The Oxford Careers Service

Transcription

1 Working Group for Careers Guidance: Questionnaire Oxford University (a) A J Butler, Director, Oxford University Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PA, England Telephone: Fax: tony.butler@cas.ox.ac.uk (b) 1892 (c) Oxford University serves approximately 15,000 current students, of whom some 5,000 are postgraduates. By the time they leave Oxford some 85% of first degree students and nearly 50% of postgraduate students have used the Careers Service. All students are charged 4 sterling when they register at the Careers Service. This fee covers them to use the Service throughout their time at Oxford and for four years after they leave. (d) First degree and postgraduate students may use the Careers Service for up to four years after they leave, and students who have left Oxford without registering with the Careers Service may do so for up to four years from the time they left. They are charged a single registration fee of 4 sterling. Students who are away from Oxford are charged postage on the weekly vacancy bulletin which is sent to them at their home addresses. It should be noted that Oxford University Careers Service, along with other higher education Careers Services in the United Kingdom, provide a service to the former students of other Universities who live in the Oxford area. (e) The Oxford University Careers Service... exists to encourage and enable current and recent oxford university students to make and implement well informed decisions about their careers;... aims to develop and maintain a careers service of the highest quality;... has as its goals: 1. To encourage and enable students to appreciate and explore the range of opportunities available on graduation and the abilities and skills needed for them; to clarify their values and interests and to relate them to possible career choices; to recognise and further develop their abilities and skills; and to formulate and realise their early career plans. 2. To encourage and enable employers and others to provide information about the opportunities they offer, to recruit from Oxford University and to contribute to the work of the Service. 3. To encourage and enable the University to understand and adapt to the changing graduate employment market, and to support the work of the Service.

2 4. To encourage and enable each member of staff to make the fullest contribution to the work of the Service. 5. To develop and make the best use of the resources available to the Service. 6. To participate fully in the work of the professional organisations, and in the development of the national resources, upon which University Careers Services rely. (f) Apart from the Christmas and Easter weeks, the Service is open every weekday from 10 till 1 and 2 till 5; and in term it is open in the lunch hour and on Saturday mornings, 10 till 1. The following is a summary of the sort of facilities and services to which students have access: the Oxford University Careers Service Guide, which students receive on registration, contains a wealth of useful advice and information about the key ingredients of successful career search: making a realistic personal assessment; exploring different occupations; focusing on a particular career; researching employers; making successful applications; and handling interviews and job offers. The Guide also covers further study, vacation work, working abroad and taking time out; extensive information about different occupations, the uses to which students can put their degrees, working abroad and postgraduate study; a series of booklets (known as AGCAS booklets) about different occupations, which have been written by Careers Advisers in different Careers Services around the country; and a series of pink sheets, called Tactics Sheets, written by Careers Advisers here, which summarise what students need to know (or where to find it) about the sorts of occupations that many graduates enter; a computer-assisted careers guidance system, PROSPECT(HE), which helps students to think about how their individual qualities relate to particular occupations (of which there are more than 400 in the database); and they can discuss the results with a Careers Adviser who specialises in the interpretation of the reports which the system generates; a wide range of employers literature (including application forms) which students can collect and, in the employer files, copies of annual reports; notes of visits by Careers Advisers to employers; comments from students on their vacation experience with them; records of interviews they have had; press cuttings; etc. The Vacation Section where students can get help with making the best use of vacations. This includes all sorts of activities - not just career related placements - which will enhance their knowledge and experience, and develop their skills. There is also information about some of the available vacation opportunities, mainly, however, for penultimate year students, but there are many others which students can be helped to locate; and there is also the Service s own vacation placement scheme, known as Vactrain for which students enrol and which then processes the applications they make to employers who make use of the scheme. The placements are of extremely high quality and are monitored by the staff of the Service.

3 the Contacts Scheme - a database of over 600 recent graduates who are ready to answer the questions which students may have about the work they do, the organisations they work for, or how they got their jobs; material to help students to prepare their CVs and covering letters, tackle application forms, and prepare for aptitude tests, interviews and assessment centres; the Service s weekly publication, The Bridge, which students can receive in their final year. Each edition contains up to 80 notices of different employers (often multiple) job vacancies and other opportunities, along with topical and timely editorials and information about forthcoming talks and events; the Service also has its own website, which students may access. Among the types of information available on the website are programme of events, vacation work opportunities, and occupational gateways, which are similar in many respects to the Tactics Sheets mentioned above. People The staff of the Service are also available to give assistance: the Information and Reception staff are available to help students to find their way around or to find specific information, to book them in to use PROSPECT(HE) or to see a Careers Adviser, and Careers Advisers are available for a full careers discussion or a talk about the reports obtained from using PROSPECT(HE). Also, each day in term time, except Thursday mornings, there is a Careers Adviser on duty in the Information Room, who is known as the Duty Adviser and is available for minute slots to deal with students quick queries. Students have to sign on a list for this service, but do not normally have to wait for more than half an hour before being seen. In addition, each day in the Autumn and Spring Terms, and thrice weekly during the Summer Term, there is an Introductory Talk, followed, if students so wish, by a short discussion with a Careers Adviser, to help them to get started. These arrangements are, however, currently undergoing some changes to take into account the new Getting Your Bearings area, displays and literature. Events Each term the Service lays on a full programme of events, including aptitude tests; talks on CVs, applications and interviews; sessions on postgraduate study; talks for particular disciplines; presentations by employers; and talks on different career areas. During the year there are a number of Careers Fairs: a general one run by the Guild Society, which the Service supports, and our own Finance Fair, both in the Autumn Term; the Law Fair in the Spring Term; and in the Spring and Summer Terms a number of events at which students can meet and talk to people working in the City, the media, the IT industry, a range of communications occupations, and in alternative careers. The full programme for each term appears in a leaflet called Compass, which is sent out to each penultimate year student four or five times a year. (g) Broadly speaking, Oxford University Careers Service aims to help employers by

4 helping them to communicate the opportunities they offer to students, principally by including notices, written by Careers Advisers, about these vacancies in the Careers Services weekly vacancy bulletin, The Bridge, which is sent to all students throughout their final year and to recent students who have requested copies. Each week some notices of this kind, some for single jobs, some for several hundred jobs, are included in this vacancy bulletin, which typically consists of pages, and is sent to 3,000 people; we also assist employers to advertise their vacancies in other ways - e.g. posters, newspapers, University societies, etc.; we maintain a file on each organisation in our Information Room which includes literature which the employer has supplied and also material which Careers Advisers and information staff put together about the employer. These files also contain information about vacation work experience opportunities and the experiences which students have had in applying to the organisation; we maintain a stock of brochures and application forms from numerous employers, which students can collect from us; we maintain a great deal of current information about vacation opportunities with employers; we assist employers in the organisation of their presentations to students in Oxford. During the Autumn Term some 130 of the biggest graduate employers come to Oxford in the space of 6 weeks to make presentations to students. We also help employers arrange interviews with students; as mentioned above, we run a number of Careers Fairs: in the Autumn Term we run a Finance and Actuarial Fair; in the Spring Term we run a Law Fair and a Work Experience Fair; and in the Spring and Summer Terms we run a number of smaller events e.g. for the IT and media industries; there is a Careers Service Recruiters Group, for membership of which employers pay a subscription. This entitles them to receive three or four newsletters a year from the Director, and to attend three discussion events each year for members of the Group, to enable them to discuss common recruitment issues. In addition they receive a copy of the Careers Service s Annual Report which gives, inter alia, detailed information about what Oxford students do when they leave Oxford. No charge is made to employers for the inclusion of notices in The Bridge. They are, however, charged if they take a space at one of the Careers Fairs or if they make use of the Careers Service s conference room facilities for their presentations. (h) Staffing: 11 Careers Advisers (including the Director and Deputy Director); six members of the Information staff (including two Information Managers); three Administrators; six secretaries; three Printing and Distribution staff and one Janitor. Some of these staff are

5 part-time. We occupy a large Victorian building which has been considerably extended at the back to provide the Information Room and conference facilities. The Careers Service costs around 1m sterling a year: about 75% of this is met by the University; the other 25% comes from the Careers Service s trading activities (e.g. Careers Fairs). The Careers Service is on the University s internal IT network. Most members of staff have their own terminals. In addition, there are seven PCs in the Information Room, of which two are devoted to the computerised careers guidance system, PROSPECT(HE). The others are available for access to the internet, the Careers Service s Contacts Scheme (see under (f)); standardised tests for Postgraduate Study in the USA, the Civil Service tests, an annual survey of Legal Vacation Work, a program to help students identify possible sources of funding for further study, the Financial Times on a CD ROM, Youth for Britain (a searchable database of volunteering opportunities in the UK and overseas) and a national website providing careers information including job vacancy information. (i) The Careers Service is a member of the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS), and the Director is a member of the South East Regional Heads of Careers Services Group. (j) The current system of appraising University academic departments includes appraisals of the provision which departments make for careers guidance. The services provided by the Oxford University Careers Service are therefore taken into account in each department s appraisal. It is expected that in the next year or so Careers Services will be subject to separate appraisal. The activities of the Careers Service are supervised by a Committee known as the Committee for the Careers Service, which reports directly to the principal Executive Committee of the University, the Council. Each year the Director prepares a report for submission to the Committee and to Council on the activities of the Careers Service during the year. This report generally includes a detailed analysis of what the previous year s students have done on leaving Oxford. Tony Butler 9 March 2000