With more than 7,500 students, University College Birmingham today is unrecognisable from the small Victorian classes where it all started.
Today, hospitality managers, aviation executives, dazzling hairdressers and makeup artists, educators, chefs, bakers, tourism industry experts, business leaders and creative entrepreneurs learn skills for life at a university hailed for its vocational training, academic achievements and cultural diversity.
We have invested £130 million in our campuses and facilities, including building McIntyre House and Moss House, since 2014. These ambitious projects represent a bold statement of intent beyond the dreams of Birmingham’s early educational pioneers.
hired@UCB is our impartial careers, employability and placements service for students and alumni at University College Birmingham.
Whether it’s guiding you towards your ideal placement, preparing you to stand out in the job market or backing you in setting up your own business, our dedicated team have the specialist knowledge and experience to help craft you into a confident, career-ready graduate.
Come and meet us at the start of your studies, don’t leave it until your final year. There is so much one-on-one practical advice we can offer throughout your time with us.
University College Birmingham Challenge
Hired is the middle man between employers and students. We are speaking with employers all the time, whether that is to arrange careers fairs, advertise roles or deliver virtual employer presentations.
The challenge that we face is engaging students with our online platform Hired Connect as well as receiving applications from students for the roles that we advertise. Some roles that are advertised by Hired, we think would be great for students, however receive zero applications and we are not too sure why.
Objectives, outcomes and impact
Hired has decided to take part as we would like to hear from students how we can further develop Hired Connect to be more student friendly, understanding what it is that might be a barrier for you getting onto the site. Do you have any issues with the look and the pathway to get there? How do you find out about roles? Where do you normally look and why?
We would also like to know what your thoughts are in regards to the roles that are advertised. What do you think about the job description and the person specification? Is there anything that you look for on adverts or anything that puts you off? How can we work with employers in order to make sure that we can challenge in the right way to remove these barriers for you?
Hopefully, an outcome will be a comprehensive document of considerations in regards to improvements on Hired Connect engagement as well as job engagement. Outcome would be a noticeable increase in engagement as well as suggestions in what/how to implement any ideas put forward from yourselves. It will also support us going forwards with engaging with employers as we will be able to comment more on job description etc with actual examples from the students.
We would hope that the impact would be that our students feel listened to, that they have a say in how and what we advertise and that we are more connected to the student voice.
Key requirements for students and graduates
It would be useful if students had a marketing background to support with advertisement of Hired Connect however, we would appreciate the opinions of any student.
Ideally would have applied for some placements or graduate roles so that they understand the process. Ideally would have utilised either Hired Connect from UCB or equivalent in Newman and University of Birmingham.
The desire to have honest conversations about some of the wider issues facing barriers to students utilising University in house careers support.
Length and frequency of meetings
Four 1 hour meetings over the 3 months. Dates TBC.
Location will be online Teams or Zoom.
Join
Deadline date - Sunday 23 January 2022 (23:59).