HEA Employability Focus Group A Dr Eleanor Quince 09 May 2012

2 Introduction Project funded by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) Central question: how can we make the best use of our relationship with our alumni in order to promote employability to our current students? Uses survey, focus groups, alumni interviews

3 Aiming to address … … three key research questions What is the impact of our current employability activities where alumni have an input? Are there any ways in which our alumni can help to raise the aspirations and enhance the employability of our students that we are failing to exploit effectively? Where within the student life-cycle can we make best use of alumni?

4 Today … … we are focussing on one of these questions: Are there any ways in which our alumni can help to raise the aspirations and enhance the employability of our students that we are failing to exploit effectively? Mixture of discussion and feedback activities to address this question.

5 Activity One Get into pairs. You have 15 minutes to discuss: “In the future, you will need to go out a get a job”. Thinking about the process of applying for jobs, what are you most concerned about? help yourselves to food; you have paper and pens on which to write your main points should you wish to; After 15 minutes, we will discuss your responses.

Activity One - feedback What are your main concerns? 6

7 How we currently use alumni During 2011/12 we have used Alumni for a variety of activities. Alumni panels – five of these, Philosophy, History, Retail Sector, ML, Film. Talks – civil service Fast Stream; Chris Humphreys, Jason Cowley lecture Profiles – interviews with alumni, video, podcast, online. We could also consider: mentoring; shadowing; ‘meet our alumni’ days; placement opportunities

8 Activity Two Get back into pairs. You have 10 minutes to: come up with an ‘ideal’ use of alumni – is there anything we are missing? How can we combine existing or suggested activities to get the most from them?

Activity Two - feedback What is your ‘ideal’ use of alumni? 9

10 Thank you! Follow project progress at: