Careers awarded National AGCAS Award for Excellence 2020
Tuesday, 28 July 2020
Our Careers team has won this years' Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS) Supporting Student / Graduate Employability Award for their #RDGGrad career development programme. This is a fantastic achievement so please join us in offering our huge congratulations to our colleagues in the Careers team.
The AGCAS Awards for Excellence encourage, reward and share good practice amongst HE careers and employability practitioners by promoting high-quality, creative, innovative and collaborative projects and high professional standards across the full range of HE careers and employability work.
The ambitious #RDGGrad career development programme increased our Finalists' participation in careers activities from 1789 learning hours in 2017-18 to 5666 learning hours in 2019-20 - more than 1,500 learning hours per year . This represents more than double the level of career activities at the most critical time of our students' career journeys.
The AGCAS Final Judging Panel said:
"The university set an ambitious project here, with an impressive range of activities. They are employing data really well to plan a truly strategic approach.
The university identified an issue with their student body and put together a bold project that addresses what their students really need, and shows measurable improvement in student and graduate employability. The submission demonstrates the impressive story really well"
The team achieved their Year Two goal to increase participation in development activities by 1,500 hours 8 months early and were particularly pleased to see high engagement from students with a WP background (between 52% - 64% of participants) Activities included:
- an innovative online course on the FutureLearn platform (Career Smart);
- a full-day assessment centre simulation,
- a branded website and social media (#RDGgrad19);
- a weekly Finalist newsletter;
- a targeted careers workshop series;
- annual calling campaign;
- dedicated finalist coaching in target departments;
- monitoring of students' job search progress three times a year;
- creation and use of PowerBI dashboards to monitor student participation in real time.
Anne Delauzun, Acting Head of Careers and Employability said:
"This is a fantastic achievement for the Careers team, against some stiff competition from across the sector. The high levels of student engagement are testament to the quality and relevance of what this programme offers, and we look forward to building on this success with #RDGGrad21"
If you'd like to find out more, please contact Anne Delauzun, Acting Head of Careers & Employability or visit our Careers pages on Essentials.