Student Marketing Bootcamp, February 25th 2021 

What a year for early careers recruitment! 

James Darley, Director of Transform Society, shared that graduate vacancies would be unlikely to return to pre-COVID levels until 2023 at the earliest. The pandemic has changed the appeal of key sectors amongst graduates with Technology, R&D and the Public Sector benefitting as a result.  

The pandemic has also changed the priorities for a first job amongst graduates; with more looking for stability and shying away from organisations adversely impacted.  

• A third of students say they don’t want to work in a large city!  
• A quarter of students now don’t feel that they want to work in a large office! 

Useful tips for employers 

• Offer face to face contact (if possible) and help students build their “life” skills e.g. professional dress, interactions with others 
• Graduate rejection is a real issue – support students more in dealing with rejections 
• Build confidence in students so they know they can apply and be successful by using case studies gathered from alumni 
• Scope community links with employability focus (Transform Society Challenge helping)
• Scope embedding activity within the curriculum 
• Co-design activity with students 

 University Careers Services open up 

Our panel of University Careers Services gave us an excellent overview of the work that they have been doing over the last year to engage with and to support diverse student groups. Here are a few of the discussion points:  

• There is an acknowledged barrier for many students in engaging with CAS stemming from a lack of perceived CAS understanding of the differences between student groups and lack of representation within the CAS of diversity 

• Students with a sense of “imposter syndrome” even in engaging with careers services where they don’t think the service can offer anything for “people like me” 

 Examples from the panel around what CAS is doing to support the spectrum of their students:   

• An increase in curriculum careers related activities to provide micro experiences that lead to increased engagement with CAS 

• Inclusive events, virtual internships, work experience bursaries and representative marketing and digital communications 
• Positive role model case studies 
• Avoiding single gender/ethnicity recruitment panels 
• Employability programmes and mentoring for Black students in partnership with D&I Ambassadors, WP and Alumni colleagues for e.g. Elevate Programme at University of Kingston 

Useful tips for employers 

• Scope embedding activity within the curriculum in conjunction with CAS  
• Researching and identifying well-run BAME specific employability programmes 
• Identifying and supporting BAME student advocates who are critical friends of CAS  

 If you are interested in talking about any of the issues or discussion points raised in our recent Bootcamp with anyone from the 106 Communications team, do get in touch with jayne@106comms.com 

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