A male student studying with a lecturer looking on
A male student studying with a lecturer looking on

University of West London wins Building Effective Partnerships Award for inclusivity toolkit

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UWL has won a prestigious award at the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS) Awards for Excellence 2023 for creating a toolkit to support students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds in higher education at virtual careers fairs.

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The Inclusive Futures Virtual Careers Fair was started in 2019 to connect students with potential employers.

Career teams at UWL, University of Westminster, University of Greenwich, London Metropolitan University, Roehampton University, Kingston University and University of Hertfordshire worked together after identifying that they all had students with similar demographics who lacked awareness of employer recruitment requirements.

Participating universities worked with the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), students and employers to create a free virtual careers fair toolkit to assist students from underrepresented groups make job applications.

Partner higher education institutions also worked with GTI, a leading student and graduate technology and service provider, to deliver the virtual careers fair.

Two women stood behind a table speaking to surrounding students. The room is packed full of stalls and students.

The toolkit guides students through preparing for a virtual careers fair. It supplies questions to ask as well as suggesting how to deal with difficult scenarios on the day. Furthermore, it also makes helpful suggestions on converting conversations into applications as well as providing advice on building a network and maintaining personal resilience.

All employers contacted for pre-fair research noted that they had better conversations with students who had researched their organisation. For example, in 2021 alone there was an 82 percent increase in student visits to employer booths.

Jonathan Eastwood, Head of Careers and Volunteering at UWL, said,

The Inclusive Futures Virtual Careers Fair has been such an important way for UWL to set underrepresented students up for success in a competitive jobs market. We’re pleased to share this award with six other universities who took part in this ground-breaking project.”

AGCAS judges said,

This strong nomination clearly articulates the growth of the programme over the years and demonstrates wide stakeholder engagement. The student contribution is excellent, and the toolkit sounds incredibly useful and clearly has significant impact.”

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