Employability Day – October 2023 - Confident Students = Confident Hires

Posted on: 25 October 2022 by Jade McGee in Connections in action

In 2022, as part of a revamped programme of employer connected events at the University of Liverpool, we launched #LivUni Employability Day to provide us with an opportunity to create a high profile, unmissable employability experience on campus for all staff and students.

The day is set to become an annual occurrence in our University calendar and each year will be themed around a trending hot topic in student and graduate recruitment.

This year, the focus was on Career Confidence following reports that less than 50% of students and graduates feel confident about securing their dream job. Alongside a series of confidence-boosting initiatives across campus, we used Employability Day to connect current students with role models from a range of employer partners to provide inspiration and top tips for overcoming imposter syndrome and developing their career confidence.

All activities were designed to enable employers to engage with our diverse student population in a creative way, whilst helping our students develop techniques that will help them take their next career planning step, confidently.

We know that our students really value hearing career stories from those that have recently been in their shoes, so we invited our employer partners to engage their most recent hires from University of Liverpool in this event via a series of alumni “Been there, done that” panels on the main stage in our Guide of Students.

These panels followed a lively and inspiring opening keynote speech expertly executed by Martina Witter, a motivational speaker who used the platform to talk to our students about her own experiences in overcoming low confidence. Martina was able to draw on over 20 years of experience working with individuals to develop a strong mindset and has been featured in HuffPost, Thrive, BBC Radio Manchester and more. Martina’s talk perfectly set the scene for the day and encouraged students to be open-minded for the talks that followed.

Across the day, our students heard from alumni speakers from 19 different organisations in roles relating to one of our seven career clusters including; commerce, technology, science & engineering, people & public sector, creative industries, health & wellbeing and nature & sustainability.

We recorded all of the panels so that they could be watched on demand by those who couldn’t attend in person – take a look  here.

Over 500 students attended on the day to hear from, and network with our panellists. Students that attended were from a wide range of backgrounds, with many of them not typically attending our more traditional careers events. From an employers perspective, this provided a unique opportunity to engage with otherwise hard to reach talent.

Employers involved in the event had a positive experience, with over 80% stating that they would return for a similar event, and 100% stating that they met students from a diverse background.

Feedback from a panel speaker, shared via LinkedIn:

Furthermore the event had a huge impact on our students, with many of them sharing positive feedback both on the day and afterwards.

Feedback from a student that attended, shared via LinkedIn:

Employability Day will return in autumn 2023, and will again provide a range of opportunities for you to work with us to raise your profile amongst our students.

Contact us to register your interest for autumn 2023.