The employability agenda is firmly placed in the UK university system now. It argues that universities have a responsibility to prepare young people for the world of work as well as imparting subject knowledge. Some scholars are resistant to this idea or disagree about how to include this in practical terms, but I think most agree that it will only become more important in the difficult years to come.
If you are an academic jobseeker you think of your own development in terms of skills and competencies as well as the subject-based expertise that you acquire and it’s no different for the graduate jobseeker. If you are well versed in the language, theory and practice of career development then you will be in a good position to help your students as well as yourself.
It is important to help them to show that the things they have done at university have given them the skills and experience that place them ahead of the pack. An obvious example is giving an oral presentation with a class mate. Research skills, teamwork, oral communication and powerpoint skills are among the demonstrable outcomes of undertaking that assessment.
Masters or PhD students can be encouraged to think in a similar way about their university experience. Not every postgraduate will want to move on to a career in academia but this doesn’t mean that their postgrad degrees are wasted: far from it! Employers admire the strength of character that completing a postgraduate qualification requires and also the skills that it produces in a candidate.
I am not suggesting that every lecturer should have to be a careers adviser as well. Students have access to their careers services often for several years after they graduate so we should not try to duplicate the good work that they do. But we know our courses intimately and can relate them to the skills our students need in the world of work. This should be in the back of our minds when we design new courses or rejig old ones. This development doesn’t require us to do different things, but rather to think about what we already do in terms of employability and skills.
