Enhancing Student Employability Coordination Team

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Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team

• Lee Harvey (Deputy Director)
• September 2003

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ESECT people

• David Baume, independent evaluator
• Val Butcher, LTSN Generic Centre
• Carl Gilleard, Association of Graduate Recruiters
• Margaret Dane, Association of Graduate Careers
  Advisory Services
• David Gosling, National Co-ordination Team
• Lee Harvey, Sheffield Hallam University
• Sophie Holmes, National Union of Students
• Peter Knight, Open University
• Brenda Little, Open University
• Rob Ward, Centre for Recording Achievement
• Mantz Yorke, Liverpool John Moores University

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ESECT purpose

• To enhance student employability
• Context
• Widening participation
• Graduate contribution, graduate premium
• Too many graduates? Non-graduate jobs
• Part-time/extracurricular working
• Recruitment strategies

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What is employability?
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Definition and operationalisation

• Range of definitions
• Lack of distinction between definition and
  indicator
• Almost no serious operationalisation of the
  concept

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Employability definitions
Getting a job
Getting a graduate job
Getting and retaining a graduate job
Getting and retaining a graduate job progressing
These alternatives are moving towards indicators
that specify the nature, timing and acquisition
of a job. At its crudest we end up with
graduation rates from institutions as a measure
of employability
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Magic bullet
HEI
Employability development opportunities
graduate
employability
employment
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Employability

• Employment rates of graduates ? employability.
• Development of the individual.
• HE and extracurricular activity.

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Employability definitions
Developing a range of attributes to become a
critical lifelong learner
Developing a range of attributes employers want
Developing a range of attributes necessary for
career progression
Exhibiting a range of attributes that employers
anticipate will be necessary for the future
effective functioning of their organisation
These alternatives are moving towards identifying
indicators that specify the development of
attributes. This takes us towards an audit of
employability-development opportunities
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Model
Subject area
Employability development opportunities
HEI
pedagogy
Graduate
engagement

• employability attributes
• self-promotional skills
• willingness to develop

Extra-curricular experiences
reflection
Employability
External factors
articulation
Recruitment process
Employment
Employer
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The ESECT view of employability
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The ESECT mission

• Challenge the idea that it is employability
  versus education rather, employability is
  enhanced by good learning.
• Promote integrated approaches to employability.
• Help employers to recruit well from the diversity
  of talent.
• Help students know what this means for them
  emphasise reflection
• Pass a strong legacy to the HE Academy in 2005.

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A. Allay academics fears

• Fear employability is toxic to academic
  values.
• Our achievement will be to
• Show teachers in HE, through evidence and
  academic concepts, that synergies are possible.
  The Learning and Employability series does this.
• Set out principles for programme design that can
  reconcile the two.
• Provide tools to help them.

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B. Encourage integrated approaches

• ESECT aims to show HEIs and partner organisations
  ways of supporting employability
• Throughout programmes of study and the student
  life-cycle.
• By getting students to reflect on and document
  in- and out-of-class achievements
• Personal Development Planning is going to be
  important here.

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C. Help employers

• The Association of Graduate Recruiters will work
  with its 600 members to encourage equity and
  diversity in recruitment.
• We work with CRAC, STEP and Shell LiveWire to
  reach SMEs.
• Regional activities are important ways of helping
  higher education institutions to imagine ways of
  influencing recruitment practices. (Variable
  regional infrastructures)

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D. Help students

• NUS will raise student unions capacity to
  contribute to employability.
• ESECT is sensitive to the Access to What?
  projects findings on combating patterns of
  disadvantage.
• ESECT will raise students capacity to represent
  their achievements through
• Promoting effective PDP practice.
• Helping departments and institutions create
  critical reflective learners.

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E. A living legacy

• ESECT will link employability with key issues
  PDP, teaching and learning, widening
  participation, e-learning, assessment.
• ESECT is working with LTSN subject centres, the
  HE Academy and institutional change agents to
  build a firm basis for enhancing employability in
  the future. Not just another passing initiative!
• We are generating briefings and toolkits on what
  works.

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ESECTs work five phases

• Phase 1. What is known? The Perspectives series.
• Phase 2. Briefings for eight client groups.
• Phase 3. Dissemination activities, including
  regional conferences.
• Phase 4. Development of materials designed to
  help the eight sets of clients to make a
  difference.
• Phase 5. Training in using, customising and
  disseminating these materials.

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Client groups

• LTSN subject centres.
• Heads of department.
• Careers services.
• Student Unions.
• Employers.
• Pro-Vice-Chancellors.
• Curriculum and other development projects.
• Educational developers.
• All routes to learners and teachers

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Making a difference

• Our fourth set of deliverables.
• Originally described as toolkits.
• They could contain
• Audit tools.
• Examples of practice elsewhere.
• Suggestions and prompt lists.
• Access to an enhanced resource data-base.
• And
• Help and suggestions welcome.

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Learning more

• Contact Peter Knight by email (peter.knight_at_open.a
  c.uk)
• Contact Val Butcher by email (val.butcher_at_ltsn.ac.
  uk)
• Visit the LTSN Generic Centre/ESECT website
  www.ltsn.ac.uk/genericcentre/ESECT

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Contacts

• Lee Harvey lee.harvey_at_shu.ac.uk
• CRE website has links to ESECT and other
  employability materials including Transition to
  work electronic version, with embedded sites,
  as a word file on
• http//www.shu.ac.uk/cre/employability