The Careers Group Annual Review 2021

The Careers Group University of London Annual Review 2020–2021

london.ac.uk/the-careers-group

Forward Welcome to the 2020-21 Annual Review of The Careers Group. In the following pages we share examples of the very best practice, innovation and research from across the member careers services of our federation during the last 12 months. All the achievements listed were created by our staff body of over 220 working in our member institutions and our Central Team for the local and collective benefit of almost 150,000 students in our group members.

It has been a great honour and responsibility to take over leadership of The Careers Group, since October 2020, and in particular at this time of extraordinary disruption, transition and innovation. We emerged into the summer of 2020 thinking that our teams and colleagues had managed well the challenges of the spring – lockdown, the transition to wholly online learning, the collapse of the graduate employment and internships market – but we might not fully have realised then how permanent some of our adaptations, adjustments and innovations would become. Solutions that were created quickly last spring, drawing on the considerable depth of experience and expertise in our teams, became embedded and core to the new evolving service delivery models across the Group. And every colleague learned new skills in online teaching and learning and online relationship management, to forge a consistent experience for students, employers and academic partners.

My predecessor as Director of The Careers Group, Dr Bob Gilworth, went on public record several times in the early months of UK lockdown saying that the transition of careers services to fully online delivery was one of the quiet success stories of HE’s challenging academic year 19–20. And indeed, student engagement has rocketed as predominantly in-person services were successfully reinvented online. From a social mobility point of view, this is fundamentally important because we have been reaching more of the students we need to reach. And while we need to recognise that not all students have equal access to or quality of interaction with online learning – or indeed to employers’ online offer – this expansion of delivery mode has permanently transformed careers, employability and enterprise services for students.

We need to maintain this momentum in student engagement. Working with students on their career planning and employability development while they are with us in our institutions is the most certain way we have of ensuring they leave with an actionable career plan. That plan means that they are more likely to start strongly in retaining and building on the value of their degree in their future lives, whatever choices they make. We all want that for students and graduates. So student and graduate success – in work, entrepreneurship and further study – must be underpinned by embedding the most diverse possible means for students to access and engage with their career learning and employability development, and that means a strategically planned approach to a blend of in-person and online services.

While the uncertain state of the employment market is an obvious driver to be more agile in how we support students, our collective learning about the engagement potential of online delivery is a watershed moment in how careers, employability and enterprise services are created and provided in a sustainable way. Retaining a strong online presence does not undermine in-person delivery, and exciting new models of blended delivery are already emerging as the new academic year dawns. But just going back to the ‘old ways’ would risk losing the increased and diversified engagement we have seen in the last 18 months. Let’s do all we can to support and enable more students to engage, so that they can begin realising sooner the value of their degree in their futures.

I hope you enjoy this Annual Review and I look forward to seeing more innovations and opportunities from your Careers Services and the The Careers Group Central Team in the months and years to come.

Dr Kate Daubney PFHEA FRSA

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Key Statistics

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Institutionally based careers services

227 University and Institutionally based careers staff

142,875 Students supported

10,350 Student and Graduate Job opportunities on JobOnline from *31 May 2020 to 31 May 2021

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online learning events, 210 live attendee staff

Supported conference attendances

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social enterprise teams from 7 Group Members made it to the Gradventure semi-finals

Being part of The Careers Group The Careers Group is a non-profit, federal department of The University of London and a living community of careers educators, whose focus is enabling students to explore and achieve their career choices. As a federation of the Careers Services and careers professionals serving fourteen University of London colleges and student communities as well as three higher education organisations external to the University, the scale of professional practice expertise in the Group that supports this student community has complexity on an extraordinary and sector-shaping scale.

The staff body of over 220 colleagues in the Group has expertise ranging across professional sectors, academic specialisms, technological tools and platforms, data, pedagogy, communications, information curation, and opportunity development, and many other areas. Our people develop nuanced and bespoke programmes and activities appropriate for the students they work with, often closely collaborating with both academic colleagues and employers.

Our staff may have similar job titles but they often have markedly different roles because of the unique needs and characteristics of our member institutions. What they all have in common, though, is a common passion for enabling student success which shines through when you meet any member of The Careers Group community.

A feature of The Careers Group is the Communities of Expertise that emerge from a staff body as diverse as ours is. While we gather by three main role functions that are broadly common to all our member Services – Student Engagement Employer Engagement, Careers Consultants – we also gather in much smaller Communities whose focus is on particular aspects of careers education and employability development. Here are some of their work and outputs from the past year.

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The Careers Group Annual Review 2020–2021

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Communities of Expertise Data Labs Community The Data Labs community of expertise exists to improve the sharing of practice, and further develop capacity and capabilities across The Careers Group to utilise data and information that we are collecting in relation to our members services performance.

During the 2020–21 academic year the group has met quarterly to share good ideas and solve common problems in the task of supporting The Careers Group members with strategic and operational reporting requirements and in continuing to develop the data capabilities of all staff across The Careers Group. Our key output this year has been the design and delivery of the ‘Getting to grips with data’ training series. This series, open to all The Careers Group colleagues, provides practical guidance for working with careers and employability data. We hosted monthly bitesize training sessions focusing on topics we are commonly asked for support with, including pivot tables, infographics, dashboard tools, data reporting and data visualisation. The programme has proved very popular and is set to continue into 2021–22 academic year.

Attendee feedback quote:

“I like that it’s bite sized and focusing on one thing that you can actually remember and practice” Guidance Community The aims of the Guidance Community relate to one of the central features of our organisational provision, namely the delivery of high quality careers guidance to our clients. With the provision of individual guidance and advice, face to face or virtually, being expanded to include a diverse range of colleagues, including Placement Co-ordinators and Application Advisers, for example, it is essential that staff across The Careers Group are supported and developed in terms of their professional practice. Our aims include to design and deliver effective, engaging and comprehensive guidance skills training to all The Careers Group staff who provide guidance to clients, and to co-ordinate opportunities both online and face to face to discuss, strengthen and enhance ongoing guidance practice.

The focus of the Guidance Community this year has been around three key areas: provide opportunities for colleagues to connect online for guidance development, facilitate individual peer support between colleagues and produce fresh guidance training for more experienced staff members. To this end we launched the Online Guidance Forums, have piloted the Peer Supported Reflection for Careers Practitioners Scheme and delivered the first Guidance Training for Experienced Practitioners course in December 2020.

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The Careers Group Annual Review 2020–2021

Distance Learning and Remote Provision Community Founded in November 2019, the DLRPC addressed a growing area of our professional practice, which has now become mainstream since COVID. Our aims include a commitment to share best practice of remote careers guidance delivery through one-to-one, group, and resource-based work from across The Careers Group and beyond, but also to build on the external reputation of The Careers Group leaders in the field of careers education within HE, including within the digital space.

The focus of the DLRPC this year has been two-fold: firstly, to deepen our understanding of the digital confidence and competency levels of The Careers Group colleagues and secondly to design training and resources to meet any development needs.

To meet our first aim, we surveyed all our colleagues regarding levels of engagement and confidence in remote provision in March 2020 and again in March 2021. The training needs identified in the 2020 survey helped us to design a comprehensive training programme including User Experience Design, Accessibility in the Digital Space and Moodle Play Spaces. The comparative datasets then enabled us to track a 29% increase in confidence in delivering remote content between 2020 and 2021.

Widening Participation and Social Mobility Community This community aims to develop expertise and share strategies across The Careers Group for working with students from widening participation backgrounds at all stages in the student journey.

Activities this year included meeting in September and February to discuss support for diverse groups of students at our different colleges, paying particular attention to the disproportionate impact of COVID on many of those groups. July’s meeting will focus on working with Black and Minority Ethnic students.

Outputs include: • Introduction to our work at The Careers Group Festival of

Research (Sept 2020).

• Discussion notes on SharePoint, giving a handy guide to

initiatives and ideas being explored at different colleges.

• Members attending relevant training and sharing learning.

• Members highlighting relevant events, research and policy in

our LinkedIn Group.

• A buddy scheme to deepen practice sharing beyond whole

group meetings, pairing interested members with staff at different colleges and with different roles to their own.

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Publications Team With support from Content and Information, the Publications Team reviews the careers information needs across The Careers Group and produces and adapts resources to meet them.

In 2020-21 the team reviewed and rewrote 23 careers advice help sheets covering the three different stages of career planning - plan, decide and compete - as well as resources for specific student communities. Particular attention was given to ensuring resources were updated to reflect the changes to job hunting and applications processes since Covid-19.

They also began to build a library of example CVs and cover letters that reflect both a variety of sectors being applied to and the diversity of student experiences and backgrounds, which will provide a useful resource for colleagues in the future.

Careers Educations: In Curriculum Community We are a community of careers practitioners who are interested and/or involved in teaching and learning in the curriculum. We meet approximately 3 times a year to: • Review/discuss/share practice regarding in-curriculum teaching

of careers and employability (topics this year have ranged from work integrated learning, inclusive curriculum and active learning in an online environment) • Share practices from across the UK gained from AGCAS

Curriculum Design group, AGCAS Academic Alignment group and other networks • Connect staff with each other and provide a source of support

for other colleagues working in this area.

Outputs: • Case studies of in-curriculum work (in progress) • Discussion topic resources on SharePoint page

Recent Graduates Community The Community exist to share good practice across the Group about working with recent graduates and understanding and addressing their particular needs. This could include how to target resources to reach those graduates most in need, and what particular support is most beneficial for graduates.

Resources: Created a SharePoint page and uploaded resources for The Careers Group staff as samples of work that can be done or resources that they may find useful. Also presented an overview of the community at The Careers Group Festival of Research.

Training: As institutions are at different stages of development, training by the Community is offered on a flexible consultancy basis. Community members are available to offer bespoke support to The Careers Group staff when required.

Information Update: Members of the team have joined the Graduate Careers Support Network (an informal support /discussion group for all UK HE Careers Advisers working with graduates) as a way to keep ourselves updated on what’s happening nationally with a view to sharing new developments and discussions with The Careers Group.

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Our Group Members: Updates focussing on Digital Delivery and Embedding Employability Embedding Employability at City City has committed to embedding employability across the undergraduate curriculum through the funding and implementation of an ambitious Employability Development Plan. Shaped by research which shows the positive impact of career focus and professionally relevant experience, the plan has two commitments:

Students from 35 programmes can apply for our flagship Micro-Placements programme and over the next 2 years this will grow to 560 brokered placements.

Other forms of Professional Level Experience include the Sociology Action Module where over 200 students will work in groups on real-life projects for charity partners.

• Every undergraduate programme will contain core

There are multiple benefits to embedding employability. It brings employability learning in line with academic teaching and our work is subjected to the same teaching and learning standards. We work closely with our learning and development and academic colleagues to ensure a good fit with the programme modules. Most importantly it means that every student regardless of background, confidence or career networks will build their employability skills and have a solid foundation for their future.

professionally relevant experience • Every undergraduate programme will include career

focus education as part of the core curriculum In their first or second year, students will have Career Focus Education (between 5 and 15 credits). In 2021–22 this will be offered over multiple programmes in 3 new subject areas for over 800 students, adding to our existing in-curriculum teaching to over 1,000 students.

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Goldsmiths

King’s College London

In a year unlike any other, Goldsmiths Careers Service (GCS) created a new model of service delivery to seize the opportunities from COVID and hurdle the barriers.

We launched innovations to build student resilience, help them engage with online opportunities and recognise all is not lost!

Over the past year the King’s Careers and Employability team have become more digitally-confident practitioners and the service is now entirely digitallyled. Central to achieving our success has been the Careers Digital Team, setting a unified strategy and ensuring that the wider team is fully supported and trained in digital content creation and online-learning pedagogies. As of May 2021, we have 20,700 selfenrolled students on our Careers Moodle in which our most popular e-learning course, on ‘exploring interests, strengths and values’, was accessed by 600 users, and the section containing information on discovering internships has been accessed by 1,200 users.

We built new networks (Gold Award Breakfast Club, Cuppa and a Chat, Themed Graduate Group Coaching) to share experiences and combat a sense of isolation and the whole team showed extreme flexibility and adaptability throughout the year.

From August to November, we created, consulted on and gained approval from Academic Board for the second 3-year Institutional Employability Strategy 202023, which was all carried out remotely. The strategy has 5 key areas for development: Graduate Outcomes, Widening Participation, Embedding Employability in the Curriculum, Experiential Learning, Enterprise & the Entrepreneurial Mindset.

One huge achievement this year has been the roll-out of Elements, the tool for use by academics to map existing employability in the curriculum. Launched in November 2020 by our project lead, Sabrina Duggan, Senior Careers Consultant, with an ambitious target of mapping 50% of undergraduate programmes by June 2021. Our academic colleagues did an amazing job in mapping their programmes, achieving 47% completion (with 2 rolled over to 2021–22, when we will complete the remaining 50%). Elements has also been built into Goldsmiths’ Curriculum Review and is the foundation for ensuring students become more fully aware of what skills they are developing and where they can fill any gaps in their skillset, using TargetConnect to record their progress.

In addition, the versatile approach to embedding employability at King’s continues to go from strength to strength. In most academic programmes, the employability value is now visible to students consistently through their Student Handbooks and the reach of the embedding remit has expanded into the extra-curricular space; the flagship summer initiative King’s Edge (34 varied experiential opportunities) all use the King’s employability framework, KASE. This focus on embedding employability has been especially welcomed at a time when students feel less certain about what they have to offer and about how to use King’s opportunities to develop their employability further.

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The Careers Group Annual Review 2020–2021

Queen Mary

St Mary’s University, Twickenham

Over the last year, the team at Queen Mary have continued to embed employability through delivering careers education in the curriculum to students across our Science and Engineering Faculties and Humanities and Social Sciences Faculties. This year we have introduced a new online tool for instant CV feedback, ‘QM CV Builder’, which has been used by over 2500 students since its launch in October 2020. In January we successfully piloted using it for an assessed piece of coursework for 530 Business and Management students. Using this tool has provided a way to upscale careers assignments in the curriculum, without needing more human resource. Following its success we will roll this model out to other in-curriculum assignments in 2021-22.

St Mary’s have developed ‘Be SMART’, a targeted employability initiative aimed at Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students. Be SMART provides opportunities for participants to acquire ‘graduate capital’ essential for successful career development, alongside empowering them to recognise and promote the value in their difference. The programme comprises three strands: mentoring from professionals working in a range of roles and sectors; paid, flexible, 30-hour micro-internships that fit around students’ studies, part-time work, and other commitments; Leadership and professionalism workshops, led by BAME facilitators, on ‘Leveraging your difference’, ‘The Resilient Leader’ and ‘Building your Brand’. The programme is heavily informed by national research into the needs of BAME students, in particular, studies showing how a ‘sense of belonging’ was crucial to engagement and success for BAME students, and was shaped by local focus groups with BAME students at St Mary’s.

The team has successfully delivered all placement, enterprise, events, information, advice and guidance over digital platforms this last year. Particularly for our employer events and alumni panels, we have seen higher student attendance and a greater willingness to ask questions and engage. Our popular alumni panels have been enhanced through participation from alumni across the UK and the world, as the online platform has allowed them to volunteer as speakers where they couldn’t previously. This has added real value to all our students and particularly our international students.

‘sense of belonging’ was crucial to engagement and success for BAME students Students that participated in the programme felt the skills they had developed most through Be SMART included self-management and professionalism, career management (including developing their professional networks), and communication. The majority of students also experienced increased confidence as a result of Be SMART. The restrictions and impact of the pandemic did not affect student participation significantly in the second iteration of Be SMART. 22 out of 24 students who were accepted onto the programme in November 2020 completed. We successfully recruited mentors and employers (internship providers). Over 60% of our internships were paid for directly by employers, this was a huge contrast to the previous year where the bulk funding for internships came from the University’s Access and Participation Plan budget.

The pandemic provided an opportunity for us to pilot delivering the Be SMART professionalism workshops online, which enabled students to join (in some cases) from their part-time jobs. The networking and mentoring meetings also took place largely online, which provided much-needed flexibility for our students around their other commitments as well as the restrictions of COVID; whilst the majority of the internships were offered as remote working roles.

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SOAS Digital Delivery In March 2020 we switched overnight to offering services online and so were able to offer a seamless transition for students and graduates to support them in a very challenging year.

We moved our programme of careers education workshops to become webinars, and our employer visits were held via online means. We also switched our SOAS Internship programme to offer virtual internships, and all our one-toone guidance meetings were held virtually. Thanks are due to all Careers team members who went above and beyond to achieve this: Luke Brockway, Marcella Carini, Jo Cooper, David Gilchrist, Sally Harris, Suzana Marie, Claire Rees, Hattie Whitworth and Kathy Williams.

There were some things which we missed doing in real life- for example our popular Career Thinking coffee events became webinars where students had to bring their own coffee, but there were two significant upsides of doing events via webinars.

The first was enormously increased attendance: up by well over double in most cases. We believe a large element of this was the flexibility and immediacy of a webinar versus having to travel to a campus event. We are currently analysing the attendance levels to see if remote access increased in hitherto under-represented groups, for example our commuter students.

The second was the opportunity this gave us to create a complete suite of recordings, accessible 24/7, to support students and graduates in all stage of their career thinking. This has proved particularly popular, especially with students who had moved back home into different time zones.

Embedding Employability Over the last academic year, we have worked closely with the Academic Development team, with work led by Claire Rees, which culminated in SOAS agreeing a set of Graduate Attributes which all programmes of study will incorporate.

This is further supported by a recent Teaching, Learning & Student Outcomes Committee decision that all programmes of study will contain an element of work-related learning.

This covers a wide remit and can range from case studies, work-related assessment methods or employer input through to work placements. Over the coming year the Careers team will be working closely with our Academic Development colleagues, led by Dr Andrew Gould, to ensure that our annual Partnership Agreements with each academic department reflect the work required to recognise current good practice and support development of innovative workrelated learning initiatives which enable students to articulate to potential employers the distinctively SOAS Graduate.

Attributes they have gained from their programmes of study.

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UCL Digital Delivery In response to lock-down we immediately set up a team of staff to support colleagues with delivering online. The team helped to troubleshoot various methods of delivery for seminars, workshops and panel events using UCL supported platforms and produced training materials, including instructional videos, that were hosted on a bespoke training Moodle. In parallel a ‘Teams’ group was set up for all staff to ask advice and share best practice on an ongoing basis which was complimented with live online training meetings in July. Resources were added over summer to help with Zoom, effective use of departmental careers Moodles and recording/editing video.

The success of this project is measured in numbers and feedback. A Careers Group survey across all colleges found UCL Careers staff reporting the greatest increase in confidence in the development and delivery of remote provision and the use of relevant technology.

Student engagement with online sessions and feedback also increased (April to July: 71% increase in engagement compared to previous year).

This is all thanks to the training team and various supporting staff: Martin Brown; Sally Brown; Jo Budd; Dave Carter; Colm Fallon; Calum Leckie; Amy Lourenco; Alice Moon; Tessa Parsons; Georgina Potts; Izzie Powell; Raj Sidhu.

Embedding Employability In 2019–20, UCL Careers embarked on a project to develop an employability framework, to be used across all taught programmes at UCL. The work was led by Senior Careers Consultant, Amy Lourenco. Extensive research explored existing frameworks in other institutions, literature on the future of work and the UCL context. The resulting model ‘UCL Pillars of Employability’ highlights the skills, attributes, experiences and knowledge that students should develop during their programme. The framework was approved by the senior Education Committee at UCL. We are now in the pilot phase and careers colleagues are looking at curriculum learning outcomes and delivery methods to identify which elements of ‘The Pillars’ are already embedded in programmes. This gap analysis exercise is the starting point for conversations regarding changing elements of the curriculum and/or looking at how co-curricular activity can be embedded. As part of COVID mitigation funding, UCL Careers gained resource to employ six work-related learning staff, who will be working with the faculties to support this co-curricular offering.

We are currently in the process of working with developers at Inkpath, an app that allows students to record their employability journey. Inkpath is already being used with the PGR community at UCL. Pathways for students from certain disciplines and year groups can be set on the app to include the curricular and cocurricular elements of the Pillars.

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Embedding Equality, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion across The Careers Group Within the University of London’s commitment to embedding equality, equity, diversity and inclusion, The Careers Group has developed its own strategy and action plan. Every person who works in The Careers Group federation of careers services and professionals should feel valued and be equitably supported to reach their full potential, perform their work well, and enjoy their work. Furthermore, equality, equity, diversity and inclusion are central to our work as careers professionals and our partnerships with students, academics, employers and other stakeholders.

The Action Plan, written by the Director of The Careers Group with critical friendship and review from internal and external colleagues and experts, sets out 19 objectives and over 60 actions to guide the commitment of the Director, Leadership and Staff of The Careers Group to championing equality, diversity and inclusion through the actions, activities and relationships of our leadership, Member careers services and staff, whether employed by the University of London or our Group Members.

The Plan complements the important and inspiring work being undertaken in our Member careers services and the University’s Member Institutions. It addresses structural inequality and promotes the benefits and opportunities of equality, equity, diversity and inclusion for our organisation and community through four key areas: Recognise, acknowledge and understand the lived experiences of others, and how they differ from our own Recognise and address the conditions of oppression and privilege, and the systems that sustain them Build equitable practices in our communityand systems.

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Contribute to shaping a culture that welcomes, celebrates and is strengthened by its diversity

Key actions include:

Creation of Inclusive Space principles for safe, inclusive and impactful conversations about equality, equity, diversity and inclusion within our community

Review of recruitment processes, implementing revisions and change to embed more equitable approaches and diversify our community of colleagues

Review of staff progression routes, opportunities and processes, implementing revisions and change to enable staff from under-represented groups to make more effective progression decisions, achieve their goals, and diversify the leadership of our organisation

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Creation of an Advisory Panel of colleagues of Diverse Heritage to work alongside the The Careers Group Strategic Leadership Team, bringing more diverse perspectives into strategic decision-making and supporting Panel members’ professional development

Share student-facing and employer-facing practice on equality, equity, diversity and inclusion across careers services, enabling reflection and learning that benefits our community and our stakeholders and partners

Queen Mary Careers and Enterprise are taking a three stage approach to be an actively anti-racist and inclusive team:

Listen to learn: three managers led a staff consultation amongst current and recently-exited staff, offering a range of feedback channels.

Think to consider: themes and recommendations from consultations were fed back to the Acting Heads who used a team meeting to collectively prioritise the areas and recommendations to be tackled first.

Act to make change: A phase 1 action plan was produced outlining next steps, many of which have since been achieved or are underway.

King’s Careers & Employability: Use of language, both written or oral, is key in our commitment to embedding anti-racism and inclusion into our work. King’s Careers and Employability have reflected critically and carefully about language we utilise to frame specific communities or activities. This work has led to the development of a resource Guidelines for Inclusive Language, which supports our work with all stakeholders.

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The Careers Service for the University of London Distance Learning Students Education Consultancy delivers a fully digital career service to over 40,000 University of London distance learning students based across the world.

With a blend of synchronous and asynchronous delivery, our awardwinning careers and employability programme meets the diverse and dynamic needs of our flexible and distance learners based internationally and furthers the University’s position as the UK’s leading provider of distance learning worldwide.

Live and synchronous delivery Despite being a very small team, in 2020-21 we expanded our offer of live delivery sessions, blending interactive webinars with career drop in sessions. Over 1400 students attended our webinars over the course of the year.

Delivered twice a day to cover as many time zones as possible, our career webinar series have incorporated topics such as Showcase your Skills, Think Like a Recruiter, Work Now: Work Future and Work in the C21st in addition to core careers and employability content, such as how to improve CV and interview skills.

The series of webinars built on the specific-content we quickly produced in response to the COVID pandemic, which included webinars The Time-pressed student – How to Balance Academic Study, Work and Family Care during the Covid-19 crisis, Maintaining Momentum and The Highs & Lows of Distant Academic Study during the Covid-19 crisis. All the webinars are recorded so we now have a back catalogue of nearly 70 webinars which students can watch in their own time when most convenient for them.

To complement the interactive webinar delivery, we also offer live career dropin sessions. During these sessions, students are invited to pose any careers and employability-related questions to the experienced careers consultants who host the sessions. The peer to peer learning of these sessions, by listening to the diversity of questions from fellow students as well as to the answers provided by the facilitators, is regularly and positively commented upon by the student participants.

Overall, more than 2,000 students took part in our live delivery events.

Design and Delivery of innovative Careers Learning Micro-Modules Over 2020–21 we have launched and delivered two career learning micromodules to equip students to develop their career planning and professional skill set for the changing 2020s global market and to successfully compete for opportunities. To encourage students to explore and get the benefit of the full range of content, we award a Certificate of Completion that is recorded on the degree transcript if they complete a series of activities to the required level.

This transcript recognition has proved a popular incentive, with 69 graduates receiving this certification for completing the first micro-module in 2020–21.

The Career Planning Micro-Module (CPMM) launched March 2020 equips students to construct and implement a future-facing personal career plan aligned with their preferred professional sector. This pioneering self-directed careers learning methodology performed strongly in 2020–21. By June 2021 it

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had achieved 62934 Student Views and 18551 Student Posts, with 31% sustained engagement, a strong result for self-directed, non-credit-bearing learning. Student feedback has been very positive, with students highlighting the utility and relevance of the topics especially in a rapidly changing world of work and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. To ensure that the career learning is as credible, relevant and future-facing as possible, we recruited content from our alumni and employer community to provide inspirational messaging.

The Professional Impact, Profile and Success Micro-Module launched April 2021 is designed to develop students’ professional skills and enhance their career success in a (PIPS) fast-changing world of work. Its four themes focus on persuasive communication. strategic thinking, entrepreneurial mindset, and market-awareness for a rapidly changing global environment.

Topic 1

Topic 2

Topic 3

Topic 4

Negotiating effectively

Strategic thinking

Entrepreneurial thinking

Commercial awareness

Utilising emotional intelligence

Time management

Project management

Customer focus

Influencing others

Managing up and down

Working in a start-up

Career flexibility and adaptability

Adding value to team work

Building your professional resilience

Working for yourself

Thriving in the 2020s economic market

Reflective quiz

Reflective quiz

Reflective quiz

Reflective quiz

The persuasive professional The strategic professional

The entrepreneurial professional

The market aware professional

The interactive design skills of the Student Experience team greatly enriched the learning design of this micromodule, in response to student requests for more interactive material. Employer voice content was sourced and has been converted into innovative and engaging learning activities. To strengthen the sense of University of London graduate identity and to ensure representation from our diverse student cohort, careers insight quotes were sourced from alumni, through collaboration with the Development Office. We involved the Student Voice Group in co-creation of the design and the content. Student UX testers gave the learning design a high rating of 80% and in the first 11 weeks since launch, PIPS has achieved 8065 student views and 5128 student posts.

Tailoring to our student cohort Not only are our students from diverse locations, but they also represent diverse stages of career development. Whilst some of our students have limited work-based experience, others have had several years in the workplace, with some even looking to translate established career pathways into new employability directions. In order that our content meets the needs of our students, irrespective of their level of career experience, we have developed our understanding of these three discrete cohorts, which we describe as career starters, career developers and career changers.

We have used this perspective to help inform specific content which is targeted at the students at different points in their career journey. We also designed and badged resources within the Professional Impact, Profile and Success module to reflect different content for each of the three career stages.

Data driven Careers Service Careers Registration relates to work readiness as a measure of learning gain. In what was initially a pilot project funded

by HEFCE, now recognised by the Office for Students, data is collected on work readiness when students register for a programme and at subsequent registration points and is then used by University career services and programme designers to enhance employability support.

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Q1: What stage are you at in your career planning?

Select one option from below (note: wording below is indicative , not verbatim)

Decide

Plan

Compete

Sorted

Not ready to start thinking

Career in mind and want to gain work experience

Ready to apply for work

Have a job for when I finish my course

Know what I want but not sure how to get there

Ready to apply for further study

Want to spend a year gaining experience

Have been applying but not successful

Already working but not in my chosen career

Working in chosen career now but want a promotion

No ideas but want to start thinking

Some ideas and ready to start planning

Q2: What have you done in the last 12 months to support employability?

Q3: Which sector(s) would you like to find employment in once you graduate?

Choose one or more (selected findings) This year has seen the second iteration of Careers Registration, and we are now ready to share programme specific Careers Registration reports for Programme Directors, which will not only illustrate the data relating to their students but also include a section which illustrates which careers and employability resources might be of most interest to the programme’s cohort.

Engagement, showcasing and collaboration In terms of sharing the success of the project with internal stakeholders, our Career Consultants have presented at the 2021 RIDE Conference on the topic of Enhancing employability and careers education through innovation and at the Policy Dialogue Event (ULIP, British Council & HESAM) on how micro-credentials can enrich the learning experience and empower people to achieve successful career outcomes.

Careers Group colleagues have also worked closely with the Student Experience Team to create fresh video content promoting the live synchronised delivery, which has been widely shared across social media.

Senior Career Consultants Laura Brammar, Liz Wilkinson along with Victoria Wade, Head of Careers provision for the University of London, also had a chapter published in the Advance HE Enhancing Graduate Employability: a case study compendium in January 2020, based on their work with our students.

The Careers professionals providing Careers services to University of London distance learning students look forward to more strategic and embedded opportunities in 2021–22 to meet student needs and expectations, through digital technology, and help our graduates to be successful in whatever their chosen career path.

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Already working in chosen career

Degree not related to career ambition

School of Advanced Study Careers Service Careers services for SAS, supporting the nine School of Advanced Study Institutes, are provided by the Education Consultancy team within The Careers Group, and offer a bespoke, nuanced careers provision that best suits the needs of its students. The SAS Careers Service works with students and graduates of all ages and at all stages of career development, offering a mix of webinars, one to one coaching and online resources.

In 2020–21, a series of transdisciplinary webinars, including Imposter Syndrome and Reboot your Career Development was offered alongside some programme specific webinars such as Career Options for PhD graduates beyond Academia. The Careers Service also worked with individual programmes to run discipline specific webinars such as Enhance your work experience for human rights for ICWS and worked closely with the Student Society (SASiety) to promote career events. Webinar attendance increased by 106% this year with extremely positive feedback from students across the board.

The one to one career coaching offered by the SAS Senior Careers Consultant Liz Wilkinson continued to have a high take up and had a 100% Net Promoter score. The Careers Service launched a monthly careers bulletin which includes top tips and relevant links, as well as a new targeted weekly vacancy bulletin that is posted on the student Virtual Learning Environment. The online careers resources were completely revamped this year and now include EDI work experience resources and targeted briefing sheets on careers in different sectors such as Heritage and Compliance.

Career Options Same skills but ...

Same Sector

Different Sector

Different Subject Focus

Higher Education Professional Services and ‘Academic Adjacent’ roles

~80% of the graduate job market!

Same Subject Focus

Higher Education Research and Teaching

Research outside of the academy Non-HE Teaching

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Professional Development Unit The Professional Development Unit (PDU) supports all staff within The Careers Group to access internal and external development opportunities and facilitates knowledge sharing through cross-group teams and communities of expertise.

This year our focus has been on supporting staff to deliver careers services in the virtual space through:

42 online learning events, with 210 live attendees. Topics have included short tutorials on data analysis, London labour market updates and best practices in remote delivery, assessment and careers education.

Managers’ Forum to share ideas on how best to support staff when returning to campus and creating an inclusive environment

49 conference attendees, including a record number of staff attending the AGCAS Annual Conference in June 2021

Monthly Forums for providing policy updates and sharing of best practices

Virtual induction materials and observation opportunities to replace college visits, including drop-in Q&A sessions for new starters

Monthly Wellbeing sessions to support the mental and physical health of staff working from home

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Research Unit The Careers Group’s Research Unit supports the work of colleagues across the Group as well as contributing to sector-wide debates on employability themes through conducting primary research. We continue to compile regular policy and research digests for staff and stakeholders, and respond to research and data support requests from our member services to support evidence based practice.

Adapting delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic The annual Festival of Research and National Careers Registration Forum went digital as we moved to an online event format enabling us to engage with a wide range of colleagues and stakeholders.

The Digital Festival of Research took place on 14, and 15 September as an online event themed around social mobility and data insights. Fantastic research is taking place across our member services, and it was great to be able to share findings and key learnings across the group, on topics including embedded careers and employability in the curriculum, distance delivery, graduate outcomes, and understanding perception of the careers service and graduate labour market of students from widening participation backgrounds.

Supporting member services to understand the impact of Covid-19 on employability and graduate labour markets through webinars Focusing on rapid changes in the graduate labour market as a result of the pandemic through sessions including ‘the London Graduate Labour Market, Covid-19 impact and recovery’.

Engaging international research communities through conference presentations and keynotes.

Keynote: Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) Employability Forum, ‘Digital footprints: The transformation of measuring employability in higher education settings’, [Fiona Cobb] Research Symposium: Australian Graduate Careers advisory services (NAGCAS) annual conference, ‘(R) evolutionising career services to engage students (Fiona Cobb) Presentation: Research in Distance Education (RIDE) 2021 conference with the theme of learning through disruption, ‘Enhancing employability and careers education through innovation: University of London Distance and Flexible Learners Careers delivery’ ([Laura Brammar)

Shaping the national agenda around Higher Education Careers and employability data The Research Unit are actively contributing to the AGCAS Data Insights working party, which aims to provide support, advocacy information and high quality input around student and graduate careers and employability data. Fiona Cobb chair’s the on course data operational group (one of three operational strands of the Data Insights working party), leading operational projects and inputting to strategy and communication with policy stakeholders, and responding to a growing need to support institutions with quality data and associated support.

Leading developments in Careers Registration The Research Unit has made great headway in developing the National Careers Registration Data Centre, which will allow UK higher education institutions to benchmark careers registration data. This will support the development of a robust leading indicator of employability, and enable careers and employability services to shape and further develop student and stakeholder engagement strategies.

Careers Registration National Forum 2020: Insights for employability The National Careers Registration Forum took place as an online event in May 2020. This one-day event, jointly hosted by the Careers Group and SOAS, University of London, brought together careers and employability practitioners, and policy makers, to explore the further development and impact of careers registration as an established, sustained, evidence-based approach for employability support in higher education.

Drawing on the expertise developed across the sector, and careers practitioners’ experiences of working with careers registration data, keynote presentations and interactive workshops allowed colleagues to explore latest innovations in careers registration, which are shaping services, strategy, and policy. Key innovations include adaptations for distance learners, targeting support for graduates, developing weighted measures of student engagement, and methods for engaging students with their own career readiness journeys.

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Information Technology The Careers Group IT unit has been supporting group members regarding shared IT systems and Digital Service Delivery since August 2018. This includes onboarding of new systems (e.g. Graduates First), day-to-day use of existing systems (e.g. TARGETconnect) and working with vendors to drive their products’ development to meet the group’s vision and needs.

Sam Daoud Matta runs this area and has provided a very successful and energetic approach to its continued development.

As a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the move to remote working and service delivery, the unit once again found itself in an important position, supporting group member and central team transition to remote digital service delivery, facilitating the existing tools to enable this (e.g. MS Teams) and working with vendors to address the gaps in the market, e.g. virtual fairs.

Aims: To provide excellent IT & digital delivery consultancy and support to the group members and central team.

To lead the field in identifying and using the latest technologies that would offer our group members and their clients world-leading service delivery and best value for money.

To push the limits and capabilities of our current platforms and systems.

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Services that are being delivered: Supporting and maintaining IT and digital service delivery infrastructure: This includes all “big 4” platforms across the group members that are managed centrally; TARGETconnect, GoinGlobal, Interviewstream and Graduates First.

The unit supports the group members, usually via each member’s super user(s), by helping them to use the platforms and extract the most out of them. This includes 1-to-1 support and training, liaising with vendors on behalf of the users when issues or bugs are raised, working with all parties during the release of new functionality to ensure a smooth launch, and being the main point of contact / liaison between the group members and the vendors.

Sharing knowledge and expertise: The unit provides & facilitates the environment and the forum for group members, usually via their super users, to share knowledge, expertise and troubleshoot major problems in relation to the CSMS and other major IT platforms. This is done via regular 1-to-1s with each super user, group meeting 2-3 times a year and by providing a dedicated SharePoint environment and mailing list for the exclusive use of the super users.

Contracts and vendors management: This involves regular catch-up calls with account managers from our systems’ vendors, annual contract review and negotiation to ensure best value for money for the group members, and dealing with the contract paperwork on behalf of the group. Most recently, we managed to negotiate a 33% reduction in TARGETconnect’s cost, 3 months free for GoinGlobal and 2% savings for Graduates First, while getting a new host of tests & functionality.

Product roadmap development: This requires us to working closely with vendors to drive forward the development of their products to suit our group members needs and expectations. For example, the IT unit sits on 6 (out of the eligible 7) TARGETconnect steering groups that look at each module area of the platform and its future development and new functionality releases.

New systems procurement: the unit takes a leading role in speaking regularly with major systems vendors in the market and looks out for systems that would offer better value for money for the group members. When such systems are found, the unit works closely with UoL’s Procurement, ITDS, Security, Legal and Financial Team to ensure that all UoL processes are proceeding smoothly. In case of the need for a full procurement exercise, the unit deals with the requirements gathering from all group members and works with UoL Procurement to produce the Request for Quotations document, mark the supplier bids, organise supplier demonstrations and present the case & recommendations according to the Group’s Strategic Leadership Team in order to help them to decision make.

New systems implementation: The unit works with the vendor, UoL’s IT, Security & Procurement Teams, and the group member’s IT, Security and Careers Teams, to implement the new platform at each site while meeting all their IT, Security, and regulatory requirements.

Supporting and connecting central teams: The unit works closely with and supports other central The Careers Group teams such as the Professional Development Unit (PDU), Vacancies Team, Research Unit (RU), and Content & Information Unit in their digital delivery and IT support. This includes working with the RU to find a suitable data system and vendor to host their new data infrastructure for their national careers registration database project, and supporting them in its implementation and on-going platform technical support. An additional example includes working with the PDU unit to identify suitable IT platforms for their group-wide digital delivery, such as to deliver ‘GradVenture’.

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JobOnline JobOnline is the shared vacancy service for Group Members run by the Vacancies Team, which comprises of three members of staff: Ingrid Ross, Aisha Memon and Marc Lane.

JobOnline gives students and graduates access to a greater volume and variety of vacancies than a single institution would be able to source on its own.

JobOnline combines vacancies shared by Group Members with those sourced by a dedicated centrally-based team who focus on achieving constant diversity across sectors and role types. The team also generates a consistent level of vacancies throughout the year, keeping the job advert numbers high when local teams are focussing on other employer-focused projects. The team is always ready to respond to strategic drivers for new types of vacancies within Member Services to ensure that opportunities reflect demand. As our JobOnline system sits within TARGETConnect (a contract with GTI), it also carries jobs from GTI’s national network and so maintains a distribution of over 1,000 live job vacancies at any one time. In 2020–21 a total of 10,350 vacancies were uploaded through JobOnline by the Central Team.

Job vacancies dropped significantly at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and have still got a long way to recover to pre-pandemic levels, especially for young people. However, the team have worked hard on keeping the level of opportunities via JobOnline above 1000 throughout. This involved searching for alternative jobs that could be suitable for a recent graduate as well as using our usual sources. The team have also been working with MIs and GTI to update the JobOnline Opportunity Types currently used in the TARGETConnect system. We also continue to provide bespoke jobs listings and reports on request to MIs.

Content and Information The Content and Information (C&I) team works with colleagues in the central team and around The Careers Group to provide high standards in careers information and keep both staff and online visitors informed with communications and online content.

Each year C&I oversee the work of the publications team in the production of The Careers Group careers advice help sheets, making sure that editorial consistency is maintained and that resources comply with accessibility standards. C&I also produce core lists of web links which provide a starting point for careers information across 98 job sectors, career planning stages and groups of students.

C&I works with IT to review subscriptions to third party suppliers and ensure they meet the careers information needs of college staff. Another collaborative effort with IT is the Technology Newsletter which examines how tech developments impact our work as well as information on how to get the most out of the software and tech tools we subscribe to. Working with the Research Unit C&I provides monthly updates to staff on research and policy relating to careers work, higher education, employability, the student experience, and the labour market.

Staff are kept aware of developments across the group via a monthly newsletter and content on The Careers Group Portal, The Careers Group intranet on SharePoint, which C&I maintains and supports colleagues in using to collaborate, share and access resources online. Essential for colleagues working remotely across institutions.

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Quality Standards Quality assurance is at the heart of the mission of The Careers Group. We value external and internal feedback very highly, as it enables us to create continual improvements to our services. Our Matrix Reaccreditation took place in May 2021 this year. The review was based on an interview between the Strategic Projects Manager and our Assessor as well as a report focussing on updates relating to recommendations from the 2020 Matrix report. We have received full accreditation once again. The Careers Group is also involved in a consultation around changes to the Matrix Standard to ensure it continues to be the most effective way of us evidencing the quality of our services. In addition to Matrix we are on target for all of our careers services having completed the AGCAS Quality Standard by the end of 2021. Using a combined standard approach, we are working to get as full a picture of our service outcomes and the experiences of those working with us and using our services, as possible.

Taster Courses The University of London Group Members run short ‘Taster Courses’ for school students, usually in year 12, to get an insight into studying a particular subject or subject area at university. The Careers Group provides support recruiting and advertising the courses and administered 3,000 applications and 110 Taster Courses in 2020–21. Over the year, The Careers Group collated a new online ‘Career Help’ toolkit to help school students with their career planning and created a mini-course to help students from years 11-13 with their career decision-making. The mini-course is made up of six workbooks, each one taking about 30 - 45 minutes to do, that include career quizzes and interactive exercises.

It is accompanied by a Guide for Teachers and Career Learners with a certificate of completion so that teachers can reward learners who complete the course.

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Two GradVentures in One Year This academic year saw not just one but two GradVenture competitions.

The first GradVenture Final, scheduled for March 2020, was postponed several times because of the pandemic and finally got moved online in November 2020. Our seven finalists from six member institutions demonstrated great resilience in the face of disruption and impressed the judges with their enthusiasm, eloquent video pitches and confidence in handling tough questioning from a virtual panel of judges. The advantage of an online event was that we were able to open up to a truly global audience.

The 2021 edition of GradVenture was entirely online and had a greater emphasis on the education and networking. It included mentoring sessions, Q&A with former winners and semi-finals with personalised feedback from the judges. The themes for 2021 were, appropriately enough for the post-Covid world, Building Community and Supporting Wellbeing.

The final took place on 7 July 2021 and the six finalists impressed the judges and the audience with the creative ways in which they approached those themes and how much they had thought of the social impact of their business. The diversity of our group of finalists challenges the perception that successful entrepreneurs are from limited profiles and backgrounds.

GrandNanny, a revolutionary childcare agency which employs mid-life empty nesters to provide working families with wrap-around childcare, scooped the £4000 prize. The runner-up was SoJo, a Deliveroo-style start-up for clothing repairs and alterations.

Events such as GradVenture also serve to demonstrate that entrepreneurship is a viable and exciting career choice for young people and graduates, both as a first choice and as part of a portfolio of employment activities, despite the economic fallout of the pandemic which has affected this demographic disproportionately.

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For further information please visit our website or contact us at:

© The Careers Group, University of London 2021

University of London Senate House Malet Street London WC1E 7HU UK

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This guide is available in alternative formats upon request.

Please contact careersgroup@careers.lon.ac.uk

The Group Members of The Careers Group are: City, University of London The Courtauld Institute of Art Goldsmiths, University of London The Institute of Cancer Research King’s College London London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Queen Mary University of London

The Royal Veterinary College School of Advanced Study St George’s, University of London SOAS, University of London St Mary’s University Twickenham London UCL University of London Worldwide

For further information on individual institution work please contact the Member Institution Head of Service as below: City, University of London, Gemma Kenyon, Director, Careers & Employability, (+44 (0)20 7040 8441, Gemma.Kenyon.2@city.ac.uk | Goldsmiths, University of London, Katy Gordon, Associate Director (Careers & Employability), +44 (0)207 919 7138, k.gordon@gold.ac.uk | King’s College London, Aranee Manoharan, Head of King’s Careers & Employability, +44 (0)20 7848 8896, aranee.manoharan@kcl.ac.uk | Queen Mary University of London, Judith Baines, Head of Careers and Enterprise, j.baines@qmul.ac.uk; Lindsey Shirah, Joint Acting Head, 020 7882 8533 l.shirah@qmul.ac.uk | SOAS, Philippa Hewett, Head of SOAS Careers Service, +44 (0)20 7898 4117, ph32@soas.ac.uk | University College London, Karen Barnard, Director, UCL Careers, +44 (0)20 3549 5909, k.barnard@ucl.ac.uk | The Courtauld Institute of Art | The Institute of Cancer Research | London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | The Royal Veterinary College | School of Advanced Study | St George’s, University of London | St Mary’s University Twickenham London UCL | University of London Worldwide, Victoria Wade, Head of Education Consultancy, +44 (0)20 7863 6061, victoria.wade@careers.lon.ac.uk

london.ac.uk/the-careers-group