Introduction
The employability agenda in business and management schools around the world is becoming increasingly important for the achievement of the prestigious triple accreditation with AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA. Triple accreditation represents the gold standard in business and management education and an institution awarded with triple accreditation shows employers that graduates are likely to be of a very high quality. A school with triple accreditation also demonstrates to students that they will have the best chance of achieving a graduate role reflective of their high-quality education and intellectual capacity. In the past, employability might have been considered an extra-curricular activity but nowadays employability is being embedded in the curriculum to ensure programmes combine academic content with the development of skills and experiences commensurate with employer requirements. The Career Development Plan is an example of one of the tools created by Sheffield University Management School to ensure students focus on their futures from their very first week as a student. This blog post forms the second in a series about critical thinking and how we use it to support employability at Sheffield University Management School. This blog post builds on the previous one by focusing more specifically on how The Career Development Plan is embedded into the first year undergraduate (UG) programmes using large-group workshops.
The Career Development Plan
The Career Development Plan is a reflective tool designed to encourage students to think about their career from 16 different perspectives which they might not have considered before. For example, the amount of money they want to earn and how this will support the lifestyle they’d like to lead, or how the opinions of others have influenced their decisions so far. In fact, the Career Development Plan is often the first time that students have considered the difference between the words “career” and “job” and it can be enlightening for students when they realise that there are many options available for them after they graduate.
The theoretical origins of the Career Development Plan are based on the Bordieusian concepts of Field, Capital and Habitus. It is largely considered that our ability to recognise and find our strengths (capital), the organisational setting where we might consider ourselves to fit in (field) and our personal desires and expectations (habitus) are completely shaped by the people that we are surrounded by and situations that we find ourselves in whilst growing up. It is this initial grounding in life which accounts for our worldviews and what we consider possible for ourselves. Considering other perspectives and thinking more widely can help students to achieve more or achieve differently in ways which are aligned with their personal goals.
The Career Development Plan is also closely aligned with the philosophical perspective of Ikigai. The concept of Ikigai, originating from the Japanese words ‘iki’ (meaning life) and ‘gai’ (meaning worth), featured as the Edge Foundation annual lecture 2021 and highlights perfectly the ethos of the Career Development Plan. In other words, to build a successful career over the long-term, it is important to find a balance between what we give to the world and what we receive in return.
Embedding into the curriculum –large group workshops
To support critical thinking about employability, the Career Development Plan forms the basis of a compulsory year-long 20-credit module for all first year UG students at the Management School. Given the reflective nature of the Career Development Plan, the current makeup of the module is a conscientious effort to move away from predominantly lecture-based content. As a result, the module features two immersive large-group workshops (we had 388 students at the last one) alongside a small number of lectures and tutorials to encourage collaborative working between students, teaching staff, placement returners and careers advisors.
The two large-group workshops feature exercises and group tasks to provide an active, engaging and stimulating introduction to career planning in a safe and non-judgmental environment. Students are encouraged to get to know themselves better and identify where they see themselves fitting into the world of work. For example, students may be asked to visualise their future work-self or take part in a World Café activity where they hear what others think about the different perspectives of the career development planning process. Students are also able to choose from a number of breakout sessions in recognition of their different aspirations. These have included an opportunity to talk with an entrepreneur about what their life is like or to hear from students who have recently returned from their year in industry about their experiences.
In addition to the focus on self-awareness, there is also a focus on getting to know the job market. Concentrating on the type of role, organisation, industry or sector in which students might want to work encourages conversations about the value they could add and how they could demonstrate it. As such, we offer opportunities to try out a mock assessment centre and receive feedback on performance, learn about some of the best sites to find placement and graduate roles, and share insights into how recruiters and employers make decisions. The large group workshops are heavily supported by the dedicated careers service at Sheffield University Management School known as the Employability Hub to ensure that not only are students introduced to critical thinking about career planning by academic teaching staff, but they are also signposted to relevant services and offered the most up to date careers advice.
Summary
The current version of our credit-bearing module uses large-group workshops to draw together the different parts of our students’ UG experience and encourage them to consider how everything is contributing to their employability. On the whole, students appear to value the opportunity to work with each other as well as employers, teaching staff, placement returners and careers advisors whilst discussing their career plans. One of the key developmental outcomes for students has been that they learn how they are different or the same as others. They start to understand more how their families and friends have shaped where they are today and they learn to become confident with their own plans despite those differences.
