UCL Student to Employable Graduate

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UCL Student to Employable Graduate

• Karen Barnard and Rob Godfrey
• UCL Careers Service

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Session Aims..

• The graduate labour market today
• What employers demand from students
• How Academic staff and the Careers Service can
  help students with employability issues

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Employability

• Is it ..
• Expecting Universities to produce oven ready
  graduates for multinational companies?
• Diluting the academic curriculum?
• Or
• A set of skills, knowledge and personal
  attributes that make an individual more likely to
  secure and be successful in their chosen
  occupation(s) to the benefit of them selves, the
  workforce, the community and the economy

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The Competition is Fierce

• 14 increase in HE students since 1997
• 50 of 18-30 year olds to participate in HE by
  2010 (currently 41.5)
• In 2001-2002, 37 of companies reducing graduate
  intake
• 14 of 25-34 year olds unemployed for more than a
  year are graduates

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Career Patterns are Changing

• 67 of graduates move employer at least once
  within their first 4 years of work
• Short-term contracts increasingly popular
• 40 of jobs open to any degree discipline
• Graduate training schemes popular - train in
  technical skills NOT soft skills
• Trend towards delayering and matrix management
• 93 UK companies are SMEs

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Problem Areas

• Many graduate job hunters may struggle to get
  satisfactory employment in the increasingly
  fragmented and challenging labour market
• - Institute of Employment Studies
• 49 of employers think graduates are
  under-prepared for employment
• 67 of employers think graduates lack business
  awareness skills

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What do Employers Want?

• Graduates with the potential to be adaptive,
  adaptable and transformative.

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What personal attributes do employers want?

• intellect
• knowledge
• commercial awareness
• willingness to learn
• flexibility and adaptability
• self-regulatory skills
• self-motivation
• self-assurance
• Source Graduates Work Centre for Research into
  Quality, University of Central England

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What interactive attributes do employers want?

• communication skills- the ability to communicate,
  formally and informally, verbally and in the
  written form, with a wide range of people both
  internal and external to the organisation
• interpersonal skills- the ability to relate to,
  and feel comfortable with, people at all levels
  and to be able to make and maintain relationships
  as circumstances change
• teamworking- the ability to work effectively in
  teams, often more than one team at once, and to
  be able to re-adjust roles from one project
  situation to another in an ever-shifting work
  situation.

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Developing employability skills

• UCL is committed to embedding key skills into the
  curriculum www.ucl.ac.uk/keyskills/staff
• But some attributes are difficult to develop in
  the classroom
• the ability to present and sell oneself at
  interview
• the ability to appreciate workplace culture
• interpersonal skills

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Helping students develop these skills and
attributes

• Encouraging students to find work experience,
  whether or not it is relevant to either their
  subject or their career plans
• Integrating Careers Education activities such as
  Application and Interview skills into your
  Department

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How the Careers Service Can Help

• Launchpad - careers guidance on-line
  www.ucl.ac.uk/careers/launchpad
• Focus on Management Course www.ucl.ac.uk/careers/f
  ocus
• Skills for Work Day - joint venture between
  Careers Service, SU, Alumni Office EPD
• ULCS Alert
• www.careers.lon.ac.uk/alert