A best-practice guide to working with the Careers Service

A key driver for most students coming to the University of Bristol is their future career and the added value a degree gives them. As such it's vital that academic departments and the Careers Service work hand-in-hand to help students make the most of their time here.

Most students know the Careers Service exists but only around half make use of us whilst they're here. This means your students aren't all getting the advice they need to enhance their graduate prospects. For us, posters and emails are not enough to attract students. Despite the driving desire amongst students to gain graduate employment many still muddle through rather than seek advice!

Experience has taught us that good exposure to students through their academic programme is the best way to not only get them to use us early enough to make a real difference but often simply to get them thinking about their prospects and what they need to do before they graduate.

"We have always found the staff helpful and responsive and able to come up with inventive solutions to the various problems that we have posed. In particular, the Service has helped us to raise awareness of Careers issues amongst our students by means of presentations; and we have also been given a lot of support in managing industrial placement opportunities for students." - Dr Mike Barton, Electrical & Electronic Engineering.


The bare minimum:

At the very least we'd like to talk to all students near the start of their final year (and that includes new one-year masters' students) for at least half an hour in a dedicated careers talk within the department. That's enough for us to raise awareness of the job market, the application processes they'll face and the support we provide. Referrals to our advisers from your staff when they encounter students with employment concerns are also welcomed.


The ideal:

The careers message gets across best with regular, dedicated, hour-long careers lectures at the start of each year, tailored to particular cohorts of students, and supported by further events throughout the year such as:

All these events are available by talking to your departmental Careers Adviser or the Service's Skills Development or Work Placement officers.


To ensure we have successful, well-attended events that benefit your department, your students, and our visiting staff we'd recommend the following: