How Many Jobs Did Our Job Shop Fill? - Monitoring Issues and How to Resolve Them Job Zone – University of Birmingham Guild Dawn Roberts & Jim Reali NASES Conference July 2011

To identify the benefits of stats monitoring in a Job Shop environment NASES Conference Aims of this session…. To identify the benefits of stats monitoring in a Job Shop environment Demonstrate the experience of the Job Zone Identify potential issues Help to identify how we could use stats effectively in our services

NASES Conference Benefits? Assess success of service What Do You Think? Identify the potential benefits of monitoring your service Assess success of service Spot trends in industries, job types, hours, average wage Demonstrate value and impact of service to management/your institution Providing information for institutional reports Solid source of marketing information Secure future funding/resources

Job Zone Case Study – Monitoring the Jobshop 2010-2011 NASES Conference Job Zone Case Study – Monitoring the Jobshop 2010-2011 Why Did We Start Monitoring in Detail This Year? Reasons as already identified University Employability Strategy Resources for service being ‘streamlined’ What Did We Decide To Monitor? Continued traditional stats counting to monitor usage of service How many students Found Employment How much students earned from their employment How many hours they were working Feedback from students engaged in Job Zone activities Measuring impact of Job Zone activities on students’ employability

Job Zone Case Study – Monitoring the Jobshop 2010-2011 NASES Conference Job Zone Case Study – Monitoring the Jobshop 2010-2011 How Did We Attempt to Tackle the Challenge? Simple counting sheets Number of student enquiries Numbers of students attending events (e.g. Jobs Fairs) Employer correspondence Database Numbers of students registering for service Web hits Contacting employers at the point of closure of vacancy Set of questions to go through Feedback from students At the point of the activity And at the end of the term, to help measure any impact A very big spreadsheet….

The Monitoring Spreadsheet NASES Conference The Monitoring Spreadsheet

The Monitoring Spreadsheet NASES Conference The Monitoring Spreadsheet

NASES Conference What We Found Out…. Our students: Earn an average of £7.97 per hour Work an average of just under 11 hours per week in term time And they work just over 28 hours per week in vacations Stats Over 400 students received support from our workshops , CV checks, or one-to-ones and a further 500 came in to speak to Job Zone staff Over 3,100 students newly registered for the Job Zone website 5,500 students visited our Jobs Fairs 220+ followers on Facebook and Twitter

The ‘Impact’ we had on Student Employability…. NASES Conference The ‘Impact’ we had on Student Employability…. Students seeking additional employability support Largest number were students from the College of Social Sciences 63% were undergraduates (so 37% postgraduates – more using our services this year) 51% were non-EU international students 24% of students who responded to CV drop-in follow-up questionnaires had found work since their drop-in 3.1 out of 5 average student satisfaction rating from Job Zone services More students who had completed a Job Zone activity were likely to recommend the service to a friend than not But…. Of the students who responded to follow-up surveys, the majority disagreed that they felt more confident

The ‘Impact’ we had on Student Employment …. NASES Conference The ‘Impact’ we had on Student Employment …. Employment Results 475 vacancy advertisements 4998 actual vacancies Worked with 235 employers Rated 8.9 out of 10 for service by employers Got 70.5% response rate from our employers Over 1200 of our students definitely secured a job through the Job Zone (1 in 4 of those we advertised) Over £1066, 000 in wages earned by our students through their part-time work in this academic year

Suggestions on how to over come these NASES Conference Barriers & Risks Working in groups…. Identify the potential barriers and risks associated with monitoring your service Suggestions on how to over come these Time Staffing/resources Difficulty chasing people for feedback (higher phone bills!) Alienating employers and students with your requests for feedback Harder for employers with large number of vacancies to give results Risk of more time spent on monitoring than delivering service! Methods for capturing the data – IT technology/accuracy

Suggestions on how to over come barriers and risks… NASES Conference Barriers & Risks Suggestions on how to over come barriers and risks… Follow up constructive feedback Give clear case to management about resources required Agree realistic level of monitoring that can be achieved and agree priorities Snapshot stats and monitoring – e.g. 1 week a term Use survey websites – find out what is out there that you can use Work with NASES to ensure our database providers can develop the reporting functions we need for the future

NASES Conference Next Steps… Fine tune the spreadsheet We will make a blank version available for use by NASES members Work on developing our database so that we can: ‘Baseline’ our students’ skills at the point of registration Get the database to do some of the recording for us Continue to ‘refine’ what we collect in line with our resources and the value of the information Publicise Our Results Press releases Impact Report 2011 Convince management/University of our value Use evidence to build on relationships Use evidence for future funding bids

Discussion & Questions Marketing & Communications Discussion & Questions