The Graduate Employability Challenge: The View from Edinburgh Napier University’s Career Service
Over the 15 plus years that I have worked in HE careers and employability services, the importance of ensuring that our graduating students are supported in their first steps into the world of work and beyond, has become increasingly more significant.
With the introduction of the Graduate Outcomes Survey in 2016 and growing pressure on universities to evidence ‘value for money’ to prospective students, it is no longer simply enough to outline the range of services a student can expect during their studies. The ability to demonstrate how careers services will proactively support students after their education should now come hand in hand with any effective careers and employability strategy.
But what constitutes as an effective graduate employability strategy in 2023? In this article, I explore what a strategy for supporting students’ employability looks like at Edinburgh Napier University, highlighting some of the most crucial aspects to ensure success and impact.
Laying the Foundation
When considering this question in the context of my own role as Head of Student Futures at ENU, I try to focus on what I believe should be our bare minimum graduate offer (first and foremost as a central career service) and how this aligns to our wider university employability strategy and it’s forth pillar which is focussed on employability legacy. Some basic principles I try to adhere to when creating a realistic careers and employability graduate strategy include:
Limiting core careers offer to graduates up to two years after education has been completed (and through to graduate outcomes survey) to maintain realistic but effective support in the absence of endless resource.
Underpinning our core graduate offer with digital interventions that signpost to key tailored graduate employability modules.
Working to ensure that graduate contact data and behavioural insights in the context of career development are easily attained and effectively used to direct our own resources appropriately.
Engaging Students Early On
In my work, I’ve found that the ultimate ingredient to supporting students shape the skills that employers are seeking is providing them with the very best opportunity to do so from their first year of study. Establishing a plan that students can understand and be part of during their formative years within the university are the key building blocks to supporting their next steps.
An effective way of doing this is by underpinning your core service with an effective employability framework. At ENU we have been integrating the Career Edge model into our students thinking, combining our curriculum embedded interventions with extracurricular career coaching sessions to outline employability language that demonstrates a clear pathway of activity and support that a student will engage with throughout their studies.
Early signposting essential skills development to students will help them understand how your service will ensure that the support provided will provide them with the ability to pursue future job opportunities and become more confident in their ability to manage their early graduate careers.
Using Insight for Impact
Tools such as career registration and capitalising on the data it provides allows students to reflect on their own professional development and ready them for the world of work whilst allowing central careers services to assess how to most effectively intervene both in and out of the curriculum.
In addition, the ability to measure student engagement through core careers appointments and events, regular employer networking opportunities through careers fairs, live projects and workshops are all critical in establishing essential underpinning data insights that help us partner more effectively with students to evidence their professional growth.
Space to Reflect
Critical interventions such as placements and other work-based learning opportunities already provide an infrastructure within most curriculums that allows students to reflect on their own professional development and ready them for the world of work. Tying the story together in an easy-to-understand narrative that can be communicated more widely helps bind the combined employability efforts of both professional services and academics together more effectively.
As students’ complete certain elements of their careers and skills development, working with them to record their progress (e.g. a reflective placement practice report or logging their own attendance at a careers event or workshop) will ensure students feel part of their own development rather than simply participants in an additional academic admin task. Utilising digital platforms such as a central CRM that records student careers appointments, events attendance and other skills related online modules can be a good way to do this, given most universities utilise digital platforms to underpin their services.
This engagement data can be tailored to the specific infrastructure of an academic programme, faculty or school and used to build employability award programmes that further incentivise students’ participation in their own professional development journey.
A Strategy for Success
Laying the foundations of careers and skills development during education is of course a complex piece and no easy feat. However, if it is delivered effectively, it should be the very foundation of creating a culture where early year graduates identify what it really means to have their own sense of employability and how to become more self-sufficient in their search for meaningful employment. Just as importantly, it should help them recognise how their university’s graduate employability strategy was in play from the very beginning of their studies and had a key part to play in their journey to success.
