Employability

Developing the employability of students is an intrinsic part of good education and a government priority. Student employability is reflected in university performance indicators and it is likely to become increasingly important to prospective students in their choice of course and to universities with regard to their funding. Increasingly, UK graduates are having to compete for jobs with talented individuals from other European countries (and further afield) and only those who are highly employable in their chosen area will succeed in this expanded market. Responding to the sceptics.

Employability within bioscience subjects

This site, maintained by the UK Centre for Bioscience, helps staff address the employability issue in a Bioscience context through the following questions:

• Do you know the employment outcomes of your graduates?
• Are your students aware at an early stage of the graduate employment opportunities open to them?
• Are potential employer's aware of the attributes/skills your students develop?
• Do your students have confidence and high aspirations?
• Are students helped in making applications for employment?
• Are your students helped to steer their university experiences towards developing employability?
• Do your students have the skills to manage degree program choices and their careers?
• Does your curriculum promote employability?
• Are your students encouraged to obtain work experience?
• Is the contribution of extra-curricula activities to employability recognised?
• Have you considered employability in the context of widening participation and disability?

Employability resources:

Guidelines for Teachers: A guide to help teachers develop ways of enhancing the employability of their students.

The Employability Card Sort: a tutor-tailorable resource which enables students to identify and focus on what are important aspects of employability for them.

Employability focused audit tools:

• Employability Audit: provides academic staff with a structured approach to the formative development of employability aspects of a course.
• Work-related Learning Audit: devised to help you consider, with respect to work related learning, the content and design of a piece of course-work or a course to identify where there are strengths, and where improvements could be made.
• Work Placement Audit: designed to help teachers consider the content and design of a course with respect to the issue of work placements and to see where they could improve the course to better address this issue.
• Reverse Employability Audit: designed around a programme handbook for a hypothetical Bioscience BSc that provides an authentic activity in which staff are encouraged identify and list areas of the course (and handbook) where aspects of employability could be better addressed. Download the Group instructions and Programme Handbook

The Employability Forum held on 19–20 May in Leeds

Industry Skills Expectations for Bioscience Graduates: provides examples of job descriptions, the appraisal process used by some employers to appraise graduates in their employ and details of graduate training programmes run for newly-employed graduates.

Downloadable CV resources: 13 reasons why I binned your CV (pdf); Annotated CV (pdf)

Employability profiles for students: Highlight the skills and attributes a student could develop during their degree. Profiles for Biosciences, Biomedical Science and Agriculture, Forestry, Agricultural Sciences, Food Sciences and Consumer Sciences are available

Employability webliography: a downloadable list of all the web links in the employability section of the Centre for Bioscience website (pdf format)

Employability is a strong strand with the Scottish Enhancement Themes. Some of the outcomes of this theme are:

Enhancing Practice: Employability
An overview of the work of the Employability Enhancement Theme

Enhancing student employability: Innovative projects across the curriculum
An edited selection of employability-related case studies from a range of subjects and institutions

Employability: Effective learning and employability
This document gives a flavour of the activities run by institutions and their student associations that enhance employability

Also of potential interest:

• Hefce's How Much Does Higher Education Enhance the Employability of Graduates?
• The Higher Education Academy has an employability section with links to employability and enterprise focused resources and organisations.
• Planet Special Edition 1: Embedding Careers Education in the Curricula of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Employability and Good Learning in Higher Education looks at the concept of employability and responses of HE to pressures to enhance employability.