Supporting Partners

Barriers prohibiting students/graduates progression into higher level employment can include: a lack of professional networks and social capital to gain knowledge and quality work experience; family commitments impacting on time to plan a career; self-limiting beliefs; lack of confidence or resilience; lack of GCSEs to enter certain industries/roles; lack of understanding of how to navigate career/sectors and a lack of ‘just like me’ role models to gain inspiration and direction.

We recognise there are many organisations and agencies within the West Midlands who are doing great work in the area of diversity and inclusion, social mobility & the skills agenda. Therefore to avoid duplication, we would like to forge partnerships with supporters who we can either signpost our students/graduates to or work directly with to create activity, thus work collaboratively on the mission to level the playing field.

The Transformation West Midlands project seeks to unlock the barriers to local graduate level employment by working more closely with private companies, charities, social enterprises, agencies, regional funded projects and community groups, who can support via:

• Offering (bespoke) places to our students and graduates on your programmes
• Working with us to create/co-create activity based on the needs and wants of our students/graduates
• Act as one of our referral agencies
• Offering or signposting our students to any skills workshops/training or work based opportunities in the region
• Acting as a mentor: 1:1 or group mentoring
• Take part in Deep sector dive events in key growth sectors: Professional Services, Health and Life Sciences, Technology etc
• Provide a ‘like me’ case study – blog, vlog, written
• Workplace visits or talks about career journey/sector you work in

• Improve the work-readiness of our under-represented groups by improving their skills, their networks, knowledge, experience and self-wort
• Forge meaningful connections with partners in the region who have a similar mission to help transform the outcomes of under-represented students in the West Midlands region
• Understand your business and needs, helping you build a more inclusive and diverse workforce for the future
• Understand the barriers to local employment and tackle the in-balance together.

• Access to local students and graduates across 3 West Midlands based universities who we can promote/signpost to any activity/events you may be organising
• Feature you in communications/social media/newsletters going out to students/gradates
• List your website/service on the TWM website to drive traffic
• Event or activity collaboration (with the potential for us to fund if it is ‘value for money’)
• Help you meet your internal CSR commitments
• Any other collaboration opportunities which suit your agenda, as well as ours