It’s that time of year where we tend to feel reflective and take stock of the events, activities and achievements of the last year. It’s been another turbulent 12 months, but we’ve been working hard to offer our full range of services remotely and in-person when that’s been possible. So, pull a chair up to the fire, grab a hot chocolate and reminisce with us about a few of the things we’ve been up to this year…
January – March
Things were pretty grim at the start of the year as we found ourselves locked down again, but we were trying to look on the bright side – we were sharing Lockdown Stories from Ibrahem AlBadareen and Alexey Uglanov, two international exchange students who had positive experiences in Bradford despite some terrible luck with coronavirus restrictions.
We also shared our advice about looking for part-time jobs in a very restricted market, and luckily things have picked up massively since then, and we’re able to share our big Part-Time Jobs list every Thursday on LinkedIn and Facebook with a range of local jobs suitable for students.
We also continued to support students with their applications for graduate schemes and internships and placements as recruitment deadlines generally come at the beginning of the year. As well as one-to-one appointments, we hosted a range of useful webinars to give further insight into specific careers subjects.
April-May
Another annual fixture is our programme of internships for first and second year undergraduates, Summer Experience, and this year as usual we were recruiting for students to take part in the paid six-week programmes at local businesses. COVID-19 was still looming, but the majority of the internships were in-person with most being flexible, with some remote working.
We also ran a Virtual Careers Week in May featuring a wide range of employers who delivered sessions about their opportunities, career sectors and more – hundreds of students took part in the 27 sessions across the week.
Summer
Even though it was vacation time for students, our work continued, and as well as delivering Summer Experience, we hosted a series of Summer Webinars to keep your career and employability skills sharp. You can find lots of our webinars in our archive on SharePoint.
September – December
Our new look Careers space in Student Central
At the beginning of term we were delighted to be back on campus again, with a new look Careers space and a brand new platform for our appointments, jobs and workshops – Handshake! You can read our guide ‘Using Handshake Career Centre – 10 things you should be doing now‘, and make sure you register to access all our services (you can also find the mobile app on Google Play and App Store).
It’s always a busy period for us, and this year was no exception – we ran the Part-Time Jobs Fair on the 6th October to sort out new and returning students with local jobs – our first on-campus fair in nearly two years. This was followed in November by the Graduate Jobs and Placements Fair, which was another first for us as it was hosted over two days, the first day was on campus and the second day was online to ensure that the maximum number of students and employers could take part.
At the fair, we took the opportunity to chat with a few exhibitors for our ‘Five minutes with the employer‘ series, you can catch up with our short interviews with Ramsdens Solicitors, Infinity Works and GXO Logistics (see the whole series here).
So that’s a few highlights (but just a small sample of everything that we do) which brings us up to date – we’ll be back in 2022 with more great stuff to help you achieve your goals, in whatever form that may take. Check out our website for lots of useful information and advice, and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. Have a great break and we’ll see you soon!