SUNDAY 4 MARCH, 2018 – UWI TODAY
13
CAMPUS MATTERS
The Careers, Co-Curricular and Community Engagement (C3)
Department helps students make the transition into the work
environment by providing services and a suite of non-academic
programmes aimed at students’ professional, personal and skill
development.
One of the tools we use is the Graduate Tracer Survey which
helps us to measure the effectiveness of some of our workshops
and services.
A popular myth about the Careers section of the Department
is that we are a job placement office. Though we facilitate job
placement for graduates, this is only a small part of our work.
The Graduate Tracer Survey (2015) for example, investigated
students’ participation in one of our flagship programmes, The
UWI-Republic Bank World of Work (WOW) Programme. This
is an initiative geared towards equipping final-year UWI students
with tools for today’s working world.
Started by The UWI Alumni Association as small lunchtime
sessions, it has expanded into a year-long programme, which
addresses seven different competency and skill areas. Though
the programme provides the opportunity for students to
gain employment at the end, it focuses on teaching students
developmental skills to prepare them for leaving the campus.
The results of the GTS showed that 75% of the graduates
surveyed were employed one year after graduation. Of the
graduates employed, 66% indicated that they had participated in
the WOWprogramme; 41% indicated that their field of study was
not directly applicable to their current jobs. This finding bears a
direct relationship to the career language and mind-set that we
practice on a daily basis: your major is not your master; your
degree is a stepping-stone on your career journey. An important
accomplishment, degrees provide leverage for access into the
world of work, but not necessarily placement in a desired career;
59% of our respondents can attest to this. This however does not
necessarily lead to a future of job dissatisfaction and overall career
malaise. We teach students that career fulfilment can come outside
of their degree major with adequate planning and research, and
proactively seeking relevant experiences.This drives home the fact
that students must focus on the development of a wide range of
knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Howwe help our birds fly the nest
Student services prepare them for the world of work
B Y K A T H Y - A N N L E W I S
One way of providing opportunities for competency
development is the provision of internships and other job-related
opportunities. Ideally, this is a journey that should begin long
before thoughts of graduation begin to provide momentum for
exiting the university system. The GTS results show that graduates
felt opportunities for practical experiences and internships were
inadequate in preparing them to enter the world of work. This
is not, however, because of the absence of such experiences, as
various opportunities are available to students from the first
year of enrolment. The Careers Section facilitates opportunities
for paid and unpaid internships and semester and vacation
employment opportunities. Additionally, we provide opportunities
for mentorship, job shadowing and informational sessions for
students. These opportunities do not exist in a vacuum, but are
closely tied to stakeholder perception and needs.
Our career office is a place where strategic alliances are
facilitated between our students and our stakeholders. From
our very first career intervention, which traditionally targets our
first-year students, we facilitate stakeholder partnerships and
collaborations. We provide access to our stakeholders to begin
career conversations with our students, and provide an insight into
the world of work. This is not an attempt to prepare our students
for a job, but to expose students very early in their career journey,
to activities and experiences geared toward their development as
individuals. Our students learn to identify their strengths through
career assessments, and are then introduced to a range of possible
careers they can pursue based on their strengths, interests, values,
skills and their degrees of choice.This sends the message very early
that it is their major, in addition to a unique combination of skills
that will provide the most leverage in their career development and
transitions. Our students see this happening in an environment
that shows partnerships between the campus and the world to
which they will soon transition. This also provides an avenue for
budding entrepreneurs, researchers or students interested in public
advocacy to begin aligning strengths, and identifying niches for
further exploration.
But let us assume, for the purposes of this article, a student
(Uwista) does come to us in her final year of enrolment. The office
caters for this type of intervention as well; as our three sections
careers, co-curricular and community engagement, support a
wide range of professional and skill development opportunities.
In Uwista’s first semester, she will be encouraged to develop skills
through one or more of our many co-curricular programmes.
These range from first aid courses, public speaking and voice
training, to ethics and integrity and Microsoft Project to name
a few. Alternatively or simultaneously, students are encouraged
to become involved in one of our many community engagement
initiatives.
This then, is our opportunity to introduce Uwista to the
World ofWork programme. As part of the programme, Uwista will
participate in employer-facilitated resume-writingworkshops, one-
on-one resume critique sessions, local and regional in person and
virtual company presentations, interview preparation techniques,
networking skills theory and practical sessions, and stakeholder
facilitated mock interviews. Finally, Uwista will attend our annual
recruitment fair; a highly interactive hub where students and
employers exchange handshakes, information, goals, vacancies and
internship information, smiles and of course, resumes
Our external stakeholders support our belief that it is a degree,
supplemented by a unique combination of skills, which affects
hiring decisions. A survey of the employers at our 2017 Republic
BankWorld ofWork programme revealed that just over 60%of our
stakeholders believe our students are very competitive compared
to new hires locally, regionally and internationally. Two thirds of
attendees consider our students highly competitive when ranked
with the average selection pool. 79% indicated that they thought
our students were well prepared for assimilation into the workplace.
Employers still believe though that more of our students should
engage in internships prior to graduation, and some of our students
still showed a lack of out of classroom experiences.
This survey is of course, based on the students who would
have completed our WOW programme – which, according to
the GTS 2015 accounts for roughly 60% of our 2015 graduates.
Students attending WOW 2017 would have benefitted from
programme interventions put in place as a result of the feedback
from the graduate tracer survey.
Kathy-Ann Lewis is Manager, Careers, Co-Curricular and Community Engagement, Division of Student Services and Development, The UWI St. Augustine.
