The CEPAR (Careers, Employability, Placements, & Alumni Relations) department is unique to Southampton Business School and is designed to enhance the employability of our students. We launched the Talent Development Programme in October 2022, which provides students with ready access to a range of activities, events, internships, external courses, and much more besides, all designed to enhance their employability profile. We have had an overwhelming response from both undergraduate and postgraduate students, providing clear evidence that students understand the need to supplement their degree with additional skills and experiences.
A central element of the TDP is the Talent Action Plan, which is a reflective document that the students maintain throughout their study at the university. It is framed by three fundamental questions: Where am I now? Where do I want to be? How am I going to get there? It is underpinned by the Five Graduate Capitals model, consisting of Human, Cultural, Psychological, Identity, and Social capitals, which is designed to enable students to develop a well rounded profile as well as acting as a diagnostic tool to enable them to identify any strengths or weaknesses.
Engaging with enterprises and employers is central to what CEPAR does and a key strategic aim is to build a network of connections from the world of business, social enterprise, and not for profits, in order to provide a network that a student can plug in to from time according to their TAP. While mentoring may be a feature, it is not a formal mentor programme but rather something more organic and based on students proactively reaching out to the network. For example, a student may want to get more information about working in a particular sector, expand their network in a particular area, identify key trends in an industry, understand better the technical skills, or perhaps what ’transferable’ skills are most in demand. It might just be an email exchange or a message on LinkedIn, or something more in-person, perhaps meeting up for a coffee on campus. After an initial in-person meeting, future connections could be online. In addition, it could be arranged around a group of students as opposed to one-to-one to be more efficient with time.
This is a great opportunity for our Alumni, enterprises local to Southampton and further afield, the entrepreneurship community, and other interested parties, to share their experiences and connections and inspire the next generation of leaders.
We hope you can be part of this exciting story!
If you wish to join the network, or would simply like to know more, please email the team at SBSEmployability@soton.ac.uk
Meet the current members of the network below…
