Engagement
Recruitment bootcamp
To better equip Durham students for the complexities of the recruitment process, Alex McNinch and her colleagues came up with a unique solution. Read more about their popular five-day bootcamp, which tackled everything from CVs and psychometric testing to assessment centres and Zoom interviews.
D
urham students have always been sought after by recruiters. They are very employable, you could say. The combination of their academic experience with opportunities to enhance their knowledge and skills through extra-curricular activities, via our college and extensive Clubs and Societies network, produces well-rounded individuals – individuals who possess the skills required to secure a job in the most competitive of industries. And there’s no doubt that there is a direct link between understanding and prior experience of the recruitment process and students successfully securing a placement, internship or graduate role. Opportunities to learn and practise all steps of the recruitment process have been available through the Careers & Enterprise Centre for a long time, but one thing the Business School really wanted to trial was putting all those steps together in a recruitment bootcamp. This kind of support is especially crucial for students from Widening Participation (WP) backgrounds, who potentially lack the contacts and experiences of some of their peers. The same can be said of international students who may wish to stay in the UK. These groups of students, as well as others who lack the experience of formal recruitment processes, need the opportunity to practise and to get
64
For years we've focused on graduate attributes and generic skills when thinking about employability. Alexander Bradley argues that we also need to teach students how to be successfully recruited. WONKHE 2021 comfortable with the process in order to put the best version of themselves forward and be their most confident selves when the time comes. This ‘gap’ has been exacerbated by the greater need for access to technology during the pandemic, during which employers made a swift transition to digital recruitment practices. WP students are less likely to have experience and confidence in using tech for job searches and recruitment, and less likely to have access to good-quality IT or a suitable environment to work in. To address this issue, I worked together with Gary Dewey (BSc Accounting Programme Director) and Donna Carr (Career Adviser) to create and run an intensive five-day pilot programme. The pilot would allow the Business School the opportunity to assess the scalability of such a programme, with the ambition of being able to offer it to all Placement Year students across the Business School.
Durham University Business School / IMPACT
