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Information for staff on services offered by Careers

Find out about what Careers can offer departments, students, graduates, employers and staff.

Introduction

Our primary role is to work with students and researchers to plan their careers, develop their employability, make informed career choices and achieve their objectives. In this we are allied with the University’s Strategy.

To do this we aim to work in partnership with academic departments and employers to help students use their time here effectively and maximise the opportunities open to them.

If you have a specific request, or can’t find the information you want, please contact the Careers Adviser working with your department and we’ll do our very best to answer your question.

Services to departments

Our qualified careers professionals work with students at all stages of their degree programme and would like your help to encourage them to make use of our services early on in their studies. We know you will often be a first port of call for students with questions on placements, references, post-degree employment and study options so this section aims to help you understand how we support your students and how we can work with you to do the same. Your department has a named Careers Adviser contact who will be pleased to work with you to support careers provision for your students.

We can help you in many ways

  • We can provide bespoke careers sessions in departments. Popular requests from departments focus on preparing for placements and post-graduation employment. For example, CVs, applications, interviews, and psychometric testing. We can also run events showcasing career options, and workshops on career options or finding and applying for work experience for students who are not doing a placement. These sessions will always be designed with the needs of your students in mind and can be scheduled at the most appropriate times for each year group.
  • We have excellent relationships with employers and would be happy to work with you to provide tailored employer-led workshops on career options, recruitment methods or specific employability skills like team-working. Our long history of working successfully with local and national employers means we can deliver events with the employers your students want to work for.
  • For those students who are considering course changes or facing disappointing results, we offer confidential and impartial appointments to help students decide their best course of action.
  • There is a network of Bath graduates who are willing to speak to your students about working in a wide variety of occupations.
  • To assist you in marketing your courses, and your students in making career choices, we manage information on graduate outcomes for all courses. You can read more about graduate outcomes information available to you further down this page. This is separate from the public information on the website on what do first degree Bath graduates do?.
  • We encourage you to link to our range of information pages, guides and web pages from your website and Moodle pages rather than download them. We regularly update these resources and linking to them guarantees your students have the latest edition. You can access our guides and information from the Resources tab in our student site, MyFuture.

Ways you can help

  • Talk to us! If there is some information you would like or something you would like us to do for your students, we are always happy to help.
  • Encourage students to think about their career planning before their final year. Some students may need to make early applications in their final year for certain types of graduate jobs so preparation before this point will be very helpful to them.
  • Encourage your students to be aware of how they can develop their employability during their time at university so that they have the best chance of being successful in their graduate job applications.

Collaboration to help students

Most students coming to the University of Bath are doing so as a step towards their future career. It's vital that academic departments and Careers work together to help students make the most of their time here. When they opt for a placement, this gives them a number of advantages. Our Careers Consultants already work with many placement staff using their expertise to support students in the application process, so these students encounter us through this support.

However, we feel that is also important that first years and second year students not taking a placement are encouraged to use us. Most students know we exist but only around half make use of us whilst they're here.

Experience has taught us that good exposure to students through their academic programme and departmental staff is the best way to not only get them to use us early enough to make a real difference, but often simply to get them thinking about their prospects and what they need to do before they graduate.

The bare minimum

At the very least we'd like to talk to all undergraduate students near the start of their final year and masters' students early on in their courses for at least half an hour in a dedicated careers talk within the department. That's enough for us to raise awareness of the job market, the application processes they'll face and the support we provide. Referrals to our advisers from your staff when they encounter students with employment concerns are also welcomed. The problem is that for many students this could be too late, especially if gaining relevant work experience or an early Autumn application are essential for success.

The ideal

The careers message gets across best with regular, dedicated, hour-long careers lectures at the start of each year, tailored to particular cohorts of students, and supported by further events throughout the year such as:

  • career-planning workshops or lectures – advice on job-searching, CVs and applications, interviews and assessment centres;
  • networking events or talks using departmental alumni;
  • sessions for students going on their year abroad or on placement about applying and making the most of their experiences;
  • talks and lectures on further study options or 'alternative' careers for students in a vocational discipline such as Pharmacy or Social Work;
  • academic skills training to develop skills such as communication, presentation, group-work, project-management, and problem-solving and transfer them from academia to employment. We can run these ourselves or enable you to source employers to do this.

All these events are available by talking to your departmental Careers Adviser. See 'Bespoke activities' below for further information about what we can offer your department.

To ensure we have successful, well-attended events that benefit your department, your students, and our staff we'd ask you do the following:

  • have a member of staff allocated to deal with all Careers events and liaison so we have a regular contact. It works best when this is a member of academic staff, as this ensures all students – not just those going on placement – are involved in careers-related activities;
  • publicise events well in advance to students and avoid clashes with deadlines, other events and reading weeks. Where possible build us into a programme of talks or events that students are obliged or required to attend;
  • use departmental-orientated student societies to arrange or promote the event and encourage their peers to attend;
  • try and make the event a specific careers event rather than part of a longer 'general' lecture where our message is lost;
  • short, well-scheduled, tailored events to particular cohorts work best as the message can be made more relevant to them – for example, for second years focusing on applying for placements, or for first years the importance of building up evidence of non-curricular activities or work experience.

Employability

One of our aims is to help students develop their employability skills and obtain appropriate work experience. Our regular contact with employers means we are very aware of the kind of skills and personal attributes graduate recruiters are looking for. Our position within the University makes us aware of the range of opportunities available to students which can help them develop these skills and attributes. In addition, our understanding of the graduate job market and of current recruitment methods and career paths is invaluable to our students. We are happy to use these skills and knowledge to help you to develop your programmes to address the issue of employability. Contact the Careers Adviser for your department to discuss improving your students’ employability.

Bespoke activities

We are always happy to work with you to develop resources or activities that would most benefit your students. Here are some examples of events we have developed with and for individual Departments in the past. Please contact your department’s named Careers Adviser to discuss how we can best help your students.

Careers talks

We regularly offer talks within Departments; these can be anything from a 10-minute introductory session in Induction week to lunchtime talks giving more detailed information. Sessions can be tailored to suit each year group - for example, career planning for first years, placement preparation for second years and job-seeking strategies for work experience or graduate jobs. We can also tailor sessions for international and master's students.

Departmental or faculty drop-in

Do you hold careers days or employer events? A Careers Consultant can offer short one-to-one careers advice sessions to students, adding a more personal touch to the day.

Tailored resources

We can produce handouts for students, specific to a course, with information on the skills developed in the course, possible career options, places to look for jobs and suggestions on how to maximise their employability.

Networking sessions

Organising a talk from alumni is fairly straightforward but we find alumni networking events are very useful to develop students’ skills as well as their job knowledge. We can support you in organising such an event by helping you source and contact Bath graduates. We suggest asking each graduate to supply a biography, so the students know a little about who they are meeting. We can supply advice to students about networking and be there to deal with queries. This kind of event needs a lead time of at least three months. You will need a small budget to cover travel and entertainment costs plus some modest administration support from your department team.

Workshops

We can run two-hour bespoke sessions on, for example, CVs during which second year students have the chance to look at job descriptions and learn more about how they can tailor their CV for particular roles. They also undertake a job shortlisting exercise for a nominated post. This can produce a significant improvement in the quality of CVs and subsequent success rate in obtaining placements. We can run similar sessions for interviews, where students can experience what it is like to be interviewed as well as being the interviewer.

Graduate outcomes data

Careers supports the collection and analysis of graduate outcomes data from all students at a specified time after graduation. For further details see Graduate Outcomes information for staff.

Please contact Careers if you have any queries about graduate outcomes.

Services to your students

All students at the University of Bath are welcome to make full use of our services; those who are currently on placement can contact us via email. Students and staff can get a good overview of our services and support from our website.

Researchers have their own area on our website, and Doctoral skills workshops and courses.

Help for your students

Students can browse job opportunities and access career resources on our online hub, MyFuture. This is also where they can book themselves onto events and appointments. Members of staff can also access the site and browse resources.

Go to MyFuture

Not sure if your students are eligible to use our services? Please refer to our statement of service.

Students’ projects: we regret we do not have the resources to assist students with projects related to graduate employment or careers or other areas of our expertise.

Services to your graduates

We also provide services to Bath graduates (including postgraduate leavers):

  • appointments with Careers Consultants and access to information indefinitely
  • access to our resources online
  • graduate opportunity listings on MyFuture.

Services to employers

We liaise with employers every day and have a comprehensive network of about 4,000 organisations of all sizes, all interested in Bath students. This is part of what makes us so effective at working with students to improve their employability – we hear directly from employers about what they want and how the students can best demonstrate it.

In essence, we act as a very big ‘shop window’ for the University – did you know that we:

  • are visited by over 300 employers every year
  • advertise opportunities with up to 800 employers at any one time
  • advise employers on recruitment strategy
  • arrange joint meetings with academic departments and employers, or refer employers on as appropriate
  • regularly update employers about changes to programmes and new courses.

However, we know that employers, and alumni, will often contact you with opportunities or offer to arrange sessions. This page aims to help you by setting out what we already do – and reassuring you that we can help you by ensuring your students get all the opportunities without information overload or event clashes!

Do you get requests from employers and agencies to advertise vacancies?

We run a comprehensive, free, vacancy advertising service for employers. Details of all sorts of opportunities are advertised on MyFuture (which often has more vacancies than national sites) where all students can view them.

If you forward details to us via our mailbox, recruit@bath.ac.uk, we will upload them for you. This means your students need only look in one place for great vacancies! Alternatively, please refer employers to our vacancy advertising policy with details on how to submit opportunities.

Do you get requests from employers and agencies to block email your students?

Please feel free to forward the request to us via recruit@bath.ac.uk. We already offer a target email service to selected student groups on behalf of employers. This operates as a chargeable service. If you choose to offer this to some employers without charge, then you may be inundated! To avoid information overload, we ensure that the emails are brief, small capacity, relevant and only sent to limited year/subject groups. We also spread them out if there are several in any one week.

Do you get requests from employers to set up recruitment events for your students?

Hopefully, you already know about our centralised events, skills workshops and careers fairs. If an employer asks you if they can come on campus, whether just to speak to your students, or to all, then please do get in touch. We can then do our best to ensure that no clashes of interest for the students arise from what we already have in place. Our Employer Services Team will be happy to book in an employer presentation or advise on the current diary. Contact them at recruit@bath.ac.uk.

Writing references

The Human Resources Department of the University has provided Reference guidance (in respect of former, existing and prospective staff and students) which should be followed. Section five deals with providing references for current or former students.

Resources

We produce resources to help staff support students and researchers with their career planning.

Enquiries

If you have any questions, please contact us.


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