Employability and postgraduate researchers

Employability and postgraduate researchers (September 2005)

The Higher Education Academy in conjunction with the UK GRAD Progamme have written a guide on what can be done to support the development of employability of postgraduate researchers. It is aimed at research supervisors and others engaged in running doctoral research programmes.

The guide discusses the importance of postgraduate researchers to the UK economy, looks at where doctoral graduates tend to gain employment both in and out of academia, and explores the ways in which research degree programmes can develop skills and thus employability. There are checklists of what supervisors and universities can do to encourage the development of employability in their postgradaute researchers. The role of recent national initiatives such as personal development planning in employability-development is highlighted.

Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team (ESECT)

In September 2002 HEFCE established the Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team (ESECT) to provide support to higher education institutions to improve student employability and encourage employment-relevant learning in higher education.

The team was appointed for 30 months and handed over its work to the Higher Education Academy at the end of February 2005. A range of resources is available at its Employability page.

These include:

• employability publications for a range of audiences including employers and students
• tools for employability
• online directory of employability resources.