Webinar: Developing Leadership Skills in Employability
This live webinar took place on Thursday 2 May 2024. Watch the session on demand below.
What to Expect
The scope and profile of employability work in UK universities has increased dramatically over the last decade or so. The raised expectations of students to get a ‘return on investment’ in the form of a good graduate outcome has led to many universities investing in this aspect of the student experience and ensuring an employability-enriched offer is foregrounded in all elements of that experience, including embedded within the curriculum. This, coupled with increased weighting of employability metrics in League Tables, institutional compliance measures etc means that there has never been a greater need for strategic leadership within our universities in this area. Few, if any, universities can run the risk of failing to address this challenge and many have actively sought to position themselves as pioneers in the space; projecting their employability credentials as a differentiator in a very competitive market place for students, both in the UK and internationally.
This webinar will introduce the various elements that can potentially lead to more effective collaboration and impactful leadership of this agenda, as well as providing practical insight into the journey Manchester Met has been on over the last five years.
About the speaker
Dr Stephen Boyd is Director of Careers & Employability at the Manchester Metropolitan University. He has extensive strategic leadership experience having worked in the HE careers sector for over 20 years. During that time, he has been fortunate to work with some amazing colleagues and had the privilege to lead some fantastic teams and, as such, been involved in some major innovations and developments in the careers and employability space. Areas of interest are widespread covering many aspects but his current focus includes organisational culture; diversifying talent into careers work; managing change within teams and services; and evaluating the impact of career interventions. The Careers Service at Manchester Met has recently received national and international recognition for its pioneering careers work, picking up a number of awards in 2023 including Best Student Programme at the Global Careers Services Summit in London, and the Best University Employability Strategy at the National Graduate Recruitment Awards. A keen writer, speaker, and researcher of all aspects of employability, his doctoral thesis was entitled Expectation, Interaction And Transition: A Study Of University Careers Fairs (a subsequent article on this research was published in the NICEC Journal).