Nurturing talent and increasing employability

Cardiff Business School’s Executive Education Breakfast Briefing series recently welcomed careers and placements personnel for a talk on preparing work-ready graduates.

Alex Hicks, Placements Manager at Cardiff Business School and Joanne Jenkins, Cardiff University Careers & Employability Business Partner, led the presentation and provided the mixed audience with insight in to current practices at the University designed to aid and enhance graduate employability.

The audience comprised business owners, senior managers and HR representatives from a range of sectors such as Higher Education, law, manufacturing and the creative industries.

Alex Hicks introduced the audience to the current graduate employment landscape, talking them through the trends, the scope for development and the challenges. He highlighted the School innovations, implemented and planned, to ensure that School graduates are academically equipped and practically prepared to contribute effectively and successfully to their chosen professions.

In additional to ensuring students have a range of opportunities to apply their class-based theory and teaching to real-world situations, the School is also developing new ways of engaging with the business community. The School is providing business with an increased number of opportunities to attract and work with its students, from formal internship programmes to short business projects. This allows students to benefit from practical and professional work experience while giving business the chance to identify talent at an early stage.

Owain Jones, Senior Commercial Partner at Barclays Partner Finance, gave the audience an insight in to why his organisation had got involved in Cardiff Business School’s placement programmes and the value it delivered. He discussed the two students that had been taken on and the standard and quality of the work they undertook and their successful integration in to the organisation.

Joanne Jenkins discussed the current issues effecting graduate employability, and then looked at the University’s approach to equipping graduates with the skills and attributes required to be successful in the workplace. Joanne asked the audience for feedback to ensure the University is aware of any skills gaps in our graduates.

A recording of the session is currently available to view.

For further information about Cardiff Business School placements please contact Alex Hicks. Alternatively, to discuss University level opportunities please contact Joanne Jenkins.

The next Breakfast Briefing will take place on Friday 11 November 2016. Entitled The Science Behind Agile Working, it will be presented by Lee Wakemans.