Good Practice Case Study - CCI / TECH

Aim: To provide early placement support to L4 students ensuring they are ready for their placement search by the time they start their L5 studies in September.

Challenges: as an extracurricular activity, ensuring students register with the programme, and take part in all sessions, is a challenge, especially when the programme is being delivered during the Summer, outside of term-time.

Ensuring there is a variety of employers and previous placement students involved to share their experiences and give a range of views.

The Summer FastTrack Programme within CCI takes place every summer (May – July), and consist of 6 online weekly workshops covering all aspects of the placement recruitment process, allowing the students an early understanding of the placement search but also providing them with the resources to submit suitable applications. We cover sessions on personal discovery, CV writing, portfolios, job search techniques, cover letters, and resilience.

Students are invited during the Spring to register to the programme online. Those registered, are invited weekly to join a live zoom session. All sessions are recorded and shared via email with those registered on the programme, but also publish on Moodle making it available to all.

For Technology, the annual summer programme contains two, two-hour sessions run on consecutive weeks, delivered by members of the Faculty Placement Team. Student sign up via Target Connect following a market from the Placements Team and Course Leaders. The sessions run via Zoom on consecutive weeks, and also included delivery where all content was hosted on one day.

Each session had live input from at least one employer and one student currently on placement/had done a placement previously. The aim is to give an industry view of what is discussed and also the student view of the placement experience from searching for roles, to finish. Sessions are recorded and sent to students afterwards and have been used to allow students who were not able to attend/did not sign up in time to still see content. 

Follow up, post completion, includes emails and calls to check in, and an invite to an in person event later in TB1. There is a thread of still maintaining contact with those who only attended one session or who did not turn up.

CCI Sessions include:

• All About Me: Discover how to identify your areas of interest, assess your current skills and prepare that ideal Creative CV to help you apply for placements and Summer internships.  

• Setting up your Professional Network: Networking is an important tool when searching for placements. Let’s help you create a LinkedIn profile.  

• Look at my Work!: Employers want to see examples of your work. Let’s talk about portfolios.  

• It’s a Digital (Job Search) World: What happens ‘digitally’ when you start searching for  employment? We’ll share a few tips on what to do. 

• A Professional You: What else do you need to successfully apply to placements? We’ll cover email etiquette, cover letter and application form tips. 

• Keep Going!: Tips to stay resilient through your search.

TECH sessions cover the following:

Session 1

• Why placements are a great thing to do – quantitative (from Grad Outcomes) and qualitative (from student) benefits of work experience and the impacts it could have on their future career.

•  Where are you right now – analysis of soft skills and how they can fill gaps identified.

• Searching for roles – looking at the different sources of placement roles for the STEM sector, as well as specialist schemes/organisations that may support them – 10000 Black Interns, 10000 Able Interns, EmployAbility, myplusstudentclub etc.

Session 2

• CV/cover letter basics – including a template in a google doc to show a potential format etc, to give a starting point.

• Online tests, video interviews, telephone interviews – what to expect, where and how to practice.

• Assessment Centres – what to expect, where and how to practice.

• Interviews– what to expect, where and how to practice.

Assess what are the key requirements that the placement applications within your sector needs, and focus on delivering sessions on those. For example, within the Creative Sector, portfolios are vital. Hence why we have included that in our sessions. 

Consider what the students may have already done in their first year regarding employability and tailor content accordingly, as well as what the capacity is for development of the programme. The content also needs to be reviewed regularly to ensure it is up to date with current practice in the early careers space. 

Use employers who regularly take placement or graduate students from your subject area and where relationships already exist. This is a great chance for them to start raising awareness of their brand with potential future employers.

We follow the students’ placement search journey once they start L5. Since the programme started we have seen students starting to apply early (September) to placements; also having more confidence to apply to large corporate organisations, and, even if not successful in cases, students are reaching final interview stages.

TECH

Participants:

• 120 Students signed up 

• 75 unique participants attended at least one session

Placed:

• 23 in year long industrial placements - 15% of placed students

Other positive outcomes:

• Students placed with larger employers: IBM, UBS, Rolls Royce, Royal Mail, ONS, DSTL, BAE

• Identified engaged students for support early in TB1 freeing time to engage with other student groups. 

• More interest in Summer internships.  

• Networking between students and employers

CCI

Participants:

• 85 signed up, recordings available post session to ensure engagement and completion of the whole programme

Placed:

• 25% of all year-placements took part on the programme

Other positive outcomes:

• Summer Internships and shorter work-experience

• Students were able to secure placements with larger employers due to being ready to apply early, examples include: SAP, Waitrose, STFC, House of Commons

Hallmark 10. -  Be self-reflective, embrace challenges and seize opportunities for development. This means you can be proactive in recognising and addressing personal and professional development needs. This enables you to be confident to make informed career and life decisions,

and achieve personal growth.

Hallmark 6. - Have an enterprising and innovative spirit.  This enables you to create value to others through recognising opportunity. This allows you to bring original thinking and productivity to the groups and communities to which you belong.

Graduate Hallmarks