The means to improve graduates’ employability during and following higher education remains a persistent topic of debate at both national and provider policy level.
As both the cost of studying at university and graduate competition increases, the stakes are even higher for universities to achieve positive graduate destinations – for students and for regulatory purposes alike.
The solutions that will achieve what are often complex, individual developments in students are far from easy, where committees debate the best approach while students themselves are increasingly keen for opportunities that will secure that dream career.
It’s in this context that we’ve written The student’s guide to career planning and employability – a handbook for both students and lecturers on structuring accessible advice for the students of today.
Skills are back on the menu
Government nationally faces the same issues as our universities, where universities are increasingly asked to provide the medium and higher skills workforce to support economic development.
In the last decade, this has seen agendas focused upon enterprise, regional skills reports, and new degree awarding powers to address how and where students are developed to be the graduates of the future.
The Labour Party returned to government in 2024, and with it has returned a national focus on skills – including the publication of the UK standard skills classification released in November 2024.
For many this is a return to a Labour priority of 1997–2010, where a focus on ensuring core skills are part of the curriculum was a major priority of the National Skills Taskforce, which outlined the need for a genuine link between university study and progression into industry, and such innovations as the foundation degree.
Many universities responded with activities such as personal development planning and increased resources in careers services to develop these skills in the students of the 2000s, measured by the Destinations of higher education leavers survey.
14 years on
Whether you refer to skills as “hard skills”, “soft skills”, “transferable skills”, or “personal skills”, the challenge for educators and careers advisors hasn’t changed in the skills agenda.
For students, finding the right means or opportunities not only to develop such skills is easier said than done at scale, but also to ensure students have awareness of such skills and can articulate them in processes such as job interviews. The context has considerably changed since, though, with technology, Covid-19, tuition fees, and job market changes seeing the skills agenda of today being very different to the last.
The stakes are also far higher than just the league tables of the 2000s – Graduate Outcomes has been given three sets of very strong teeth for universities to answer to, notably:
- Condition B3
- The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)
- Access and participation plans
Into the curriculum
To ensure students’ engagement with skills development activities, increasing numbers of course teams are turning towards embedding employability in the curriculum. This sees curriculum going beyond traditional disciplinary content, taking steps to overtly engage students in skills development through access to experiences such as live briefs and work-related activities.
Ensuring engagement through the hard line of summative assessment to assess such experiences, courses have innovated in assessment practice far beyond the essay, exam, and presentation – toward an array of authentic work-related assessment.
The handbook
To create a resource that engages, guides, and supports students’ development and awareness of skills, we were delighted to launch our new handbook for students at the start of the year. The student’s guide to career planning and employability is for students of all disciplines, and aims to provide an accessible source of advice and resources to kick-start their career planning.
The book can also be used as core reading for employability modules, or as a resource for staff designing in-class materials – and there are even self-audit and reflective activities for students to complete.
The handbook begins with students’ current position, where our initial chapters ask students to explore themselves, introduce skills, and understand the flexibility of degrees to different working contexts. The initial chapters highlight the vast opportunities available during university study to develop new skills and experiences through:
- Work experience
- Extra-curricular activities
- Networking
Beyond making the most of opportunities during university, the second half of the book focuses on graduate jobs to postgraduate study, including advice on job applications, interviews, and assessment centres.
Order your inspection copy as an educator now, or see purchase options.