Enhancing Student Employability Coordination Team

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Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination
Team

• What is ESECT About?
• Dr. Neil Moreland
• ESECT Research Fellow

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Some ESECT people

• Peter Knight, Neil Moreland and Patsy Kemp, Open
  University
• Val Butcher and Kathryn Dolby, HE Academy
• Carl Gilleard, Association of Graduate Recruiters
• John Gough, Association of Graduate Careers
  Advisory Services
• Lee Harvey, Sheffield Hallam University
• Alison Holmes, National Co-ordination Team
• Sophie Holmes, National Union of Students
• Brenda Little, CIHE Open University
• Mantz Yorke, Liverpool John Moores University
• Rob Ward, Centre for Recording Achievement

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The ESECT Mission is to

• Challenge the idea that it is employability
  versus education rather, employability is
  enhanced by good learning. The complex
  achievements employers value sit well with good
  learning in higher education (THES, 2/8/02).
• Promote integrated approaches to employability.
• Help staff and students to know what this means
  for them.
• Support related developments (www.ncge.org.uk)
• Pass a strong legacy to the HE Academy in 2005.

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Five phases

• Phase 1. Intelligence gathering and organising.
  Development of web-database.
• Phase 2. Targeted booklets for six key audiences
• Phase 3. Dissemination events, as far as possible
  in partnership with other networks.
• Phase 4. Development of toolkits for the six.
• Phase 5. Training in using, customising and
  disseminating the toolkits.
• Plus, throughout, regional work subject work and
  

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What is Employability?

• A set of achievements skills, understandings
  and personal attributes that make graduates
  more likely to gain employment and be successful
  in their chosen occupations, which benefits
  themselves, the community, the workforce and the
  economy

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Key Contextual Developments

• Globalisation.
• Changing employment patterns.
• Increased importance of knowledge as a commercial
  and personal requirement.
• The individual is faced with a kaleidoscope of
  possibilities and choices, which present both
  threats and opportunities. This necessitates an
  increasing use of reflection, in which
  individuals look critically at their action and
  ask what they are making of themselves (Butt,
  2004 128).

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Employability and Learner Types

• Employability creates at least three distinct
  groups
• of learners, these being
• Adults and young people seeking to position
  themselves with regard to the labour markets they
  wish to participate in
• Adults in work who have a need to update their
  skills and capabilities to remain employable
• Adults who are out of work, and thus need
  re-qualification or additional qualifications to
  re-enter the workforce (Illeris, 2003 174).

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Empowering Approaches to Employability

• 2 main ways of assisting students
• Enhance capacity for navigation through working
  life.
• Enhance capacity for invention of working life.
• success will come to those who know themselves
  their strengths and values, how they best
  perform, where they belong and what they should
  contribute and to those who update and expand
  their expertise, knowledge and skills, who build
  and maintain networks, and who increase and
  display reputations (Opengart Short, 2002
  222).

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Aspects of Self-Knowledge

• Metacognition (higher order mental capacities
  such as planning how to approach a given learning
  task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating
  progress toward the completion of a task).
• Learning Styles and preferences
• Thinking Styles and preferences
• Career Anchors (Edgar Schein)
• Personal Ethics

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Work-Related Learning Capabilities

• General economic awareness
• Subject related occupational trends and
  developments
• Career Planning
• Job search strategies and capabilities
• Learning from experience(s)

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Issues

• How can you do to help to maintain the graduate
  premium?
• What more needs to be done on the assessment of
  work experience?
• What more needs to be done on integration issues
• Subject and employability
• Subject and related industries
• ?