside graduate destination data for that cohort. This approach has enabled us to target activities to students relative to where their thinking is, to avoid making assumptions about where they ‘ought’ to be.

New Student Intranet project The Careers Service was one of the pilot departments for SOAS’s new Student Intranet. We have structured our web pages around the stages of career thinking, with a handy diagnostic tool for students based on our different stages of career thinking and planning.

Data-informed services New Careers Service Management System We have run our fourth annual Careers Survey this year with a deliberate focus on students who had not visited us in order to gain insights into how we could better support them. We are currently analyzing the data and working on an action plan, which we will communicate to all students at the start of the next academic year. We have also produced an annual Careers report for each department, highlighting the work we have done with them over the last year, and our plans for the coming year. These have been very well received as part of our continued drive to embed employability within the SOAS student experience.

We installed a new Careers Management System at the start of the calendar year and asked students to select a name for the system which reflected the SOAS ethos and brand. They chose the name ‘Budiriro’ which means ‘journey’ in the Shona language. We are starting to reap the benefits of using the system to track and then support students more comprehensively through their own career journeys.

The Careers Service was one of the pilot departments for SOAS’s new Student Intranet

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

UCL Careers Remodelled Space In summer 2016, UCL Careers underwent an extensive refurbishment. The new open plan office can accommodate more staff to support the expansion of the team. There are also more careers ‘pods’ to enable increased numbers of student appointments and a collaborative space for informal meetings, which has enhanced staff cohesion and wellbeing.

Team Structure To support our ‘hub and spoke’ model, we have introduced a new management structure to the service. Team leaders have been appointed to areas that have expanding teams, to provide staff management as well as strategic leadership. We have 2 team leaders in the School of Management, based in Canary Wharf and one in the Faculty of Engineering. As the team continues to grow, we anticipate introducing similar posts in other areas. To support the new structure we have also introduced a set of team values that are being integrated into recruitment and appraisals, as well as forming part of ongoing discussions with all staff. In addition we have introduced a staff wellbeing team who actively promote and support mental, physical and social wellbeing across the team. Tangible outputs have been the introduction of a buddy scheme for all new staff, weekly mindfulness sessions at lunchtime and the encouraged use of ‘standing desks’ and ‘walking meetings’.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Internships, Placements International Ventures and Vacancies To support the advice we offer to academic departments about facilitating work experience opportunities for their students, this year we have worked extensively with the Legal team and Registry to provide a pack of contractual templates and useful resources to support staff responsible for the due diligence and duty of care for placements as part of an academic programme. We are also working with the Innovation & Enterprise and Study Abroad teams to develop more joined up ways of working so that we can offer more work experience opportunities for UCL students in the future. In addition, earlier this year we took over the facilitation of UCL’s summer internship scheme part-funded by Santander, from UCL’s Innovation & Enterprise team. For this summer we had nearly 1000 applications for up to 40 subsidised 6 and 8-week internships. In light of the changes we have made to the scheme, we have developed information packs for students and employers, and organised a briefing for students on making the most of their internship.

Collaborative Health & Life Sciences Fair In November, we ran a collaborative Life and Health Sciences Fair at the new Francis Crick Institute, alongside Kings and Imperial College Careers Services. The event was the first of its kind to be held at the Crick Institute and received extremely positive feedback from all concerned, with the Institute proactively inviting us to be part of their annual events calendar. The event was attended by 870 students (330 of whom were from UCL) and 32 recruiters.

UCL Careers staff have been involved in global visits this year.

One of our Careers consultants carried out a research project in collaboration with UCL academic staff. The study looked at the use of language by recruiters and how this shapes the perception of the workplace by graduate trainees. The careers consultant then presented their findings at a national careers conference in the USA. Members of the UCL Careers School of Management team delivered the annual alumni networking events in Beijing and Hong Kong. At the events, alumni are celebrated and given the opportunity to network with industry partners and prospective students. The events were attended by 70 delegates. This year’s Beijing event was hosted at Peking University’s Campus to mark the launch of the UCL - Peking University joint MBA Programme. During the visits, time was also taken to engage and build relationships with recruiters that may be interested in employing School of Management students.

Careers Registration To support UCL’s Education Strategy and as part of a HEFCE consortium, UCL Careers has worked with colleagues from Registry and the IT department to embed a short questionnaire focusing on career readiness, sectors of interest and level of work experience into the annual registration process for all undergraduate and PGT students. Following a very successful pilot in December, this will be officially rolled out in mid-June to capture the data from 30,000 students. This will provide the foundation for a data-led approach to careers provision in academic departments as well as enabling us to target support at students who are most in need.

In November, we ran a collaborative Life and Health Sciences Fair at the new Francis Crick Institute The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Aim 2: understand, anticipate and prioritise the current and future needs of stakeholders

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Thought and Practice Leadership

As a collective, our group will be highly visible as thought and practice leaders in higher education careers and employability, nationally and globally. In turn, the leading edge thinking and practice will enhance delivery in member services and bring reputational benefits to the University centrally and to member institutions.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Informing practice through research The Careers Group’s Research Unit supports the work of staff across the Group as well as contributing to sectorwide debates on employability themes through conducting primary research. In addition to compiling regular policy and research digests for staff, the team have produced a range of research outputs this year as well as continuing work on a three-year HEFCE funded project looking at Careers Registration as one measure of learning gain.

Festival of Research Following on from the success of last year’s inaugural event, the Research Unit delivered the 2017 Festival of Research in May 2017. Over forty colleagues from across The Careers Group attended this annual opportunity to share examples of research-informed practice. The year’s varied programme featured external speakers from The University of The Highlands and Islands and the Association of Graduate Recruiters, in addition to a range of colleagues from within The Careers Group who outlined current research projects they are working on, including topics as varied as employers’ perceptions of the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR), exploring commonalities between a range of contemporary career management theories, and early insights into a new project looking at the use of behavioural insights or ‘Nudge theory’ to increase student engagement with careers services. Feedback from the event was overwhelmingly positive with many attendees valuing the breadth of the programme.

Publications and dissemination

It was very interesting research and helped me reflect on my own practice. Festival of Research attendee

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Building on the publications generated by the Queen Mary-Research Unit Collaboration in 2016, the Research Unit has had a paper published in the Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling (NICEC). The paper, ‘Experiential work-based learning as a social mobility mechanism for widening participation students’, written by Rae Roberts, Laura Brammar and Fiona Cobb, considered the social mobility outcomes of an award-winning programme which facilitated teams of students from lowincome backgrounds, many of whom are bursary holders, to conduct miniconsultancy projects with local businesses. The paper was also featured in a blog for the Association of Graduate Recruiters in May 2017.

I feel more positive about starting my [own] research now… thank you! Particpant on research skills training series

Research skills enhancement This year the Research Unit collaborated with the Professional Development Unit to produce and deliver a series of webinars aimed at enhancing the research skills of staff from across The Careers Group. With topics ranging from ‘Conducting a Literature Review’ to ‘Data Collection for Careers Services’, the Research Unit Series was received very positively with participants clearly appreciating the opportunity to improve their research skills and confidence.

A really good overview of what types of data are (or could be) available to Careers Service

Really effectively broke down the various kinds of data to collect and how to do it. I am a novice so this was particularly useful in helping me define where & how to get started with collecting data.

Particpant on research skills training series

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Careers Registration and Learning Gain: Insights for employability

Project Leads: Bob Gilworth and David Winter Project Coordinator: Fiona Cobb Data Analyst: Omolara Amuwa

What is Careers Registration?

Project growth and key developments

‘Careers Registration’ involves including employability-focused questions into student registration processes for all new and re-enrolling students, to capture annual data on individuals’ perceived stage of career development. The data enables institutions to measure students’ readiness to engage with career management support, which can then be categorised into developmental stages such as the ‘decide, plan complete’ model originally used at the University of Leeds. The nature of the data allows for both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses and can be used to inform how careers services plan programmes and activities.

Now into the second year of this threeyear HEFCE funded learning gain project to investigate the use of Careers Registration as a measure of learning gain in relation to work readiness, the central project team has grown, welcoming Omolara Amuwa as our central data analyst. We also increased our project partners to 16 institutions, with representation from across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and including eight of our own member services.

Why is it important?

Over 300,000 student responses and 16 research partners

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Learning analytics are becoming increasingly important in helping universities to optimise the student experience and evaluate learning gain. The introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) may require additional robust data from HE institutions which measure the added value to students of studying degree programmes. With the direct link to student registration data that the Careers Registration datacapture process entails, we have the opportunity to map the employability journeys of particular student cohorts (e.g. widening participation students), explore links between career readiness and academic success, or measure the impact of specific employability interventions.

The project has reached the metaanalytics phase and, as we analyse the 308,000 responses we have collected so far, we are drawing out key measures of career thinking including ‘compete’ ratios, ‘compete’ growth, and movement between career thinking categories, as well as investigating widening participation students’ career thinking journeys during the first phase of analytics.

Contributing to national policy discussions Drawing on our initial findings, Fiona Cobb presented a paper at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference in April 2017, focusing on the ways in which Careers Registration data can be used to support an evidence based approach to employability support for widening participation, which spoke to the central theme of the conference: ‘Recovering the Social – Personal Troubles and Public Issues’. The project team also contributed evidence to the Bridge Group report ‘Social Mobility and University Careers Services’.

Reshaping our understanding of employability Bob Gilworth contributed a blog piece for HEFCE on the HE sector’s understanding of employability, and how Careers Registration is changing HE institutions’ approaches to monitoring and supporting employability: http://blog.hefce.ac.uk/2017/04/04/ reshaping-our-understanding-ofemployability/

TCG hosts first national The day in numbers: conference on Careers 85 attendees from 65 different Higher Registration and Education Institutions, working in 19 different roles including heads of Learning Gain service, information professionals and The Careers Group also hosted the first national conference on Careers Registration as a measure of learning gain this year. ‘Insight for Employability: the implementation and impact of Careers Registration’ provided a forum for colleagues from across the sector to explore the impact of Careers Registration as an evidence based approach for employability support in higher education.

managers, careers consultants, employer engagement and marketing staff. https://storify.com/CareersGroup/ insight-for-employability

Drawing on the ongoing research of the HEFCE-funded Careers Registration Learning Gain pilot project, keynote presentations and interactive workshops helped colleagues to consider the impact of Careers Registration for their own institutions. Delegates were the first to see some of the findings from the first stage of meta-analytics, which included the finding that 48% of all final year undergraduate students are still in the ‘decide’ phase of career planning. Alongside sessions on the wider context for learning gain research in HE, colleagues from across The Careers Group ran some really informative workshops on how they are using Careers Registration data to inform strategy and practice, including a session on using CR data as part of an effective employer engagement strategy and a great interactive workshop on dashboards.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Representing The Careers Group nationally and internationally An important part of our mission is to influence wider debate and policy making around employability within higher education, using our own evidence and expertise to ensure that the voice of our members is heard and that we share cutting edge research and evidence from across the sector to inform institutional strategies. Many colleagues have represented The Careers Group at external events this year to share their experiences with others as well as bring back best practice from across the sector.

External representation We work very closely with our professional body, the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS), and currently have three members of The Careers Group’s senior management team on the AGCAS Board. Bob Gilworth is in his second term as Director of Research; Liz Wilkinson, Director of Careers and Employability at Royal Holloway is the AGCAS Treasurer; and David Winter, Head of Research and Organisational Development, is the newly elected AGCAS Learning Director Bob Gilworth is on the Association of Graduate Recruiters’ (AGR) Research Group; the ‘Skills for Londoners Stakeholder Advisory Group’ which will inform the work of the Mayor’s Skills for Londoners Taskforce; and the Steering Group of the Institute for Employment Research Futuretrack Research Programme. This year Bob has also represented the views of university careers services as part of various sector-wide consultations. In October Bob attended the HESA Destination and Outcomes Review Strategic Group Meeting as part of the national review of the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education survey; joined the HEFCE round table event on Work, Careers and Personal Achievement and input into planning for the optional questions to be included in the 2018 NSS (National Student Satisfaction) Survey.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Conference presentations and publications National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling (NICEC) Conference – ‘Rethinking Career Development for a Globalised World’ In September various colleagues presented at the NICEC Conference ‘Rethinking Career Development for a Globalised World’. Bob Gilworth presented ‘Career Registration: can big data produce an evidence-based approach to employability support in higher education?’; Laura Brammar, Careers Consultant within the Research Unit, presented on ‘New pedagogies, new potential: how careers professionals can harness technology to enrich the careers learning of their clients’; and David Winter contributed to the plenary session on ‘innovative practice’. Careers Registration and the effective use of data Bob Gilworth presented on Careers Registration and learning gain at numerous national conferences this year including the HE Institutional Research 2016 Conference in Liverpool on ‘Metrics that Matter’; at the HEA Surveys Conference in Manchester on ‘Where are you right now? Using Careers Registration to support employability in higher education’; and at the NICEC Conference in Derby ‘Rethinking Career Development for a Globalised World (‘Career Registration: can big data produce an evidence-based approach to employability support in Higher Education?’). Fiona Cobb, Project Coordinator for the HEFCE-funded Careers Registration research project, presented a paper at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference in April on the use of Careers Registration data to support evidencebased approaches to supporting certain student cohorts. Donald Lush and Kate Murray, careers consultants working with research

students and staff at King’s, presented on the use of Careers Registration data with postgraduate students at the Vitae Researcher Development International Conference. Their session was titled ‘Why do we do what we do? Using careers enrolment data to plan careers services and activities for researchers’. AGCAS annual conference Colleagues presented on a range of themes at the AGCAS annual conference this year: ‘Career Registration: feedback and learning from two different approaches’ - Philippa Hewett, Head of SOAS Careers Service, and Victoria Wade, Head of Education Consultancy. ‘Are skills awards about participation or achievement?’ - Gemma Seabrook, Careers Consultant based at Royal Holloway, in collaboration with Maxine Sims from the University of Bristol. ‘Bridging the academic engagement gap’ – Mona Vadher, Head of Employer Engagement at City University with Dr David Seymour from the City Law School. ‘Developing global graduates through international internship programmes’ - Michael Benson, Global Internships Programme Manager and Andrew Kidals, Global Internships Officer, both at King’s Careers & Employability. ‘Keep calm and carry on analysing: good vs. bad data analysis’ - Mona Vadher with Kate Croucher, University Relationship Manager at FDM Group. Current issues in student employability Bob Gilworth represented The Careers Group at various panel debates on current employability topics across the country, including the Higher Vocational Education and Pedagogy in England (Hive-PED) final seminar on ‘Higher Vocational Education: Where do we go from here?’ in September; the Commonwealth Horizons CEC Autumn Conference entitled ‘Skills for the 21st Century’ in October; and Inside Government’s event on ‘The Future of Learning Gain in the Higher Education

Landscape’ in December as well as their ‘Increasing Employment Prospects for UK Graduates’ forum in February. David Winter contributed to a panel on “Supporting teaching excellence & enhancing the student journey” at a Westminster Briefing on “Next Steps for Learning Gain: Supporting Excellence & Improving Student Outcomes” in February. And in March David attended a London Careers Strategy Consultation Workshop organised by the Department for Education, London Councils and the Greater London Authority, to discuss the all-age careers element of the Government’s Industry Strategy in relation to London. In May Bob presented at the Inspiring Futures Annual Conference on ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution - implications for young people and their futures’ in London. He also presented at the UUK conference on graduate employability and skills: designing and implementing your institutional strategy’ on the topic of ‘Disrupting the narrative: employability rhetoric v evidence-based reality’.

Skills development and recognition through Skills Awards and the Higher Education Achievement Report Joanie Magill, HEAR Coordinator at Goldsmiths, presented at the CRA HEAR Annual National Seminar entitled ‘Recognising and presenting student learning in the 21st Century in Manchester’ on the topic of ‘Developing and implementing strategies for local engagement with employers.’ Using technology effectively within employability In September Laura Brammar, Careers Consultant within the Research Unit, presented on how careers processionals can harness different technologies to support clients in their career learning at the NICEC Conference ‘Rethinking Career Development for a Globalised World’. In May, Rosalind Kemp, Information Officer with Responsibility for Digital Content within the Content & Information team, ran a session on “Platforms and content: a social media game” for participants at the AGCAS Technology in HE Careers Update at Warwick University.

In January Karen Barnard, Director of UCL Careers, and Philippa Hewett, Head of SOAS Careers Service, co-presented at the AGCAS Heads of Careers Services Conference on the theme of student engagement with a session entitled ‘Tell us what you really want…’. Karen also presented as keynote speaker at the Graduate Recruiters Network meeting in the autumn on the ‘View from Campus’. Effective support for postgraduate taught students In May, two colleagues presented at the AGCAS event focused on employability support for postgraduate taught students entitled ‘Accelerate - Get Your PGTs Moving Faster’. Stephen Gurman, Careers Consultant based at UCL, presented on the work he has led at UCL to develop a SPOC (Small Private Online Course) for PGT students. And Dr Katarina Lezova, Gold Award Coordinator at Goldsmiths, presented ‘Focusing on PGTs Personal & Professional Development: A Skills Award’s Perspective’.

Information literacy and employability Finally, and on an international note, Careers Consultant Sophia Donaldson presented the findings of a research project she conducted in collaboration with academic staff at UCL at a national careers conference in the USA. Her talk, entitled ‘Transitioning University Information Skills into the Workplace’, was delivered as part of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) annual conference in Las Vegas.

This year Bob has represented the views of university careers services as part of various sector-wide consultations.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Aim 3: ensure that we have the right staff locally and centrally with the skills, knowledge and support needed to perform sustainably at the highest levels.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

The work of the Professional Development Unit The Professional Development Unit supports all staff within The Careers Group to access professional development opportunities, regardless of whether they are employed directly by the University or by member institutions. This includes managing a programme of in-house training delivered by a mixture of internal and external trainers, coordinating staff induction and attendance at external conferences and training events, and the management of professional qualifications for careers consultants. The focus for this year has been on expanding the programme of in-house training to encompass a series of themed ‘series’ including the Social Media Programme, Employability webinar series, Engagement webinar series, Information Professionals Programme and Research Skills Programme.

PDU Highlights this Year Over 230 hours of professional development training delivered in house Over 700 staff places booked on in-house training courses 44 hours of training webinars delivered and recorded Introduction of 6 thematic training series including the new Social Media Programme, Research Skills Programme and Information Professionals Programme. Recruitment and induction of 12 new careers consultants across the organisation Second year of partnership with University of East London

New thematic training series introduced The PDU introduced several themed training programmes, delivered via a

combination of webinars and workshops. The Research Skills Programme provided practical advice on how to engage in research as practitioners, from selecting a research question to ethics approval; data analysis to writing for publication. The Social Media Programme covered topics as diverse as developing a social media strategy for a Careers Service to using technology to finding and evaluating content online. And the Employability Series included webinars focused on current topics of importance in the field of employability, ranging from embedding employability into the curriculum to current research into widening participation.

Leadership development needs analysis A new cross-Group team was set up this year to look at the development and support needs of managers across the organisation. The group have begun a detailed needs analysis of existing and aspiring managers to help inform the programme planning undertaken by the PDU, as well as work to map current management development opportunities available to our staff.

Partnership with the University of East London This year saw the second year of partnership with the University of East London’s Psychology Department to co-deliver a module as part of their PG Diploma in Career Coaching. The module, entitled ‘Career Coaching: the Higher Education Context’ is delivered by colleagues from across The Careers Group and covers six thematic areas of HE employability activity: • Careers education in the curriculum • Working effectively with academic departments and other stakeholders • Supporting diverse cohorts • Working with employers

• Using technology in careers work • The role of data in HE careers work The purpose of the module is to provide students on the programme with a framework to explore and discuss employability within the higher education context, examine the role and purpose of careers services and practitioners in this environment, and consider the impact of contemporary political, social and economic drivers on this work. This year the module included experienced practitioners working in a range of institutions as well as those who had never worked in higher education, with an emphasis on sharing ideas and perspectives as well as engaging critically with relevant theories and research. For The Careers Group this partnership is an important part of our mission to ensure that we are thought and practice leaders in our field, by providing opportunities for our staff to become involved in teaching as well as sharing knowledge and experience with participants. Thanks to our module contributors for all their work on the programme this year: Kulvinder Birring, Laura Brammar, Fiona Cobb, Vanessa Freeman, Bob Gilworth, Laura Mackenzie, Sue Moseley, Kate Murray, Vinny Potter, Fiona Richardson and Morag Walling.

Enabling knowledge exchange Cross-Group teams An important area of focus this year has been ensuring that all professional staff groups are supported to share knowledge and best practice across the Group. A coordination team was set up for each of the three main groups identified: Careers Consultants, Employer Engagement Professionals and Information Professionals. The role of the coordinating teams is to facilitate effective knowledge exchange and professional support for each group of staff within an ever-growing organisation, which includes organising cross-Group meetings regularly throughout the year.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Aim 4: work in partnership to achieve valued, mutually beneficial outcomes which enhance the competitive advantage of member institutions and make the best use of our resources

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Shared content and information Ensuring high quality careers information provision

An important benefit for members is access to centrally licensed online careers software. This year saw the engagement of a new video interviewing software platform to meet the changing needs of our member Services.

One of the benefits of membership of The Careers Group is the opportunity to collaborate around core information provision to allow greater focus at local level on bespoke resources for specific student cohorts. The central Content and Information team work with careers information specialists across member services to provide high quality careers information via various media including Careers Tagged, The Careers Group’s custom-built collective online resource library.

Another membership benefit is the opportunity to collaborate on shared information resources. Colleagues across The Careers Group were involved in the development of content for our annual Careers Guide for students and in producing a set of leaflets on essential career management topics to support local careers information provision.

20–80% Group-wide discounts on licensed careers software

This year also saw a project to refresh our central website for The Careers Group, to better reflect the work that we are currently doing and our current organisational structure.

Highlights from the year

Around 5,800 curated careers resources on CareersTagged, The Careers Group’s bespoke online careers resource library

One of the priorities for the year has been to support the sharing of best practice around information work in careers with a wider audience. This included the development of a new webinar series on the use of social media by careers professionals, and the delivery of a workshop on social media strategy for AGCAS’ Technology Update which forms part of the AGCAS postgraduate qualification in Careers Education, Information and Guidance for Higher Education. This year also saw the launch of a new cross-group project to review the future information needs of the Group. Another area of focus has been the continuing curation of quality information resources, including the review, updating and archiving of hundreds of resources on Careers Tagged.

25 careers management essentials helpsheets generated collaboratively

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

JobOnline â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest graduate vacancy site JobOnline is the shared online vacancy site for member Careers Services run by our central Communications & Vacancies team. The shared vacancy model, whereby vacancies are shared across the Group as well as being directly sourced by a central team, seeks to ensure that students and graduates across our member services have access to a greater breadth and diversity of vacancies than a single institution would be able to source on its own. The breadth comes from combining vacancies shared by member institutions with those sourced specifically by a dedicated centrally-based team who focus on achieving consistent diversity across sectors and types of role with a clear emphasis on opportunities that are suitable for students and recent graduates. The central team can also respond to strategic drivers for new types of vacancies within member services to ensure that opportunities reflect demand, whilst their experience and networks provide rich sources of opportunities.

Over 27,000 vacancies advertised each year across 26 industry sectors

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Thanks for all the work your team does on JobOnline on our behalf - we get some really great student feedback about the interesting roles students find on JobOnline. Head of Careers Service

Thanks as always for the [weekly digests of JobOnline vacancies] - theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re invaluable in helping me put together our weekly all student newsletter. Marketing & Internships Officer in a member Careers Service

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Collaborating for greater impact The Global Careers Series

Engagement from employers has been far-reaching and proved to be an effective university-business collaboration tool.

University’s Careers Service, still have access to relevant and engaging careers support.

The Global Careers Series was a collaboration within The Careers Group to provide students and graduates from five internationally-focused universities across London with information and resources to help them prepare for a globalized job market and explore career options outside the UK.

So far, the Global Careers Series has attracted over 600 students and feedback from students has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly around the fact that the series provided access to information on educational exchange, securing employment and volunteering opportunities overseas through the same events.

At the time of writing we have published over 90 videos and have recorded over 7,700 watched minutes on YouTube. We plan to use the videos to keep creating helpful content that will benefit students and graduates well after the project closes in December 2017.

Participating universities included City, University of London, Goldsmiths University of London, King’s College London, the School of Oriental and African Studies and University College London.

Successful accreditation against the matrix quality standard

A series of events enabled students or graduates who are interested in working internationally to hear from industry professionals from across the world. The purpose of the series was to enable students to • Network with like-minded individuals and industry professionals • Appreciate how experience in these selected countries could confer advantages to graduates in the labour market • Understand the challenges to working successfully in the country or region, and how these can be overcome Each event followed a similar format, bringing together panellists from different backgrounds to share insights into the challenges and opportunities associated with working overseas. Each session focused on a different country or region, hosted by one of the participating universities: China (hosted by King’s), South East Asia (at SOAS), Middle East (UCL), North America (City) and Western Europe (Goldsmiths). Students from all participating universities were welcome to attend any event and the partnership approach allowed a wider reach to students as well as ensuring a better return on investment to all participating employers.

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Search for ‘Great Grad Job Hunt’ on YouTube to take a look at the videos that the project has created.

The Great Grad Job Hunt The Great Grad Job Hunt is an innovative project from The Careers Group made possible with funding from the Convocation Trust, University of London. The project aims to help students and graduates to find out how to job hunt effectively using peer to peer examples via an accessible medium. Since November 2016 students and graduates from across The Careers Group, University of London have been making vlogs (video blogs) about their experiences of job hunting across a range of sectors. These vlogs have created an online series that documents the real life experiences of students and graduates looking for work. The student vlogs have been supplemented by videos created by careers and employability professionals from member institutions offering professional guidance. By accessing all of these resources, students and graduates who may be reluctant to approach their

The Careers Group was successfully reaccredited against the matrix standard in February this year following a week-long accreditation visit. The matrix standard is an internationally recognised quality framework to evaluate the effectiveness of organisations providing information, advice and guidance to individuals considering career and wider life goals. Accreditation occurs every three years and The Careers Group is accredited as a single organisation which allows us to consider the effectiveness of varied approaches to core goals across our different member services. Having a single accreditation visit is particularly time effective for our services and ensures that we hold a periodic review of common policies and areas of best practice. This year we received an extremely positive accreditation report which highlighted a number of areas of good practice across the services visited as part of the assessment visit.

Particularly enjoyed engaging with student questions through your virtual platform. [We] would be delighted to support any further events moving forward that help to connect students and graduates with career opportunities in China. Employer representative at the Global Careers Series China event

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Working towards greater sustainability Alongside core work, teams across The Careers Group have been working to make our carbon footprint lighter and our working lives more sustainable:

Green impact award at King’s

The City Careers Service contributed to the City Student and Academic Services directorate winning the April Sustainable City Challenge against other departments and Schools. We collectively opted for our prize to be a gift donation through Oxfam in the form of a goat to the Making a Living project.

The King’s team have retained their Bronze & Silver NUS Green Impact Awards, and have submitted evidence for the Gold Award this year. As well as working hard to make the current office a more sustainable place, we have consulted with the Bush House team to ensure we have a sustainable future in our new office space. During 2016-17 King’s Careers also organised two events on Careers in Sustainability, attended by 126 students, and the Internships team have sourced more internships in sustainable/ environmental companies.

From green careers to green giveaways at Goldsmiths

Sustainability meets wellbeing at Queen Mary

As past Green Impact Gold award winners, Goldsmiths Careers Service has a track record of excellence in sustainability. We routinely use recycled paper and Fairtrade giveaway tote bags, and recycle batteries and stamps for local charities. We compost enthusiastically, at least half our staff walk or cycle to work, and a couple of people have benefitted from the Goldsmiths bike recycling scheme. Finally, we help students to explore options around ‘green’ careers by inviting Fairtrade companies to our careers fairs.

The Queen Mary Careers & Enterprise team have been working towards a Green Mary Platinum Award after achieving Gold last year. The team launched a range of initiatives this year including: a ‘Wellbeing Campaign’ (walking meetings, cycle/walk to work week, team lunchtime gym and after work rock climbing sessions and an office ping pong set), a ‘Reduce Waste Campaign’ (Recycled Secret Santa, Clothes Swap Fairtrade Tea Party, new office cutlery, Keep Cups for staff, and a ‘good reads’ book swap corner) and a ‘Biodiversity Campaign’ (repotting all the office plants and lunchtime sessions at the campus allotment).

Meeting the Sustainable City Challenge at City

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

UCL goes platinum UCL Careers are also increasing their sustainability efforts having recently undergone the UCL Green Impact Accreditation Scheme, with the aim of winning a ‘Platinum’ Award for Sustainability practices for the fourth year running. This year, the team have focused on increasing the amount of food waste diverted from landfill by adding a third wormery to account for increased staff numbers. They have acted as an advice point for other universities and groups on the important things to be aware of when keeping a wormery, and have provided compost and fertiliser for another garden at UCL. The UCL Green team have also created a ‘closed loop’ biodiversity garden this year, using compost and fertiliser from the wormeries to grow wildflowers to provide an area of biodiversity and resting point for bees in central London, as well as some edible plants such as tomatoes. They also send a regular Green Newsletter with hints and tips on topics such as water and energy reduction, and organise sustainability-themed sharing lunches for the wider team at UCL Careers in collaboration with the Wellbeing Team.

Walk to Work Week 2017 Staff from across The Careers Group contributed a very healthy 543 miles to national Walk to Work Week and came first in the University of London mini-league!

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Acknowledgements Thank you to all our staff for their contributions this year: Chloe Ackroyd Jalal Afhim Rashida Ahmad Diana Akinmboni Khalid Al-Muhandis Bodrul Amin Omolara Amuwa Jane Angell Sarah Aramide Magdalen Attwater Emma Baker Cathy Balfe Jessica Barber Richard Barden Rebecca Barlow Karen Barnard Lacara Barnes-Rowe Shuma Begum Weronika Benning Michael Benson Laura Beswick Charlotte Betts Trevor Bibic Kulvinder Birring Katie Bisaro Katie Black Lena Blos Rachael Blundell Estanis Bouza Laura Brammar Cal Brindley Luke Brockway Rachel Brown Martin Brown Sally Brown Tara Brougham Natasha Burbridge Kirsti Burton Eliza Burton Tracy Bussoli Tess Bygge Dave Carter Elena Casero-Canas Mark Chadwick Liz Chapman

Helen Charlesworth Louisa Chastney Shak Chowdhury Melanie Christou Antonia Clark Fiona Cobb Merossa Cofie Sarah Cook Joanne Cooper David Coronado Anya Cowley Andrea Cox Joe Cronin Anthony Crowther Jana Dankovicova Annabel Datiari Kate Daubney Tom Davies Jonathan Dawson Jenny Daykin Mark De Freitas Karen Deadfield Anne Delauzun Rachel Demetriou Matthew Dennis Elaine Denniss Adam Dimitroff Ella Dodd Sophia Donaldson Chris Donaldson Robert Donovan Adriana Dragu Sakinah Drief Ingrid Duffin Sabrina Duggan Catherine Dyer Mark Eastwood Jo Edmondson Susan Elgin Nicholas Elliott Dorothy Evans Colm Fallon Anna Favalessa Inis Fitzpatrick Charlie Fitzpatrick

The Careers Group Yearbook 2016-17

Chris Flanagan Natalie Flintoff Alice Forbes Isabel Frazer-Veli Vanessa Freeman Alexis Fromageot Mara Gardner Rachel Garman Gemma Garrett Abi Gaston Kate Gault Mark Gilbert David Gilchrist George Gill Bob Gilworth Fergus Gleeson Krista Godfrey Moira Good Kathryn Goodfellow Russell Goodinson Jonathan Goodliffe Helena Goodwyn Katharina Grass Marlon Gray Helen Green Kiren Gui Beth Guilding Stephen Gurman Fahmee Habib Rose Hackett Petra Hajdu Phil Hardcastle Sam Harris-Jones Katy Gordon Gianina Harvey Alice Hawley Louise Hearn Philippa Hewett Emily Hogg Louise Honey Phil Howe Emily Huns Olivia Hynes Camilla Imarisio Zain Ismail

Veronique Jablonski Agnieszka Jakubas Ellen Jarman Kate Johnston Lynne Judge Zita Kalman Rosalind Kemp Helen Kempster Gemma Kenyon Andrew Kidals Carla King Ksenija Kotova Gill Lambert Deena LamelaPanthaky Marc Lane Katherine Lapinid Natalie Larr Calum Leckie Anna Levy Katarina Lezova Caroline Lisser Jie Liu Penny Longman Jonathan Lott Helen Lovegrove Donald Lush Karen MacIntyre Laura Mackenzie Jane Maddison Joanie Magill Irrum Magre Maaria Mahmood Reza Majid Simon Mantell Connie Marcell Emily McGrath Alison McGregor Ed McLean Caitlin McManus Eloise McWilliam Aisha Memon Maya Mendiratta Mala Mohindru Pat Molloy

Alice Moon Candice Mooney Hilary Moor Rupinder Morrow Sue Moseley Mary Mullarkey Kate Murray Amrin Nahar Hannah Nambooze Neela Nawathe Gya Niyazi Arabella Nock Alex Nowosiad Danielle Noyland Louise Ogle Obieze Oputa Rhyan Orrick Michelle Paris Joanna Pattison Donise Perkins Nicola Persue-King Sophie Picard Hannah Posner Vincent Potter Tisha Pryor Laura Radford Anil Ram Emma Ramsey Taimaz Ranjbaran Claire Rees Alex Reeve Uzma Rehman Sarah Reid Fiona Richardson Rachel Roberts Ingrid Ross Naz Sadoughi Parm Sahota Jonathan Sanders Taranjit Sanghera Nicholas SaundersSmith Lewis Sawyer Deva Scott Gemma Seabrook

Jai Shah Kay Shah Prosha Sharif Lindsey Shirah Raj Sidhu Sonia Singh Sarah Sirrell Linda Smith Serena Spoendlin Jacqueline Steinmetz Susanne Stoddart Jon Strathdee Rochelle Symons Emma Taylor Amanda Taylor Vicki Tipton Amy Townsend Natasha Triay Mona Vadher Victoria Wade Morag Walling Andrew Walsh Freddie Warner Sylwia WasiakRakowska Vivienne Watson Karen Watton James Weaver Brenda Welch Natasha Weller Kirsty Whitelock Tina Whittle Hatty Whitworth Aimee Wilde Daniel Wilkey Elizabeth Wilkinson Kathy Williams Rhiannon Williams Bryony Wills David Winter Kate Woods Andrew Wright Fatima Yasmin Lisa Zampetti

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