Grow Your Future Week 2022

Posted on: 12 April 2022 by Samantha Riella in Connections in action

Grow Your Future 2022

Grow Your Future was a week-long, virtual employability event designed for students from the School of Environmental Sciences.

Environmental Sciences Employability Week

Grow Your Future was a week-long, virtual employability event designed specifically for students from the School of Environmental Sciences during the week commencing Monday 21st March 2022. Being partially timetabled into the student’s academic calendar ensured the event was accessible to all years of study across the school which led to high levels of engagement from students.

The industry-led sessions involved over 20 organisations sourced by the Employer Connections Team taking part in six different panel sessions. The representatives gave the students insight into their organisation and the sector plus any internship, placement and graduate opportunities available at their organisations. Following this, students were offered the opportunity to connect with employers through an informal Q&A.

Panels were Careers in Earth Sciences, Planning, Environmental Consultancy, Green/Sustainable, Ocean/Marine and an Alternate Careers panel. Each of the panels had a University of Liverpool alumni involved representing various organisations.

Our new panel for this year Green/Sustainable Careers saw representatives from Siemens, Matalan, GSK, NVentures and Fleetsolve talk about how their organisations are tackling sustainability and environmental issues as well as share some exciting new roles around these topics.

Think Pacific Environmental Consultancy Challenge 

The week also incorporated a real-world Environmental Consultancy challenge where students worked in groups on a challenge posed by Think Pacific. Think Pacific sends over 1000 students abroad each year from the UK to the Fiji Islands for cross-cultural travel immersion programmes. Being conscious of the carbon footprint of international travel, they asked students to consider the following -

 “How can we best combat the flight emissions produced from international travel? We are keen to invest in carbon projects, advocacy projects or ways to mitigate our carbon footprint. But what is the best way to do this, and will it be effective? Design your presentation for how Think Pacific should best address this issue and have a robust and clear policy.”

Simon Darker, co-founder of Think Pacific said...

“We were completely blown away by the work ethic and high standard of output produced. In just one week, students were able to fully understand our needs, connect with our values, research to high quality, and showcase super professional pitches. It was an incredibly difficult decision to choose the winning team!”

Testimonials

With over 300 students attending, the success of Grow Your Future is a result of collaboration between Careers and Employability (Science and Engineering Faculty Team and Employer Connections Team), academic employability leads, industry partners, student societies and the School of Environmental Sciences Student Experience Team. Here is what some of the employers and students involved had to say...

  • “In a year where student engagement has been tough, the University of Liverpool Careers & Employability team defied the odds again with a fantastic, really well-run panel event. There was a great range of panellists speaking with a terrific, really engaged group of students who were eager to explore opportunities across a whole variety of fields.” Lui Del Verto – Teach First
  • “It was a privilege to work with the Employability Team and students at the University of Liverpool this week for a very inspiring Environmental Consultancy Challenge! Dom, and the Employability team designed a fabulous and highly engaging hybrid project for Think Pacific to connect and collaborate with students. This facilitated a unique career experience for students, whilst providing an innovative platform for Think Pacific to identify talented young people and make an impact to real world issues." Simon Darker, Co-Founder- Think Pacific
  • “The activity was attended by a diverse group of students and the speakers on the panel highlighted the variety of ways into the profession (Planning) and the areas it covers.” Joanne Harding - Home Builders Federation
  • "The events are a great opportunity to understand the different ways you can get into each specific sector. I would recommend it to other students as it has definitely helped to broaden my scope for job searching." Final year Environmental Sciences student