Building the Employer Relationship – Sci-Tech Daresbury Campus

Posted on: 4 May 2020 in Connections in action

The Employer Connections Team looks to build sustained relationships with a diverse range of employers, all with the aim of securing a range of opportunities for our students and graduates.

However, many of the relationships we build go far beyond this and one such example is Sci-Tech Daresbury, a partnership that has been gathering momentum over recent years.  

The Sci-Tech Daresbury Campus sits within the Liverpool City Region and is home to over 150 science, engineering and technology companies alongside the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Daresbury Laboratory, part of the UK Research and Innovation body. 75% of the (1500) staff working on the Sci-Tech Campus are degree qualified or above and many of the companies based at Daresbury have high growth value.  And as we speak, plans are already underway to expand the Daresbury Campus, with a vision to eventually being able to accommodate up to 10,000 people working there over the next five years.  

Attracting talent will be critical to support this expansion and therefore the Employer Connections Team has embarked upon building a deeper relationship with the companies based at Sci-Tech Daresbury to support this.  

Building the relationship has involved visiting the Daresbury campus on a regular basis to discuss building a broad strategic partnership to the benefit of both parties but also has meant that we have been working closely with some of the individual companies based there to understand their recruitment and talent needs. Building and cementing the Daresbury relationship, has seen an increase in: 

• The number of companies engaging with Careers and Employability initiatives; 
• The number companies offering summer internships, year in industry placements and graduate employment opportunities for our students and graduates;  
• Companies becoming engaged within Faculty based employability activity.  

But it hasn’t stopped there... 

To ensure more of the best talent from the University is retained within the Liverpool City Region and to help strengthen the links between Careers & Employability to Sci-Tech Daresbury, they have recently appointed a student Campus Brand Ambassador to actively raising the profile of Sci-Tech Daresbury amongst our students utilising a peer-to-peer approach.  

Of particular success this year, was the introduction of some virtual campus tours and insight into life working at Sci-Tech in place of our originally planned “Career Trek” out to the site with some of our students.  This provided students with a valuable overview of Sci-Tech Daresbury and the anticipated expansion plans, greater understanding about the Daresbury Laboratory and the companies based there, an opportunity to hear firsthand from a number of company representatives and entrepreneurs and perspective from a current UoL placement student and recent graduate, who both explained what it was like to work for a company based on the campus and how they made the transition from their course of study, to their current role/career.   

Sci-Tech Daresbury were also represented at our ConnEXPO event in autumn 2020 and we envisage seeing an acceleration in the number of opportunities for our students, including offers of: 

• Summer internships 
• Year in Industry placements  
• Graduate roles  
• Course-based real-world projects 
• Networking opportunities  
• Webinars  

Watch this space!