What do employers want? A study of three professional pathways Helena Knapton, Learning and Teaching Development Lead (@HKnapton) Alice Diver, PL for LLB Law & Criminology, Year 1 Lead for Law Richard Kitt, Senior Lecturer Mental Health Nursing knaptonp@edgehill.ac.uk

Background Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework TE(SO)F Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE) ‘What Works Project’ – concluded in 2017, retention and progression Social mobility linking higher education with economic success (Nussbaum, 1997, Wolf, 2002; Goddard, 2009)

how do employers define graduateness? Students having faced the ‘right level of challenge’ as undergraduates? (Eraut, 2007: 418) Including perhaps some useful degree of …ongoing reflection upon why a particular career or learning pathway was chosen? (Jones and Higson, 2012) …or some other means of embedding preparedness for professional practice? (Fry, Ketteridge, & Marshall, 2009)

research Methodology and methods Exploratory qualitative methodology as a new area of research Semi-structured interviews to allow participants to explain and investigate their own viewpoints Purposive Sampling: using professional contacts to start the investigation

Prompt Questions for the Semi-structured interviews What do you look for in a new-to-the-profession employee? How and where did you acquire these skills/ attributes? When/where/how do you expect your new employee to have developed these skills/ attributes? What does an employer get from a student who studies law/ nursing/ teaching but chooses not to pursue that profession? To what extent do you think that you exhibited these skills/ attributes at the start of your employment after university?

Initial findings: comparison with the literature ‘Belongingness’ (Yorke, 2016) Profession-relevant tasks and assessments; The ‘right level of challenge’ (Eraut, 2007: 418) Reflective practice The role of the employer

Where to next? Re-engagement with health professionals Use of grounded theory to investigate responses more fully Work with employers in the North West of England and University colleagues Investigation of those students who having completed a professional degree choose not to pursue those