Careers Adviser 1: Welcome to the Careers and Employability Centre at the University of Birmingham. We very much hope that when you arrive here as a student and right through your time as being a student here that you are going to make the best use of our service as possible. We have an astounding array of services for you. A sign of the commitment that this university actually has to your employability, which we know is a significant issue for those of you starting university. A lot of students, particularly new students feel that you can't actually use our services, until either you graduating and perhaps in your final year or that you have a very clear idea of what you wish to obtain in terms of a career. I'd like, at this point to actually say that’s not at all the case. We are very very happy to work with you, when you are actually trying to identify what your career ideas are. Of course, we'll help you when you have identified an option and to help you actually make those applications. So you'll find our guidance services are very diverse and available across the institution.
Careers Adviser 2: Have you used the advice desk before?
Student 1: No.
Careers Adviser 1: Here in the Careers Information Centre you can use our advice desk on a daily basis for quick queries.
Careers Adviser 2: But we'll also help with putting a CV together and also if you need help like with the interview practice and that sort of thing.
Careers Adviser 1: One of the things that we hope you will find particular important and particularly valuable is the very strong and vibrant engagement we have from employers. Now these are employers who are nationally known names who are international and global graduate recruiters as Birmingham is one of the targeted universities for those employers. But we also have public sector, charities and smaller companies, particularly from the region. Now, as much as possible we try and involve them in the delivery of our work and the most obvious way though that you'll actually see them on campus as actually in our events. Those are the individual presentations of which several hundred are actually run on campus each year, ranging from major employers who recruit graduates of all discipline to those who are recruiting from very specific degree programmes. You are welcome to attend any of those presentations and as many as you wish to attend. You will hopefully attend some of the fairs that we do. These are significant fairs with maybe up to fifty or sixty employers attending them.
Student 2: The services that I've used from the Careers and Employability Centre principally are the Honeypot award that I was successful in and also the career fairs that they regularly put on and generally just going in and having a look around with what’s out there and basically looking on all the posters and seeing what workshops and what internships and anything like that are available.
Careers Adviser 1: One of our main partners on campus in delivering employability services is actually the Guild of Students. And one of the main services that they offer that we link in closely with is their Job Zone. Now that’s a service that actually will source up and advertise part time work for you to undertake whilst you are a student during term time, but also during vacation periods. I'm also very pleased to say that we were one of the few Universities whose career service actually runs an entrepreneurship service. Now, entrepreneurship is actually a very popular word at the moment. It has great currency. What it actually means is that we recognise that there will be a significant number of you who actually aren't necessarily looking to work for an employer. You are actually thinking about running your own businesses or working on a freelance or consultancy basis. If those are your interests or perhaps you've developed those interests whilst you were a student, we have a dedicated entrepreneurship and innovation centre.
EIC adviser: The EIC offers a number of services for our students, anything from a short introduction to entrepreneurship and enterprise skills through to actually helping them start their businesses with funding and with incubator facilities and other resources that will help them do that. Through enterprise where they are starting their own business or just picking up some enterprise skills, students learn things that are really valuable for later life. They learn how to sell themselves and how to persuade and influence other people, how to manage risk and how to spot opportunities and of course practical things like finances and marketing as well.
Careers Adviser 1: Just a reminder, we are not here just for you when you are finalists. We are not here just to talk about planned career options. With our work experience, with our employer events, with our PSA programme, the entrepreneurship support we offer, all of the advisory services that we offer at college level, but also centrally, you can and should make use of us from the first day you arrive here and, I'm pleased to say that we can even support you after you graduate. So please, do make use of us. Thank you.
