Vice-Chancellor Professor Anthony Forster has marked Student Employability Week by underlining in his latest blog why equipping students with the right knowledge, skills and experiences for the world of employment, is central to an Essex education.
In his blog Professor Forster said: “We work with our students from the moment they begin their degree, to help them to develop their employability potential so that, by the time they graduate, they are ready to face the world of employment, equipped with the confidence and skills to enable them to succeed in whatever they choose to do."
Professor Forster said the University was now taking its commitment to employability “to an entirely new level.”
This week also see the release of a new podcast featuring the Vice-Chancellor and the Director of Employability David Stanbury discussing the value Essex places on the employability of its students.
David said: “One of the things that we’ve noticed at Essex is how much more switched on to employability students increasingly are. For example, in October, we ran a special event so freshers could come and get advice on CVs, finding jobs or internships, and just in one week, over 1,300 students came down and visited us here at the Employability and Careers Centre.
“One of the new things that we’ve done this year is to launch the Big Essex Employability Award, so that our students can be recognised for the experience and the skills that they’re gaining while they’re at the University.
“It’s a very simple approach – students have to accumulate about 50 hours of experience and attend four career development workshops, and if they do that successfully, it is entered on their degree transcript. This is proving really popular and we already have 500 students involved, which is absolutely superb.
“Over the last two years, one of the things that we’ve noticed is that we’ve had record attendance at our Graduate Recruitment fairs, not only from the students, but also more and more employers want to come to the University to meet our students.
“Over the next year we will be doing even more to support students’ employability. So we will be running Springboard, which is a national scheme to support female students, and we are setting up a scheme so that our third year students can be mentored by Essex alumni to help them stand out from the crowd.
“We've always offered a lot of employability support for students, whether that’s employer-led skills development workshops, overseas study or individual careers advice. But we continue to innovate providing new and more varied opportunities for our students, so that they are as well prepared as they can be for the increasingly competitive world of work.”