When gearing up for an intense two-weeks focusing on honing you to be a highly employable global citizen, learning your new key skills directly from the employer you actually want to work for might not be an obvious approach. But UCL Careers actually has an extensive employer engagement programme based on skills development, which will be a large part of the Global Citizenship Summer Programme.

Graduate recruiters are often very willing to give up their time to come onto campus and spend time helping students improve their employability skills. At the Global Citizenship Employability Programme, employers from a vast variety of sectors will join us on select days to help you with your interview skills, your CV, and assessment centre exercises.

This is a great opportunity to improve your eligibility and confidence (by practicing with one of the most relevant people to your career interests) before you go up for the real thing. For the sake of a good example, let’s presume you study finance and it’s your dream to work for Barclays. Would you pass up an opportunity to get a personal session with somebody who recruits graduates to work for Barclays, in a totally informal way, and receive feedback from them on your CV and your interview abilities? You never know how far impressing the right person at the right time can take you.

The scenario described above is not, of course, applicable to everyone. Let’s look at another example – say you are serious about your studies and have a good idea of what you want to do, but only vaguely where you want to work. Why not take the totally free opportunity to meet a recruiter from the sector or sectors you’re interested in, who will give you tailored, relevant feedback to prepare you for applying within their industry? Alternatively, it might even be an extremely useful and efficient way to figure out what companies or sectors you might not actually be that well suited to after all.

Who knows— you might even be surprised when you’re a student who just wants some professional feedback— anybody’s professional feedback—and you realise that your skills are quite well suited to an employer that you’d never considered before.

At the Global Citizenship Employability Programme, you will meet and work with a variety of employers. You’ll have chances to network and potentially make some useful contacts along the way who can answer your questions and tell you about the skills they developed when they were in your position.  You’ll practice intense and high pressure “speed” interviewing, practicing answering competency questions under time pressure to a series of employers from different industries. You can get your CV checked and work with a group of students to understand what you can do to improve this fundamental document. There will be a number of diverse, helpful viewpoints that you will be exposed to, and invaluable advice tailored to your employability.

To register and find out more about the UCL Careers Global Citizenship Employability Programme as part of the Global Citizenship programme run by UCL, head on over to: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/careers/events/employabilityprogramme

– Weronika Benning, Skills Administrator, UCL Careers