What was the objective?

The primary goal was to encourage first-year students to start thinking about their careers early on. While many may feel it is too soon to consider life after graduation, the competitive job market demands that students focus on developing both skills and academic achievements. Building employability skills is a gradual process that cannot be crammed into the final months before graduation. Our objective was to provide a practical session, taught collaboratively with greater time and staff to foster discussion and reflection.

What was your approach, and how did you implement it?

Two hours of dedicated time each semester for all ~800 in the first year is now built into the student's normal scheduled timetable. This builds on a previous ‘short and sweet’ 20-minute format at the beginning of 6 science labs over the last four years. The sessions despite being amended from year to year were rushed, lacked depth and cohesion and resulted in minimal completion of tasks. We wanted to change this approach to delivering employability to where students had time to produce outputs, time to discuss with peers and the GTAs. 

The sessions, referred to as ‘careers labs’ (a term that began informally but became standard), involved extensive logistics. Delivered in a lab with a capacity of 50 students, they were repeated 16 times, requiring the involvement of 5 academic staff, 27 GTAs and myself. There were two labs, one in each semester, with training sessions provided for both staff and GTAs.

Students completed pre-lab exercises exploring careers-related research from Bright Network and the Institute of Student Employers, focusing on employer vs. student perceptions of skill needs in recruitment. In the semester 1 class, they learned about the key skills employers seek in graduates and worked in groups to match cards with skill names and definitions. They then audited their own strengths and areas for improvement, discussing how to develop these skills. Next, they created a skills-development action plan, learned how to write a one-page CV and had time allocated so they could draft their own in class.
In the second semester, students reflected on the skills they had developed in the time since the last lab and used the STAR framework to structure their responses, (students often struggle to effectively articulate the skills, tending to more generalised accounts. This leads to being unable to clearly convey their abilities and experiences to potential employers). Then, in groups we got the students to write a cover letter to a specific role and asked them to peer review and judge the letter most likely to get the job. Chocolates kept the winners sweet in each class and the winning team in the whole year got Amazon vouchers – all to create a light-hearted approach. It is a diverse cohort with many international students commenting on how pleasantly surprised that they got careers advice.

How did you measure success?

As we start the 3rd year of the careers labs, we would like to build on the last two years of informal evaluations. We want to formally examine student engagement and participation in the sessions, as well as evaluate the sessions' effectiveness and impact on students' preparedness. Also, we will compare the outcomes between WP and non-WP students.

What were your key takeaways?

Given the low employment outcomes for life sciences students and the need to jumpstart their career planning, the motivation for running these sessions is clear. Practical learnings have been that a 2-hour session is the best fit in terms of engaging students and being able to run a practical workshop style where students can chat, explore ideas and produce outputs. Lastly, a key benefit has been getting to know the students’ strengths, experiences and even challenges beyond their academic achievements, which can only help create a supportive learning environment.

How can staff find out more?

They can contact Fiona Stubbs (Careers & Employability Manager for MVLS).

First published: 1 September 2025

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