If you’ve been to 1CC over the last few weeks, you’ll know it’s bustling with students.  Employability and Graduate Success are taking advantage of this with a pop-up tent and preliminary career chats with passing students. If students don’t come to us, then we must go to them.

At just past its halfway point, the Employable (You)Us initiative is a five-week series that covers career essentials – from career planning and options, through to gaining experience and personal branding. Student engagement is a true challenge, but the team has embraced this new approach to meet students and encourage them to utilise the expertise and resources available.

Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dominique Parrish says, “it’s challenging to get students to engage with career planning early in their studies, but it’s imperative. They need to have a vision of the career and industry they’re aiming for, and to work on building the employability skills they need to get there.”

Students can be difficult to engage when they see as optional or something they can delay for “future them” to think about, so this year’s focus has been on bringing career and employability directly to the students.  In just a few minutes, barriers can be broken down, students get a taste of what is on offer and most importantly, have had a seed planted which they can grow through proactive follow-up.

The Employable (You)Us initiative has taken a themed approach that should be easy for students to engage with. In addition to career chats at the pop-up location in 1CC, there have been giveaways and competitions as well as a series of industry expert and employer sessions, available both online and face to face.  And in times where student engagement has declined, students also have the option of catching up via session recordings.

Kylie Ebert, Director Employability and Graduate Success says, “graduate success is measured by the government, primarily on the ability of our graduates to gain the employment they trained for within four months of graduation. This is a short, arbitrary and often unrealistic timeframe for the measurement of graduate employment outcomes.  We are highly committed to engaging students consistently throughout their studies to maximise their preparedness for transition to work.”

Staff are also welcome to engage with the resources and events offered during the Employable (You)Us series and can find more information on our website.