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Physical Careers Office:                 Keep a small office / information point………leaflets / Summer / Telephone / etc.

Careers Staff Offices:                      Small…..hot-desk style office (for when careers staff “need” to be on campus)……perhaps in the library building

Place of Work:                                   At Home / On-Line………..unless specifically needed “on campus”

Drop-ins:                                             Triaged by Front-line staff………any queries they can’t deal with are then e-mailed to CC with responsibility to relevant Dept CC / Specialism CC

Drop-in queries to be dealt with ASAP………but no set drop-in times / schedule

Guidance Interviews:                     Shortened to 40 mins (max)

Responsibility for ACTION PLANNING to be left with the student

On-line provision – unless particular want/need for face-to-face

Careers Education:                          Pretty well as at present………     Push (us promoting “titles/material” to tutors and Emp co-ords)

Pull   (us responding to student (SSCC) demand as well as staff (emp co-ords, etc.) demand

EE opportunities:                             Communication between EE Team and Depts…….(CCs to be copied in for info. only)

Proper “embedding”:                     CCs being considered as “part of the team” in Depts……inclusion in all Dept. staff meeting, etc.

Employability Co-ordinators:       Expand to include each discipline (such as, separate Law and Criminology Emp co-ords…..and one for each “theme area” in IBERS, for example)

A CC to have overall project responsibility for maintaining a community/network of Emp Co-ords.

Specialist CC responsibilities:      Keep Alumni relations (inc. eMentoring); post-grad; enterprise……

Add in Emp Co-ords (see above) and International…….

Re-allocate responsibility for Website and ABERcareers (not real CC functions)

Overall positioning of Careers:   Separate from Student Support………(2 years in and it really doesn’t feel like a co-ordinated service !!)

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ABERcareers portal - promote via departments.

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ABERcareers portal - promote via departments.

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Create a way of tagging students occupational interest (beyond at the beginning of the year) so a report can highlight relevant students to specific vacancies.
Create a custom field with text or list.

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One key word on ABERcareers telling CCs what the disability is.  For example, dyslexia.

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Promotion to students who have no work experience or poor employability skills.

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Working from home has been more productive and the flexibility that comes with it is greatly appreciated. The option to work from home more often would be good.

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Virtual drop-ins/outreach have been a good way to work and the students respond well. Drop-in in the top office in previous summers has been largely empty. Could drop-ins be run virtually more often e.g half the drop-ins in a week might be in person, and the other half virtual.

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Virtual guidance has been very effective and I have found that in the whole academic year only two students missed their appointments with me, and these had good reasons for doing so. In comparison, face to face appointments in previous years have often been missed by students, it seems the students respond well to virtual apts, especially those who have anxiety about visiting us in person.

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Our webinars have proved popular with students and the problems of students trying to find the room, along with us needing to book rooms is largely removed. Some students will need or prefer face to face, so a mixed offering of face to face and virtual workshops/webinars would be good to see.

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There needs to be more coherency and consistency with what we are offering as part of our central provision. There was a definite divide between the EE webinars and the CC webinars and it would have been good to have had more collaboration.
Reflection and evaluation - we need to have a session at the end of each semester to go over the webinars in terms of content delivered, numbers attending and feedback given. Which sessions were well attended and why? Which marketing techniques led to greater student engagement? Data analysis - use of AC reports to determine whether there are more students from certain departments who engage with us as a service and if so why? How can we replicate this engagement across the university and all departments? Which departments aren't engaging with the careers service in terms of what we provide as a central service. CCs to feed that back to departments.
Positive examples of engagement and feedback to be regularly fed up to senior management etc. to demonstrate where progress is being made.

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The Enterprise Team Perspective - Louise (endorsed by Tony)

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The Enterprise Team Perspective - Louise (endorsed by Tony)

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Provision of Enterprise events on Teams has worked very well.

Enterprise workshop attendance has on the whole been very good.

Provision of workshops throughout the holidays is now possible – we piloted this last August/Sept and we have a ‘Social Media Summer Series’ planned for 4 evenings in June/July/Aug/Sept

Big Ideas Wales Role Models are now all working remotely – enabling us to source RM’s from all over Wales, which was not possible when delivering workshops in person.  We now have a huge range of speakers to choose from rather than a limited pool who are willing/able to travel to Aber for a 2hr workshop.  Big Ideas Wales are continuing to work remotely and provide RM’s in this way.

1:1 Business mentoring with Big Ideas Wales business advisers is all done via Zoom/Teams etc. – they have reported this works well as it offers greater flexibility to fit in with commitments clients may have, enabling us to offer a more accessible service.  Big Ideas Wales staff have informed us that this will probably be ongoing – this also enables clients to access mentoring during holiday periods when they may be away from Aberystwyth.

We no longer spend any of our grant money on providing catering at events – this has enabled us to pay for external speakers (other than those from BIW) such as Alana Spencer (Ridiculously Rich), Steve Keyworth (Environment Systems), Liliana Vilamor (InvEnterPrize winner 2018), and Richard Steele (Freelance Aber).

We were able to run InvEnterPrize successfully this year using the new Simply Do online platform.  The judging day was then held on Teams, which on the whole worked well and was easy for all judges to attend as no travel/time and accommodation provision was required for external stakeholders who have busy schedules.

There has been some feedback that Networking is not as easy/possible remotely, particularly with larger groups - however on the whole remote provision of Enterprise Services has been positively received.

In general arranging and holding meetings is easier, as it involves no travel time for anyone and is easy to access, also for those who can only attend part of a meeting this can be easily done, as in person this may not be possible.

Collaboration with Enterprise Champions in other Universities and FE’s across Wales has been much easier and joint ventures have been put in place, which will be ongoing.  We connect with colleagues across Wales far more frequently than when Pan Wales meetings were once or twice a year.

From a personal perspective, I have found working from home to be very good – no travel/better work-life balance/able to start early etc. and I am happy for this to be ongoing.  I am fortunate to have good internet connection and suitable working space at home.  Tony & I have more regular ‘catch-up’ meetings to discuss Enterprise plans & the monthly careers service meetings continue to provide updates on other colleagues work and careers service provision – we also have more regular meetings with BIW colleagues, regional partners and others who contribute to Enterprise education provision at Aber.