All Workshops Are in the Forum Unless Stated Otherwise

Annual Conference 2018

Workshop Descriptions

All workshops are in The Forum unless stated otherwise

Free choice on the day – seating is on a first come, first served basis

TUESDAY AM 11:45–13:00

A1: Enabling disabled students to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Presenters: AGCAS Disability Task Group members Christian Jameson-Warren, Loughborough University and Keren Coney, Keele University

Room 1

Findings from ‘What Happens Next? 2017 – A Report on the First Destinations of Disabled Graduates’ indicate that disabled first degree graduates were less likely to obtain a permanent role than non-disabled graduates.

While the Fourth Industrial Revolution may dramatically change the workplace, disabled students can feel positive about the future. This workshop addresses:

• Challenging any negative mindsets disabled students might have developed about their own potential and future. Help identifying realistic work goals in an unpredictable future.
• Equipping advisors to help students identify and feel confident about the skills developed and strengths associated with their disability that would interest employers in a changing workplace, and how to present them clearly.
• Latest information about technological changes that enable participation for all. An OECD report from 2017 states that technological progress is likely to lead to increased flexibility and greater opportunities for under-represented groups, such as disabled.
• Support available in the workplace and helping disabled students take ownership of their own support network.
• Reflecting on our practices and attitudes as advisors.

The workshop will also include examples from both Loughborough University and the AGCAS Disability Task Group.

A2: Future-proofing through developing “agile and responsive” students

Presenter: Morag Walling, King’s College, London

Room 2

Students’ ability to be agile and responsive to a fluid and changing graduate market relies on their ability to be highly self-aware of what they actually offer as a result of the degree they have taken. Integrating employability into the curriculum, particularly through extracting the knowledge, attribute, skills and experiences they gain, ensures that students leave university more aware of how what they offer meets the requirements of professional work. It also sets them up well for getting on not just getting in.

This workshop is based on the innovative approach taken by King’s College, London a Careers Group member. By working within the quality assurance framework of the institution employability considerations are now core to any new programme development. This makes engaging with employability in the curriculum structurally unavoidable in the approval process and thus of the student experience, ensuring equality of opportunity for all outside of engagement with the careers service.

Key insights will be shared along with specifically developed tools that have proved instrumental in working with academic and other key stakeholders, both at a strategic and practical level. This includes tools to support academics to “extract” the employability value of what they already teach, curriculum design considerations that enhance employability and how this focus works alongside “added” employability opportunities.

In an employment market that is not subject specific and an employability climate where what will be valued in the future is unclear “agile and responsive graduates” works for individuals, business and society.

A3: Future-proofing PhDs: Supporting postgraduate researchers to find their “fit”

Presenters: AGCAS Research Students and Research Staff Task Group members Holly Prescott, University of Birmingham and Bryony Enright, University of Bristol

Room 3

Universities themselves have ‘a pivotal role to play’ in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Horowitz and White-Burke, 2018). At the heart of universities are researchers, responsible for ‘developing new technologies; grappling with the broader consequences of the 4IR; and educating the next generation.’ Consequently, as crucial ‘engines of innovation,’ postgraduate researchers (PGRs) have become all the more strategically important to universities, with many citing increased recruitment of PGRs in their institutional strategies (Mellors-Bourne et al., 2014).

On the other hand however, UK academic research is undergoing a simultaneous revolution. Lack of job security discourages many new-generation PGRs from staying in academic research, whilst The Royal Society suggest that only 7 in 200 UK PhDs will secure a permanent academic post (2010).

Effectively supporting PGRs therefore offers HE IAG professionals a key opportunity to demonstrate our value by responding to the needs of this strategically important cohort and, in turn, in supporting PGRs to effectively respond to rapidly-changing worlds of work and academia. However, in careers services often geared towards UG support, colleagues can feel less confident with PGR clients. This workshop therefore aims to increase this confidence by giving participants a deeper understanding of: the strengths that PGRs can bring to near-future labour markets; opportunities that exist for PGRs in emerging career areas interested in PhD-level skills; and the challenges and threats that PGRs might face in navigating these labour markets, thus helping PGRs to find meaningful and satisfying applications of their research and other higher-degree skills in the world of the 4IR.

A4: An Interview with Death

Presenters: Marianne Savory and Marc Steward, Leeds University Business School

Room 4

Subject knowledge and soft skills may be the future of the successful graduate, though not just the standard communication and presentation abilities; our students need to be enterprising, creative, adaptable and commercially savvy. Developing and measuring these soft skills can be challenging, but perhaps one of the starting points should be the format of delivery in the curriculum.

‘An Interview with Death’ was a cross faculty project in the form of a ‘who dunnit?’ theatrical play involving students from two very separate faculties; The Business School and The School of Cultural and Creative Industries. Creative students took the roles of five candidates at interview to an audience of international and UK based business students. The audience had to deduce who the successful candidate was with the additional task of deciding who the killer was! Questions and networking amongst the students occurred for this purpose.

The creative industries are very competitive, so it was important for these students to gain an understanding about business-related courses and job roles in order to broaden their perspectives in their job searches. Similarly, the business students could understand the importance of creativity and the need to be confident in “selling themselves” to future employers. Body language, cross cultural communication, confidence, adaptability and commercial awareness were some of the many discussion points and outcomes explored at the end of the play. Two students noted that this workshop should be compulsory – great feedback from a pilot voluntary attendance session.

A5: 4IR: Utopia v Dystopia

Presenters: Ann Duff, David Levinson and Gail Angus, University of Glasgow

Room 5

Are you ready for the future? As a professional, how do you feel about the challenges posed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution? As a service, how are you adapting your delivery to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving graduate labour market and a generation of students who are into tech-everything?

In this workshop, we will encourage participants to think creatively about helping our graduates to prepare for new types of jobs for employers who don’t yet exist using technologies that have yet to be invented! The workshop will enable both some critical reflection of what we do currently and the sharing of best practice about adapting to the future.

As practitioners, we have to respond to the changing landscape and this may highlight feelings of both excitement and anxiety. The changes around us are redefining our profession and fundamentally changing the way that we deliver our services. We need to adapt to future-proof our own profession.

A team from the University of Glasgow Careers Service will present our ideas in this area. We recognize the threats to a traditional model of providing careers services and are embracing digitalization as a core method of delivery, not just an add-on. Expect a lively debate and some differences of opinion! Our aim is to identify some tangible takeaways to bring back to your own professional practice and to help your service to meet the challenges ahead with optimism!

A6: How understanding the context of careers education, information, advice and guidance in schools – and exploring the impact of this on student perceptions of and engagement with careers services – can help inform agile, responsive careers work in HE

Presenters: Clare Matthews, Jenny Livesay and Claire Roethenbaugh, University of Bristol

Room 6

This workshop aims to give HE Careers staff a better understanding of the ambitions and constraints of careers work in schools. It invites them to consider the impact of this on their work and how they can address some of the issues raised in their practice. We will address:

• How does the state of careers guidance in schools and the landscape of choices available post-18 affect our careers work in HE?
• How does student perception of their school careers experience impact on their engagement with their university careers service?
• What can we learn about our students' job readiness and how we might best support them into graduate roles when they graduate?
• How might the apprenticeship levy and the increasing promotion of degree apprenticeships and school leaver schemes affect our students?
• Does it matter that the latest government strategy does not extend to university-level careers advice?

A7: Finders Keepers: Developing new student opportunities in SMEs

Presenters: Emmie Studencki, Nottingham Trent University and Kylie Cook, Gradconsult

Room 7

Currently 34% of graduates find their first graduate role within an SME, in the future world of work, agile SME employers are going to become even more important to the graduate labour market. Working with them strategically to support their ability to recruit and retain graduates is an important way to future-proof our provision.

This project is about demonstrating our value to the local business community by being agile and responsive to their specific needs.We are helping SME employers to translate complex labour marketing information into pragmatic strategies for graduate attraction, recruitment and retention.

NTU’s answer is TMC: a series of 12-hour interventions with local, high growth SMEs. A diagnostic tool is used to identify key areas for improvement in the business’ attraction, selection or retention activities. We explore the business need and design bespoke solutions that can be devised and delivered in a short timescale. This is a great opportunity to develop institutional relationships with businesses and understand labour market information.

We have seen a trend with blue-chip companies moving towards an account-based marketing approach to maximise ROI with their clients. Inspired by the theory, TMC offers bespoke solutions to SMEs whilst also mapping appropriate products and services from NTU against the business needs. During this interactive session we will share:

• Approach/methodology
• Funding and supplier details
• Case studies
• Benefits for NTU
• Trend analysis (what obstacles SMEs are facing)
• Project learning and suggestions for institutions considering similar projects

A8: GDPR and Careers – three months on…

Presenters: Jane McAllister and Zalika Shand, Birmingham City University

Room 12

Survive and thrive post GDPR. This workshop aims to provide opportunity to discuss, share and explore together issues relating to the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and how we can futureproof our services and stakeholder links.

By responding to the data protection revolution, the aim is to provide an overview of the changes and share good practice with AGCAS members that will enable us to sustain and protect our stakeholders in moving forward with the new GDPR. Discussion points:

• GDPR and the Graduate Outcomes Survey
• Building and maintaining employer contacts post GDPR
• Email advice and guidance in a post-GDPR era

A9: What role might creative practice play in enhancing the employability of all graduates in the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Lessons from a skills award case study at Goldsmiths, University of London
Presenter: Laura Brammar, The Careers Group, University of London and AGCAS Skills Awards Task Group member Dr Katarina Lezova, Goldsmiths, University of London

Room 11

The need to develop ‘creative capacity for the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (Wilson, Lennox, Hughes and Brown, 2017) has never been more acute. Indeed, creativity is number 3 in the World Economic Forum’s list of ‘Top 10 Skills of Employment by 2020’ (WEF, 2016). But how does creativity fit into the wider employability agenda and how might careers guidance professionals use creative practice with all their cohorts to foster broader career learning and self-reflection?

This workshop draws on a study focusing on the use of a creative element in a skills award at Goldsmiths, University of London.It considers how engaging students, both those studying creative and non-creative disciplines, might use creative practice and associated writing tasks to reflect more widely on their personal and professional development.

The workshop will feature examples of the students’ creative outputs in addition to extracts from their reflective writing. These examples not only demonstrate how students used creative practice to identify their wider skills, but also illustrate the ways that such creative practices can be woven into guidance approaches, such as narrative career counselling (McMahon, 2017).

By the end of this interactive and engaging workshop participants will have considered the following questions:

• Why is encouraging our students’ creativity important to their employability within the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
• How can careers professionals provide an opportunity for students’ to explore their creativity within a skills award context, regardless of their academic discipline?
• What role might creative practice play in providing agile and responsive careers support in the future?

A10: Robots as Peacemakers? Academic and careers service partnerships through the lens of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Presenter: AGCAS Quality Director, Dr Nalayini Thambar, University of Nottingham

Room 10

It is a truth universally acknowledged that as careers professionals we can be most effective when we have strong partnerships with our academic colleagues. Many of us have experienced the challenges of fostering these partnerships; balancing tensions between subject content and employability in the curriculum, engaging in debates about the purpose of a university and the value of education and sometimes struggling to find common ground that goes beyond a pragmatic acceptance of league tables.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution provides us with an opportunity to boost our existing partnerships, start new conversations and open doors that align employability with research as well as teaching and learning.

This workshop will provide food for thought and some examples for you to consider, while giving you an opportunity to reflect upon your current academic partnerships and consider new opportunities for alignment between research, teaching, learning and employability.

A11:Skills shortage and recruitment difficulties

Presenters: AGCAS Research and Knowledge Committee member Kate Daubney, King’s College London

and Charlie Ball, Prospects
Room 8/9

What occupations are in shortage at the moment? Which industries have the most trouble finding graduates? And why?Charlie and Kate present findings from a major new cross-sector collaboration, using data from a huge government employer survey, and show you how you can use it to help your students – and your institution.

This is a workshop demonstrating how the sector can use new data sources in an innovative way to widen our understanding of employment and to make educated predictions about future graduate demand.

TUESDAY PM 15:45–17:00

B1: Brexit means what? Future implications, challenges and opportunities for UK HE student international mobility
Presenter: Miguel Rodriguez, University of Dundee

Room 1

In recent years, UK universities’ focus on graduate employability and development of transferable skills helped student internationalization to become firmly entrenched in HE. With two thirds of employers stating that international experiences would improve an applicant’s employment prospects, student internationalisation was regarded as an effective route to boost student’s cultural intelligence and to enhance graduate employability.

Then 23 June 2016 happened.

Two years on from the UK’s vote to leave the EU, there is still much uncertainty about the impact Brexit will have on the Higher Education career and employability agendas. However, what seems to be clear is that Brexit will significantly affect a large number of Higher Education students, both directly (home and EU students alike) and indirectly (through the sustainability of currently active mobility programs).

This workshop will explore how career and employability services can tackle the Brexit uncertainty in regard to student international mobility, exploring relevant issues and recent findings in order to come up with some strategies – some of them already in practice at the University of Dundee – that will help AGCAS members to better help the students most affected by the 2016 groundbreaking political decision.

By the end of this workshop, delegates will be able to feel more ‘future-proof’ against the implications of Brexit on Higher Education careers and employability services in the UK, as well as to feel more confident when considering what ‘Brexit means Brexit’ actually means for the international mobility and employability of the students they support.

B2: Creating shared value through a partnership approach to fostering employability at Nottingham Trent University
Presenters: Angela Vesey and Debra Easter, Nottingham Trent University