Ron Harle - Dark clouds above. Can we dodge the storm?

Ron Harle, Director of Support Progression and Employability, first started liaising with the University in the late seventies when he worked in graduate recruitment and training for an electronics company and sponsored a lot of students at the University. Since 1989 he's been employed at Bradford as a Careers Adviser, and for the last ten years has been Head of Career Development Services.

I've seen lots of changes over the years including several recessions and boom periods, the traditional "Milkround" (recruitment interviews) disappearing, the development of online services and electronic applications rather than paperbased brochures and forms. The interview though is still core to recruitment.

The one thing that has remained constant is the need for students to access professional advice and guidance services to help them explore opportunities, understand what is required by employers and to refine their skills of engaging with the employment market. Career planning is a complex process involving a lot of inter-related factors and it frightens many people as a consequence.

With the increased access to HE, the notion of a segregated graduate recruitment market has changed. Nowadays a graduate job is any job that a graduate can or does do. Some elite entry, highly competitive schemes still do exist and much has been written in the media over the last year about the number of graduates chasing every vacancy. I've seen quotes referring to 70 graduates chasing every job!

Let me state emphatically here that although things are tough in the employment market at the moment for young people, this media hype is not to be believed. If it were true, only 1 in 7 of graduates would be employed, when the reality is that around 1 in 10 is unemployed. Our proportion in this situation from Bradford mirrors the national picture. Obviously that is still a real problem for those affected and all university careers services have been doing all they can to support them.

This University's traditional strength in the employment league tables, regularly capturing No 1 spot in Yorkshire, shows how much our graduates are valued by employers. Many of our graduates have completed professional accreditation as part of their degrees; others have completed an integrated sandwich placement which has given them real work skills. But there is a variety of ways in which students develop employability, the in-vogue word which describes a whole set of attributes, skills, and knowledge that enhance an individual’s potential to engage in professional roles. Part-time or vacation employment is an invaluable way of developing employment skills.

A range of schemes, including mentoring, workshadowing project work, volunteering, serving in responsible roles in clubs or societies, and particularly sabbatical roles in the Students' Union give people the evidence they need to convince employers about their capabilities.

But one of the things I am acutely aware of is that we can't merely stand still or churn out the same old stuff in these turbulent changing times. So I'm immensely proud to lead a team of people who are constantly looking for new ideas, are very tuned in to the student psyche, and are tremendously supportive but equally capable of challenging and pushing their clients to work at realising their cherished ambitions.

For instance over the last year our team has undertaken a fundamental review and redesign of our "needs-based" website which has been used by many other institutions as an exemplar. We have devised and delivered an innovative Postgraduate Certificate in Employability and Entrepreneurship, currently unique in the sector.

To respond to the increasing demand from small businesses and to fulfil a belief in nurturing enterprise skills we have launched YoYo (you organise your opportunities) which is a structured approach to offering skills in the context of self employment.

We already deliver an extensive range of undergraduate Career and Personal Development modules, and these have been significantly revised over the last year to ensure that assessment is relevant and fit for purpose. In addition to our own academic modules we contribute to many others, working closely with academic colleagues to embed employability and skills development elements into courses from first year to postgraduate level.

A new innovation, which has already been tested in pilot form and will build up steam over the next year, is Challenge Yourself which has been designed to inspire students to stretch themselves and reflect on the learning they acquire, with the option of having this work accredited for an additional University Certificate.

We organise a number of events which bring employers onto campus, including focus days, careers fairs and presentations, and we are really excited about the potential of using the fantastic facilities in Student Central in creative ways to help students engage with employers. Collaborative work is strong in the careers sector and the Yorkshire Graduate Recruitment Fair held in June, a joint venture with the University of Leeds, brought together over 100 employers offering vacancies with around 2,000 graduate job seekers from the region.

Over the last year we have gained funding from HEFCE, along with other regional careers services to develop graduate internships, and against stiff competition we secured funds to lead and run a pilot scheme in four Universities to increase access to the professions through a summer internship scheme for students completing their second-year studies.

In a "normal" employment market we would expect well over 90% of Bradford graduates to be employed or in further study within six months of graduation. In exceptional good years this combined percentage has been as high as 96%. But clearly these are exceptional not normal times, and inevitably even Bradford graduates are suffering. Graduates from 2009 had a combined percentage of 89% success into employment or further study, and within this total there was a big shift towards further study, demonstrating the fragility of the employment market.

Our strength and success in recruiting locally-based students over the last decade is also our vulnerability in the current recession as so many of our students are intent on remaining in the district to find work after graduating. For many this translates into an expansion of part-time hours they worked as students, expanding into full-time as graduates, but the risk associated with that is the lack of opportunity to develop or engage in higher-level work.

Yet others are finding that the Bradford district is not well equipped to provide the volumes of higher-level jobs required for an increasing graduate population so flexibility, adaptability and a preparedness to travel some distance to seek work in the wider region becomes a vital component of them successfully landing a job.

As I write this we embark on a new academic year in which we will be engaging in a debate about how we can enhance the employability of our students, how we can ensure that every one of our graduates will leave Bradford with accredited experience of work-based learning and how we can continue to pursue our mission of Making Knowledge Work. This is a tall order.

We cannot stand still because all other institutions are now pursuing the agenda which has in the past been one of our core strengths. Unless things go disastrously wrong we should still be able to hold claim to one of the best, if not the best, record for employment in the region, but others are pushing hard at our heels. All Universities recently had to publish an Employability Statement on their websites declaring how they aimed to facilitate the development of core skills.

Over the next couple of years our students and graduates are going to have to be more determined than ever. They are going to have to be thick skinned, to develop the capacity to bounce back from disappointments, and to be able to learn quickly from any feedback so that they refine their job-seeking skills, become more self aware and enhance their self-promotion capabilities.

All of us have a duty to help them do so. Our students have significant fears about the society they will graduate into and how they can reap the benefits of investment in education. As individuals they have a duty to engage with this environment, to be resilient to the pressures and to have a dream. They will get no reward if they give up before they start, thinking that it is impossible.

I recognise that life is tough for all of us, and working in a university nowadays brings its own pressures. Our resources in careers are being refocused as a result of staff reductions, but our commitment to clients remains as strong as ever.

I came into careers work in the early 80s when we were starting to emerge from a recession. One of my first tasks then was to prepare some Electrical and Electronic Engineering students for interviews for some newly emerging vacancies with a Canadian Telecommunication company. After passing on my insights of how to cope with interviews, I mused that one student was not going to be employable. I learnt a swift lesson when he was the first to be offered a job. He fitted their requirement, and of course I was no longer making the employment decisions.

A few weeks later I saw another student who was despairing because he had made over seventy applications with no hint of success. After going through his applications, CV and interview technique in fine detail I had nothing to suggest in terms of improvement. All I could proffer were words of encouragement that it would all come good if he could just stick at it. It seemed so inadequate! Two weeks later he contacted me to say he had been offered a job.

Sometimes what students or graduates need most is the reassurance to know that what they are doing is along the right lines. Doing it right means not doing it wrong, and unfortunately too many people blow their chances because of lack of attention to detail on applications. In a tough market there is little forgiveness for sloppiness or spelling errors. So I'll end with my ten tips for securing that job. They may be obvious but believe me they do work!

Ten tips to help you get that job

1. Make sure you know exactly what the employer is looking for to fulfil the role. They have a shopping list.

2. Review what you have to offer and identify the explicit evidence to prove the match. Can you get in their basket?

3. Find out all you can about the organisation and how the role fits in.

4. Identify why securing this job really means a lot to you. Work out how you can convey this.

5. Think about what you can bring to the role – not what you can take from it.

6. Spend a lot of time collecting your thoughts about how you should pitch your application.

7. Spend even more time writing it, rewriting and refining it. Too little time invested means too many rejections.

8. Don’t waffle or make claims you can’t prove. Be precise and plant the seeds that you can grow if you are offered an interview.

9. Think about what makes you different, and what extra you can bring. How can you stand out from the competition? Don’t be wacky though.

10.When you have finally completed the application read it critically and objectively. Do you think you have done the best job you can for yourself? If not don’t send it!

And finally whatever the outcome always review the response and learn from your experience. Be a survivor and you can succeed!