Student-led Employability Audit Toolkit > Adopter Universities - Doing an Employability Audit > Employability Audit - UWE

Adopter Universities - Doing an Employability Audit > Employability Audit - UWE

Through adoption of the Student-led Employability Audit Toolkit project, the University of the West of England (UWE) took the materials, support and advice available to design and implement a student-led employability audit of mechanical and electrical engineering degrees at the university.

The adoption activities at UWE were led by Adele Merrison (Careers Consultant, adele.merrison@uwe.ac.uk). Find out more details about UWE's audit process and associated outputs below.

The Audit Process

The engineering degree employability audit was carried out by six students [two from electrical and four from mechanical engineering degrees] during 4 meetings between the 7th March and 4th April 2012. The students were recruited through the university's PAL [Peer Assisted Learning] scheme.

UWE Adopter

The project had four strands:

1) Employer consultation

The students having identified the top five ‘key’ skills graduate employers require, surveyed engineering employers to determine how these skills and attributes can be successfully evidenced on application forms, at assessment centres and at interviews.

2) Module audit

Using the knowledge gained from the employer consultation, students conducted a module-by-module employability audit of their electrical and mechanical engineering to identify ‘evidence gathering’ opportunities related to these five skill areas. They then made suggestions as to how these opportunities could be further developed.

3) Comparison of employability skills development opportunities in mechanical and electrical degrees

The students asked if there were differences in opportunities to develop or enhance employability skills between awards. If so, what examples of good practice from one area could be suggested for adoption by the other?

4) Personal career goals

What are their personal career goals? After reviewing occupational literature detailing the key skills required for that specific role, how well does their degree prepare them by offering opportunities to acquire these? What gaps if any are there? How can these be filled (e.g. work experience, volunteering)?

Students captured their experience through the audit process using an online blog.

Audit Outputs

The students' work resulted in an Engineering Employability Audit Report describing the project’s rationale and findings including all the documents produced during the audit, the recommendations and blog posts:

UWE - Engineering Employability Audit Report

The report has been well-received by the Department of Engineering, Design & Mathematics and it is believed that its recommendations will be considered by the Head of Department.

Thus far, the audit process and resultant report has been disseminated via four conference and seminar presentations. To maximise sustainability, Adele has shared the practice of conducting the audit and its outcomes with careers colleagues who have expressed interest in adopting this activity for their own faculties.

A case study capturing UWE's experience of, and learning from, the project can be downloaded below:

UWE - Employability Audit Case Study

Finally, to support dissemination of the project around UWE and further afield, a project poster and presentation were developed, as below:

UWE - Project Poster

UWE - Project Presentation