The Rules of (Employer) Engagement

An illustration of an employer partnership.

Over recent years in the UK higher education sector, providers and institutions have been facing the challenge of responding to a shifting labour market.

Within departments, directorates, and services, the Careers and Enterprise service is a potent example of this change. This service within universities has been adapting, evolving, and specialising, reacting and responding to the quantitative and qualitative data from employers to help ensure that students employability needs are met as well as employer expectations. New roles and subsequent job descriptions constantly emerge and thus Higher Education must be agile to respond to be proactive and respond to change. These could include anything, from:

Information, Advice and guidance
Student Ambassadors
Careers Consultants
Graduate coaches
Digital Media Officers
Employability advisors
Enterprise staff and Employer Engagement teams.

In this article I focus on the role of Careers and Enterprise services with a focus on Employer Engagement teams within careers services.

Employer Engagement is important in the context of how universities need to respond to the changing labour market as they provide a direct line on the live interchange of student / graduates to the expectations of organisations and needs of open or future roles therefore Employer Engagement communicate this message to staff and students within university. Developing an account management model of Employer Engagement yields a continuous single point of contact for those external recruitment teams hoping to fulfil roles, this could include info sessions or visits to campus that may give students a helping hand on securing graduate roles.

Employer Engagement at Queen Mary, University of London

The primary aim of the Queen Mary Careers & Enterprise Employer Engagement strategy is to initiate and build relationships with employers of all sizes across all sectors to create opportunities for our students and graduates to positively impact the University’s key metrics such as Graduate Outcomes and the QS Survey.

The Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS) is strategically important as it is a metric used in league tables, the Teaching Excellence Framework and the Access and Participation Plan. Employability is central to Queen Mary’s reputation amongst prospective students and their parents / carers and supports student recruitment strategies.

As Graduate Outcomes is a relatively new survey (2017), there is no concrete published research yet on which factors correlate with positive outcomes. In relation to the previous survey (Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education), these were the most important factors in guiding graduates to a positive outcome:

Undertaking paid work while at university or in the six months immediately after
Focusing job searches exclusively on graduate-level jobs and making most applications while still studying
Having a career plan upon leaving university

C&E (Careers & Enterprise) aim to create mutually beneficial sustainable partnerships with employers and be seen as a recruitment partner of choice. The C&E Employer Engagement Strategy aligns with the QM Vision of opening the doors of opportunity and develop a positive brand that reflects QM’s values and culture. We aim to work in partnership with student and graduate employers, professional bodies and associations, career development organisations, and facilitate institution wide collaborations.

Employer Engagement: Why Is It Important?

Employer Engagement teams are growing all over the country both in central careers services and in Business schools within higher education institutions. What was once a niche role is expanding to attract those from industry and graduate recruitment / Attraction roles that is welcomed by a sector that often sees ‘career academics or people staying within HE for most of their career. I personally came from a background of managing public sector graduate programmes that helps me to provide a useful scope for current students and graduates navigate this process and obtain such roles.

With a plethora of internships, programmes, Careers fairs, podcasts, Enterprise challenges, events and other more specialist engagement opportunities employer engagement is crucial to be the power source of these programmes and communicate live industry knowledge and describe any skills gaps that are seen.

Employer Engagement helps to provide a partnership model with employers, both small, local, micro, starts ups and big multinational / and anchor institutions throughout London or the world to cater for a range of international students. Gaining trust through relationship building is imperative as this will help target business areas or to diversity staff demographics that wouldn’t have been known otherwise and thus a refined approach can be implemented.

A data led approach that underpins the work are, Careers registration data, Graduate outcomes survey, a variety of labour market information. They way QMUL approach this is a student-centred three-way relationship consisting of the careers service, Employers and students and graduates.

Introducing employers into the curriculum can help enrich a module whilst embedding a focus of employability into a course that perhaps has lower graduate outcomes than others. Out of the curriculum is the arena in which people can creatively work in employers in a plethora of formats, three of our most popular are events are Women in STEM and semi exclusive recruitment events and the annual careers fair.

The priorities of QMUL are to work towards a sector focused account management model informed by data in order to improve graduate outcomes and QS rankings and work cohesively will all internal schools and facilities and thus would encourage universities to invest in or expand this area as it helps to capitalise on external companies wanting to engage with universities and subsequently maximises this relationship to provide a plethora of opportunities.