Episode 2: The Big Picture with Dr Lorna Dargan - Careers Centre Director

I think there's a role for us with students and then there's a role for us with our colleagues and within the institution.

So I think the role for us with students is captured very nicely with our strategic plan and our mission statement, which says that we are all about education, inspiration and empowerment.

And those three things, I think, are quite important in the way that we approach our work.

So, you know, the education bit, we are here to teach students lifelong skills in terms of how they manage their career and their career thinking because you're not going to be with us forever and we want everybody to go away feeling like they know how to manage their careers in future.

The inspiration bit, because sometimes we all need a bit of inspiration and sometimes that can come from quite unexpected quarters.

And so we want to make sure our students know about the range of opportunities that are available to them And then the empowerment bit, I think, is really important because, like I said, I learned from my own career, you're in charge of yourself and nobody else is in charge of making things happen for you.

And we want students to feel confident that they've got the skill set.

Yeah, to realise their ambitions, whatever those are.

So from a student facing perspective, I think that's quite important.

The bit that students, I think, don't always see, but is a really important part of our work is we want to make sure that the environment for the whole university in the curriculum and in the student experience is is set up to help students succeed when they graduate so quite a lot of the work that we do behind the scenes maybe that students don't see is about the work that we do within our academic schools so working with the school employability officers to make sure that there's a good range of things happening at that level so a big focus of our work coming up is going to be making sure that the curriculum is set up to help students succeed so that's partly about the way that students are taught and the way that they're assessed and also not just Putting things in the curriculum, helping students to recognise that that's what the curriculum is already doing.

Because we know sometimes there can be a bit of a disconnect between what you've learned on your degree in English or biology or divinity and what you're doing in the workplace.

So we know that our degree programmes help set you up for success in the workplace.

But I don't think students always realise that.

So we want to help bring that to the fore.

I think that's such a great idea as well.

I know that before I think we had a sustainability talk and there was a lot of talk about whether what they were learning was that really what was going to be happening in their role when they eventually graduated and got a role within sustainability.

So yeah, I think that's so important.

Another question was, what do you think students sometimes misunderstand about careers support? Quite a lot

because our job is surprisingly complicated for everybody in the service.

So we've got 21 individuals I think in the service who are all doing different kinds of jobs and we as a profession don't always communicate what we do very well so I do remember when I was thinking about applying to become a careers advisor and I went to observe some careers advisors at work I sat down and thought well this looks really easy I can talk to somebody about their job for 15 minutes And then the first time I ran an appointment with students, my brain just went completely blank because it's actually quite a difficult job to structure that conversation.

So I think the complexity of our work is not always very visible.

I think a few things that we encounter quite regularly when I talk to students about what we do, I think there's a sense about us telling students what to do, either that we're going to tell students what to do when you come in, And we'll choose your career for you.

Or you can't come in and see us unless you know what you want to do first.

So the team are very skilled at helping you to think about and teasing that stuff out of you around what's important to you and how that might translate into the workplace.

But what we can't do is tell you what to do because you're the expert on you and we might make a suggestion that you don't like and then you don't want to come back and see us because you don't think we can help you.