1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. Job Zone Case Study – Monitoring the Jobshop 2010-2011
NASES Conference
Job Zone Case Study – Monitoring the Jobshop
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

5. Job Zone Case Study – Monitoring the Jobshop 2010-2011
NASES Conference
Job Zone Case Study – Monitoring the Jobshop
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….

6. The Monitoring Spreadsheet
NASES Conference
The Monitoring Spreadsheet

7. The Monitoring Spreadsheet
NASES Conference
The Monitoring Spreadsheet

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. Discussion & Questions
Marketing & Communications
Discussion & Questions