Get Hired!

• Final year A2B students from the West Midlands region (home region)
• Final year Birmingham Scholars from the West Midlands region (home region)
• Final Year students from the West Midlands region (home region)
• Recent graduates from 2021 with a bachelors degree who are in part-time work or unemployed, seeking graduate level work and from the West Midlands region
• Recent graduates from 2020 with a bachelors degree who are in part-time work or unemployed, seeking graduate level work and from the West Midlands region

Please note that due to the limited number of spaces, priority places will initially go to: A2B participants, other Birmingham Scholar students and graduates from the West Midlands region on a first come, first served basis.

Eligibility criteria is due to funding, received from OfS (Local Challenge Fund), supporting local graduates into local graduate jobs, enabling particularly under-represented groups).      

Discover your best self. Using Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle Model, you will be introduced to the concept of ‘finding your why’. You’ll consider your values and aspirations, helping to identify jobs of interest and understand West Midlands employers’ needs. Learn ways to boost your can-do mindset and resilience and spot the difference between positive pressure and stress. Take control of your future by getting to know yourself with greater clarity.     

Learning outcomes

1. Confidence building and feeling positive about myself to be in the right mind-set to progress onto day 2
2. Knowing what I can offer employers
3. Opportunity to talk through what I would like to achieve from day 2 & day 3
4. Start to plan my next steps to be prepared for recruitment (action planning)
5. Opportunity to talk to coaches about how I am feeling/what I’m  considering and to tackle any challenges 

Start the day by gaining knowledge about the local labour market. Then understand commercial success in different contexts. Understand why this skill is highly sought by employers and learn how commercial awareness can be demonstrated at interview. You’ll also gain a thorough understanding of popular recruitment processes and how to succeed in them, knowing what employers seek when assessing candidates. Finally, build on what you’ve learnt from Day 1 ready to talk positively about yourself in front of recruiters; confident to ask questions in preparation for Day 3. 

Learning outcomes

• Awareness of West Midlands’ jobs and the labour market
• Confidence to talk positively about yourself to others
• Greater awareness, knowing what employers really look for when recruiting candidates and their scoring processes to help you get ahead of the competition
• How to independently complete recruitment related activities such as job descriptions, improving your CVs and tips for succeeding at interviews

Commence the final day reviewing what’s been learnt so far and how to approach today. Meet a panel of professionals from the business community who will share their life/career experiences and tips, having worked in recruitment. Then meeting employers and recruitment agencies with live vacancies. Chat with careers staff and coaches for advice and support to maximise your time. Finish the day reflecting on your learning, career planning progress, new links and action planning.

Learning outcomes

• Confidence approaching employers and learning the career journeys of others
• Building connections and pursuing the next recruitment steps independently with an organisation(s) paving the way to getting hired

Day 1

• A stronger idea about what career/jobs interests you and why, so that you can tailor your applications
• Greater confidence in yourself, knowing how to build your resilience and can-do mind-set

Day 2

• Knowing what commercial awareness means and how to demonstrate this sought-after skill
• Knowing how recruiters score and assess to then perform at your best
• Knowing how to sell yourself for maximum impact when in front of recruiters
• Gaining tips to STAND OUT from the crowd
• CV writing support available if you need it checked

Day 3

• Showcasing your best self to recruiters looking to recruit locally in the West Midlands, to get yourself hired!
• CV writing support available if you need it checked
• Networking with other professionals to gain additional knowledge
• Get a head-start from other applicants
• Opportunity to APPLY for jobs!

By attending all 3 days, you will qualify for a £200 bursary to cover costs (enabling you to attend when you might not be able to do so).  This will be obtained from the Transformation West Midlands team having attended all three days with evidence of attending, e.g. registration. Information will be provided to you by the University as to the process closer to the date of Get Hired.  

Panel

Daniel Hoff Rodriguez (CX2 Founder Solutions)

After graduating in law, Dan enjoyed a successful career in recruitment. However, over several years Dan became increasingly frustrated and disenchanted with the industry and in 2019, he became the proud founder of CX Squared, a now quadruple award-winning tech recruitment and hiring consultancy. The company was created out of a burning ambition to establish an organisation that is culture first and a community-focused talent business, meaning it gives back first.

When Dan set up CX Squared, the focus was on delivering a customer experience for both the candidate and the client. By focusing on a businesses culture and purpose, and matching that with a candidate’s ambitions and own personality and personal values, in the long-view a candidate is more likely to stay in a company where their values and ideas are shared.

The emphasis on community is at the heart of the enterprise by helping to support and inspire the ‘Next Generation’ of tech talent through various community programmes. It also places the emphasis on both a client and candidate’s customer journey through each stage of the hiring process.

With a keen aim to bridge the digital skills gap in Birmingham and the West Midlands, Dan created The Brum Muse, a now fully recognised CIC, with the goal of creating a framework with clear objectives and actions to help young people at schools, improve diversity for people withing tech and create an equal platform for people from deprived areas of the city. His work has since been recognised through being made Digital Skills Lead for Birmingham Tech and also representing the GBSLEP on the Digital Skills Partnership board for the West Midlands Combined Authority.

At the back-end of 2021, Our Smart Brum was finally launched. Our Smart Brum is a bi-monthly event aimed at empowerment and enablement, created as a platform for young people, educational institutions, local authorities and the wider business eco-system to come together to understand and contribute to Birmingham’s plans to be a Smart City by 2030.

Dan is a champion advocate of encouraging people to talk about the topics that really matter. He strongly believes that "together we are stronger, meaning we can strive to achieve more, but only if we work collaboratively and not against each other".

Hannah Wilson (NHS)

Hannah Wilson is the Deputy Director of Nursing and Therapies at Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust. She is an Occupational Therapist by profession with 22 years’ experience working both clinically and as a leader/manager across a variety of healthcare settings.  Hannah is passionate about stretching traditional role boundaries to be able to move into jobs that were not traditionally open to her profession. Hannah has extensive experience recruiting staff and developing systems and processes for recruitment.

Laura Thursfield

Laura is a Chartered Financial Adviser at Mazars LLP. Laura is responsible for leading the Birmingham Financial Planning team and for a wide range of Midlands-based clients. She has experience advising a wide range of private clients, from senior partners, directors and business owners through to independently wealthy individuals. In recognition of this, Laura was named Rising Star in the Women In Financial Advice Awards 2018 and has appeared in New Model Adviser’s ’35 Under 35’ Advisers in 2018 and 2019. 

Laura is a founding member of the Financial Vulnerability Taskforce, an independent body established in January 2021 to address the way in which the profession identifies and addresses aspects of client vulnerability. 

As Birmingham Young Professional of the Year 2018, Laura acted as a national ambassador for Birmingham and is committed to improving the financial literacy of the city, in particular working alongside schools to develop key skills and self-development opportunities. Recently graduated from her Executive MBA at Aston Business School, Laura is also a Trustee of CORE Education Trust and a member of West Midland’s Women’s Voice Committee, all contributing towards the goal of creating a supportive environment in which all who live and work in the region can thrive.

Speakers

Jasmine Kundra (Former Apprentice Candidate from Coventry)

Jasmine Kundra is a learning and development professional with over 17 years’ experience of steering and managing training in corporate business at senior executive level, having implemented technology-driven learning within organisations such as Citibank, The Civil Aviation Authority, Eurostar and BskyB. Jasmine spent eight years at Mitie, consulting on training programmes internally and externally working with senior management at board level, and two years at Jaguar Land Rover digitising training for their global procurement division. In the last three years, Jasmine relaunched Omniplex’s digital design agency Cursim, establishing long-term strategic partnerships with clients including Thames Water, Stella McCartney, Chanel, Deloitte and Skanska to digitise their learning and help shape their global eLearning programmes. Jasmine is now independently consulting with businesses to design and build digital learning content, including a D&I programme for a national supermarket brand.

• Birmingham City Council
• Black Country Museum
• Deloitte
• Enterprise
• Fit4Sport
• GuyKat
• HS2
• ICF
• KPMG
• Marriot Hotels
• Miss Macaroon
• National Express
• NHS
• Secure and Trust Bank PLC
• Smith and Nephew
• Staffordshire Police (Positive Action Team)
• Talbots
• Teach First
• West Midlands Police
• WM Jobs

The event will also include guidance support from Chamber of Commerce, the three universities involved in the TWM project (University of Birmingham, University College Birmingham and Newman University), and additional support from the facilitator Gradconsult.

Privacy Statement - Transformation West Midlands 

Last updated 4 October 2021

Who are we?

The University of Birmingham, Newman University and University College Birmingham have won a grant from the Office for Students to help boost job opportunities for local graduates in the region. The project is called ‘Transformation West Midlands’ and the three university partners will work closely with key employers in the region to help them recruit locally and diversify their workforce. 

Key to the project is improving the employment outcomes of local undergraduate final year students and graduates* who are from the West Midlands region, seeking work in their home region, supporting in particular Access to Birmingham participants; Black and minority ethnic students/graduates and students/graduates with disabilities. The activities that we deliver are intended to help identify what enables the progression of individuals, so that we can share learning between our careers services and universities, to improve support and provision, boosting graduate job employment.  

The University of Birmingham is the lead partner and will report to the Office for Students and inform the UK Higher Education Sector of the outcomes of this project.  

A number of activities, online resources and information (e.g. skills development training; networks, mentoring, reverse mentoring and events across the West Midlands) will be available to you. This is to help raise your awareness of opportunity in sectors and locations and enhance your personal/professional development.  

What personal data are we collecting?

When you participate, you provide the project with your name, university, year of study, programme of study, student ID number, your postcode, gender, ethnicity, health/disability data and your engagement with the project, as well other information collected on the student record systems, such as Careers Network’s ‘Careers Connect’ which you may have accessed to register for any careers events. We will also collect your feedback e.g. through surveys, questionnaires, reflection logs and focus groups. Only personal data related to the Transformation West Midlands project activity will be held at the University and shared across the partner universities.  

If you are in receipt of progression coaching, we will be collecting further details from questionnaires that you have completed; your written answers to questions put forward to you mid-way and upon exit of coaching and other communications, to determine how helpful coaching has been to support your progression. We will also be collecting data related to your career destination, sectors/roles of interest and your career goals to determine if you reached your goals as a result of the support offered and your actions. We will also be collecting data that relates to the effectiveness and administration of coaching such as number of appointments; career development; any skills gaps or generic barriers; whether you accessed other support such as mentoring, so that we can review and create quality provision that enhances students’ and recent graduates’ employability skills and knowledge. 

To evaluate the effectiveness of progression coaching, coaches from each of the partner universities will be producing a small sample of anonymised case studies for their own reflective practice, to assess challenges, development, results and learning points in order to explore what makes the difference to progression. Additional data collected that may be used, will be from coach notes, action plans and any email correspondence between the coach and coachee that links to progression and barriers to help improve support. 

How will we use it?

This project aims to develop your knowledge, confidence, skills/competencies so that you are better prepared for the workplace and for what local industry demands.  We will test a number of interventions/activities to create a stronger support network, with the goal of leading to higher level graduate employment or further study for individuals that live in the region. 

We will use your personal data to: 

• Deliver additional services and facilities to you, related to careers which are part of the Transformation West Midlands Project and include the partner universities; 

• Communicate effectively with you including the distribution of relevant newsletters and invitations to take part in other careers related activities; 

• Evaluate, monitor and report on how students and recent graduates are accessing our services, plan for future courses and activities, and plan/provide help or reasonable adjustments; 

• Evaluate to what extent we are enabling progression, (which may lead to a graduate level job, further study, employment or self-employment) and which interventions are more effective, to improve how careers services work with local and under-represented students/graduates; 

• Review and report on coaching using data from coaching sessions for creating small anonymised case studies in order for the coaches and the project team across the partner universities to share their reflections on coaching as an intervention for enabling progression towards graduate employment.  

• Communicate anonymous feedback to others for the purpose of knowledge sharing. Feedback includes offering insightful reflections that identify key themes and progression enablers; activities found to be beneficial to progression; generic tips and guidance that would assist others to progress their career endeavours.

What is the legal basis of the processing?

We consider the processing of your personal data for these purposes to be necessary for: 

• the performance of our contractual obligations with you; 

• the performance of tasks we carry out in the public interest; 

• the pursuit of the legitimate interests of the University or external organisations (e.g. to enable your access to external services). 

We do not use your personal data to carry out any wholly automated decision-making that affects you. 

Who will your personal data be shared with?

Your data will be securely shared between the University of Birmingham, Newman University and University College Birmingham to enable the project to evaluate the success of Transformation West Midlands. Coaching conversations, action plans, coach notes will remain anonymous, so your privacy is protected.  Within the University of Birmingham, succinct coaching notes including plans outlining your actions will be shared along with your personal data with Careers Network staff for the purpose of providing you with additional support and service delivery.

Anonymous data will be shared with the external funder, Office for Students, and their evaluators, as part of its reporting obligations to show progress and results. The Transformation West Midlands Steering Group** and colleagues of the three universities will receive anonymous data on a need to know basis. At the University of Birmingham, this includes (but not restricting), Careers Network, to positively change any practice as a result of learning; the Student Access and Progress Committee that monitors performance against the University’s Access and Participation Plan (e.g. interventions to support A2B students); the University Executive Board and the Council to learn of progress and results.

Anonymous data may also be shared with other organisations and the public interested in the project, shared for instance on the Careers Network website to assist with other local students/graduates’ progressing; the OfS website; other higher education institutions to share best practice and local / regional employers to foster greater collaboration and job opportunities.

If we require your consent for any specific uses of your personal data, we will collect it at the appropriate time, explaining why we are collecting the data and how we will use it, and you can withdraw this at any time.  

Your rights

More information about how the University of Birmingham, the lead partner uses your personal data and your rights can be found on the How the University uses your data page and supplementary page student privacy notice.

*Graduates - West Midlands graduates (from the region) who have studied at Newman University, UCB and University of Birmingham, graduating in the last two years with a bachelors degree; currently unemployed or underemployed. The West Midlands area includes Birmingham and Solihull, Black Country (Sandwell, Dudley, Walsall, Wolverhampton), Coventry and Warwickshire, Hereford and Worcestershire, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, Staffordshire. 

**Transformation West Midlands Steering Group – Black Country Consortium, Citi-Redi, GBSLEP, Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, University of Birmingham Guild of Students, Uprising and the partner universities. 

Please read this if you are submitting anything about yourself (i.e. your personal data) for the purpose of University and Transformation West Midlands project marketing communications and publicity.  

It is completely voluntary to submit any personal data for the use of your photographs, recordings, vlogs, blogs, quotes, case studies etc. that you submit. That means it is your choice to include your full name, degree course, year of study/graduation year and any other personal data that may collectively identify you. Therefore, when you send your material to us, please do not submit any personal data that you do not wish to be used in the described ways.  

Your materials will be used to publicise the benefits of you using or participating in activity and to help demonstrate visually to other students, graduates, higher education institutional careers colleagues and employers/other providers what these services are like. 

Your materials may be used in the following sources or any others, as the University of Birmingham, Newman University, University College Birmingham and the funder (Office for Students) sees fit: 

• The University’s worldwide website and e-publications 

• Paper-based University and publications 

• Transformation West Midlands project presentations to students and graduates (provided as a link if you submit a video for example)

• Transformation West Midlands project presentations to employers and careers colleagues in the Higher Education Sector (provided as a link if you submit a video for example) 

• Transformation West Midlands reporting that evidence activity and project feedback 

• Summative reports to the funder and its evaluators  

The lawful basis for storing and using your personal data for the described purposes is ‘legitimate interests’, which means we need to process the personal information to fulfil our objectives, we believe it will not adversely affect you and we think you would expect it. The legitimate interests are that it is necessary for the involved organisations to publicise the benefits of the use of and participation in this project and to demonstrate visually to other students, graduates, higher education institutional careers colleagues and employers/other providers what these services are like. 

Non-exhaustive examples of what form your personal data might take or how it might be used include: 

1. Photographs
2. Video Recordings  
3. Voice Recordings
4. Vlogs
5. Blogs
6. Case studies
7. Written feedback 
8. Podcasts
9. The University using your written feedback, blogs or case studies to create a video or animation 

The personal data will be stored and used for as long as necessary for the described purposes. After this time it will be securely destroyed.  

If you later change your mind and wish to opt out of having your personal data used in this way, please contact Alison Sharp, Project Lead, Transformation West Midlands a.sharp@bham.ac.uk who will consider whether it is reasonable and possible to stop using / remove your personal data. We wish to treat people well and where it is reasonable and possible to stop using this personal data / remove this personal data, we will do so. However as the lawful basis for this use of personal data is legitimate interests and not your consent, the organisations are only obliged to stop using / remove any personal data where your interests outweigh the interests of the organisations.