What sort of support do PGRs want from the Careers Service?

Steve Carter (Student Careers)

Project overview

To look at PGR perceptions and awareness of the Careers Centre offer and if they feel that it meets their needs with regard to individual careers advice, workshop sessions and employer engagement.

Key findings

From the survey, awareness of our services and how they can access them is high, with 27 or 93.1% being aware of us and only 2 or 6.9% being unaware.
However, verbal evidence from the focus groups suggests that the further away from being a taught student, the less relevant they feel that the Careers Service is, especially re: employer engagement.
PGRs would like to meet and speak to employers relating to the skills and knowledge they were accruing via their PhDs: ‘employers who want their level of qualifications as well as subject matter and skills’.
There were focus group discussions as to a ‘realistic’ pathway to academia and to have it ‘demystified’.
International students feel that there is not enough specific support put on for them about finding work in the UK, including academia.

Implications for practice

Careers Service senior managers can use it to better inform our overall service to, where possible, consider if they are meet any of the needs of our PGR community. A good example would be how we can better engage employers who specifically would like to recruit PGRs, (see Outputs below).
Where we cannot, as a Careers Service fill all the gaps highlighted in this report, look at where we can collaborate with other parts of the university. For example, providing one off sessions with faculties and PGR student bodies (see Outputs below).
Doctoral College senior managers will be provided with an overview of the Careers Service provision and the PGR perception of it with a view to collaborative effort to meet PGR needs as part of the new PGR Opportunities and Futures Strategy (see Next Steps below).
Graduate School managers and other stakeholders working with PGRs can utilise the finding to create/implement bespoke events for their PGRs such as application workshops or alumni panel events.
As a basis for further research into the employability provision to our PGR community for example helping to ‘educate’ employers as to the value of recruiting PGRs for their organisation.

If you want to find out more details about this fellowship or what the next steps were upon completion please read the full snapshot or contact Steve Carter (s.g.carter@leeds.ac.uk)

Project start date: 1 September 2022