Employability

Are potential employers aware of the attributes/skills that your students develop?

This section is concerned with building links and relationships with employers both in your discipline and outside it. Many employers outside your discipline-specific area may not be aware that your bioscience graduates may make excellent managers/administrators in all sorts of non-bioscience areas. They may make successful bankers, fast stream civil servants, marketers, management consultants, editors, accountants and other private and public sector professionals. Your careers service may already have a system to facilitate development of these relationships and will know which employers will be visiting your university during the year.

Employers can favour specific institutions and may need persuading to include your institution and department in their target list. One way of developing relationships is to invite local and national employers to your unit to meet students and staff. Employer representatives will be interested to talk to your students or to attend some of the student presentations on their final year projects. They will be keen to liaise with staff to discuss the curriculum and, of course, their research interests.

In addition, encourage staff and students to attend employers' for a which may be organised in your university by or through your careers service. Employers may invite academic staff to visit them and learn about the whole spectrum of graduate careers they offer. Let your careers colleagues know you are interested to attend.

Working with your campus careers service to ensure that local and national employers are aware of the skills, attitudes and knowledge developed by your graduates is a good way to start building relationships. Your careers service may have advisers specifically associated with your discipline who will be willing to talk directly to your students. Careers services have a directory of staff in all UK university careers services (with contact numbers and, often, areas of responsibility) that may enable you to make contact with other careers services.

View links to UK careers services on Graduate Prospects

But the most effective way to build fruitful links with employers is to ensure your students are

• aware of all the graduate opportunities open to them
• have high aspirations
• the skills necessary to manage their careers
• appropriate work experience
• the ability to make effective applications for employment

For more information on the issues in the above list click on the appropriate question in the Employability Resources Page.

Employers who are impressed with your students will include your department and institution in their recruitment target list and will want to develop a working relationship with you. See also Industry Skills Expectations for Bioscience Graduates

Your careers service may be able to supply a list of all the employers that have recruited your graduates in recent years. Otherwise, information about named recruiters of bioscientists (but only the larger and higher profile ones), both for technical and generalist employment, is available from:

• Graduate Prospects
• TARGETjobs
  

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