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Student-led Employability Audit Toolkit

Lead Institution: University of Exeter
Collaborating with: Teach First, Nationwide, JP Morgan, Centrax, Airbus, Microsoft, RBS, Devon Education Business Partnership

Project Outputs > Developing an Employability Audit

A key strand of the Student-led Employability Audit Toolkit project was to design a process through which the extent to which employability support was integrated within the University of Exeter’s Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering degree programmes could be audited. Initially, this involved research in order to develop appropriate audit materials:


Informing the development of appropriate audit materials

Initially, research was undertaken of the employability-related resources available to students in the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Exeter. It was found that these resources included:

  • Dedicated careers advice / employability support
  • Careers fairs
  • Personal development planning
  • Employer in the foyer events
  • Employer-led skills sessions
  • Leaflets, noticeboards, plasma screens, emails
  • Work placements and industrial training
  • Extracurricular activities
  • Exeter leaders award

The below report generated from this research may provide a useful structure for other universities that are considering how employability is embedded across their institution for students. In addition, so to might the project's research of various national reports, articles and weblinks.

Employability-related resources at Exeter

To inform the project further, a questionnaire was designed and distributed to Exeter students from all degree programmes doing Year 2 Maths; students were asked to complete a questionnaire among three of them, with a total of 49 questionnaires completed. The questionnaire uncovered:

  • The skills identified by students as the most required skills by graduate employers
  • The students' understanding of how they have developed these skills through their degree programme
  • Students' suggestions for which aspects of their degrees could be developed further to enable a better integration of employability support in their degree programmes, and the ways in which they saw this integration being achieved

The majority of students suggested that teamwork and communication skills were the skills that required most development within their degree programmes in order to ‘move away from being a typical mathematics student'.

The below report captures the findings of the survey in full:

Student Questionnaire - Report of Findings

Finally, meetings were organised between students and graduate employers. These allowed students to quiz the employers about the skills which were seen as relevant for STEM students moving into the workplace, and how the employers believed such skills may be acquired through either extracurricular activities or via degree programmes. The employers engaged in this process were: Matchtech, TeachFirst and IBM. 

Staff involved

Dr Barrie Cooper
Project lead, University of Exeter

Abel Nyamapfene
University of Exeter

Amanda Arthur
University of Exeter

Amy Boylan
University of Exeter

Chloe Cunningham
University of Exeter

Dawn Evans
University of Exeter

Fiona Dyke
Teach First

Greg Craft
Nationwide

Holly Geipel
University of Exeter

James Baxani
Teach First

Jodie Sherman
JP Morgan

Julie Hawkings
Centrax

Kathryn Edwards
Airbus

Lee Stott
Microsoft

Mohit Malik
RBS

Paul Hartley
Devon Education Business Partnership

Richard Whinnett
University of Exeter

Rowanna Smith
University of Exeter