Employer engagement opportunities

Attract the brightest talent - supporting you to access our students and graduates
Employer engagement opportunities

Contact one of the team today to discuss how we can support your recruitment needs or how we can help raise the profile of your organisation on campus:

Telephone: +44 1752 587729

Email: employers.careers@plymouth.ac.uk

We look forward to hearing from you!

A warm welcome from the Employer Engagement team

The Careers Service provides a range of activities aimed to help connect employers with our talented students and graduates. 

Our dedicated Employer Engagement team work in partnership with employers, offering a tailored service depending on your business requirements and objectives. 

Explore this page for an overview of our activities and we look forward to talking these through with you in more detail. With a wealth of experience between us you are in safe hands and we’re here to help.

Discover employer events and activities

Advertising vacancies
myCareer is our online careers platform that connects employers with students. You can promote your vacancies free of charge to all University of Plymouth students and graduates through myCareer. The types of vacancies you are able to advertise through this service include paid part-time/casual roles, short-term internships, placements/year in industry and graduate jobs/schemes. As well as advertising your vacancy on our jobs board, we can also promote your opportunities through our social media channels and automated emails through myCareer.

Log on now or register for an account to add, preview, update and delete your job postings as required. 

Promote your vacancies through myCareer

Placements
A placement (also known as a placement year, sandwich-year, year-in-industry and work-placement) is an excellent opportunity for an employer to welcome an undergraduate student into their team for up to one year. Plymouth has a long history of supporting businesses (big and small, locally, nationally, internationally) with recruiting undergraduates into placements and will often use this an effective talent mapping recruitment method for filling graduate level roles.

Key benefits to a placement host:

  • Identify talented individuals early
  • Bring in fresh and innovative ideas
  • Bring in a new perspective
  • Extra resource for busier times
  • No long term commitment
  • Helps to raise the profile of your business within the student network
  • Students can complete part time hours in the final year

We have a dedicated team of Placement Advisers, providing you access to our students' current knowledge and enthusiasm and giving you a fresh perspective on the talent available. If you would like to find about recruiting a student on a placement as part of their degree programme, please:

Email: placements@plymouth.ac.uk

Phone: +44 1752 586007

And speak to:
  • Lindsey Marshall: Employer Engagement Officer specialising in placements for psychology, biomedical sciences, chemistry, biological and marine sciences. 
  • Nikki Reid-Foster: Employer Engagement Officer specialising in placements for built environment, business, tourism, digital arts and criminology
  • Andrea Kemp: Employer Engagement Officer specialising in placements for computing, maths, engineering, environmental science, geography and geology. 
  • Lois Dyer, Myla Serdiuk and Haydon Anstis: our brilliant Employer Engagement Assistants
Internships
Micro-Internships
Each year we deliver a Micro-Internship programme open to all undergraduate and postgraduate students. The Micro-Internships are voluntary work experience that will last up to 2 weeks, with a minimum of 3 days. It is a great way for a business to benefit from our talented students who will assist you with a short project or a collection of defined tasks, whilst giving students the chance to develop their employability skills before entering the world of work or before embarking on a placement year.

The Micro-Internships run on set dates three times a year, with one cycle in each academic term. Typically these fall in the following months:
Winter cycle: November – December
Spring cycle: April
Summer cycle: June – August 
For specific dates and to find out more, please see our information booklet.

Summer internships
A summer internship (also referred to as a summer placement) has all the benefits of a shorter internship, and more, as these can last between one and three months. An increasing number of students and employers are seeking/offering these opportunities each year because a lot can be achieved over a summer experience. This can be a very appealing option to students who will not always be able to undertake a year long placement. If you have a summer project in mind, that would provide invaluable experience to one of our students, please get in touch to discuss advertising this with us.

Funded internships
The Careers Insight Programme is our current funded work experience scheme and has a WP (widening participation) focus. We aim to provide a host organisation with a student for up to 100 hours; working on a clearly defined project.
A single bursary payment is made directly to the student, coordinated by the University, at the end of the experience.
The scheme is open to students who are defined as under-represented by the OfS; and we are keen to hear from potential hosts who have a strong belief in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). To find out more about the Careers Insight Programme, please see our social mobility page.
For more information on any of our internship opportunities, Melissa Worboys, our Employer Engagement Officer specialising in internships and short work experience opportunities will be happy to talk with you by:

Internship opportunities

Careers fairs
Exhibiting at a careers fair is a great way for businesses to raise their profile, promote opportunities to students and chat with potential future employees.
Our in-person fairs attract students from a wide range of courses and at all stages. (Note: we do not generally see students studying medicine, dentistry, nursing or teaching at our fairs).
With an easy booking system, a dedicated careers events team, featuring in a wealth of marketing and competitive pricing, a careers fair is perfect for you if:
  • you have placement or graduate positions starting in 2023.
  • you can offer our students part-time work, work experience, internships or overseas opportunities.
  • you are recruiting students from a range of courses and have multiple roles available in your organisation.
Dates for 2023/2024 careers fairs coming soon.
Find out more about our fairs in our FAQ document.
If you have any questions, please contact the team:
Email: employers.careers@plymouth.ac.uk
Phone: +44 1752 587729

Raise your profile at one of our careers fairs

Employer insight panels
We have a variety of panels planned for 2022/2023 and this is a great way for employers to share their industry experience, career journeys and top tips for success with our students. It is expected that a majority of these will run virtually, as they proved to be very successful virtual events across the last year, enabling a wide range of panellists to join us from across the globe! 

Planned panels include:

  • Careers in marketing 
  • Careers in sustainability
  • Careers in teaching
  • Careers in the public sector
  • Careers in the South West

To express an interest in becoming a panellist and to ask any questions please speak with Fiona Raymont and Natasha Harrison, our Employer Engagement Officers, specialising in the design and delivery of careers events:

“As an Alumni of the University of Plymouth I have been invited to present at an Earth Sciences/sustainability panel a few times. A student who attended the 2021 event, successfully applied and joined the Environment Agency in December 2022, three months after graduating. The Environment Officer role was advertised on the university’s internal jobs board which can be accessed by students and alumni for career opportunities. He becomes the 5th Environment Officer in Cornwall alone to graduate from university in the past six years, which says a lot for the courses and opportunities the university offer.”
Jack Hale, Environment Officer – Land and Water, Environment Agency. 

Panels

Employer promotional activities
You are welcome to book your presentation, workshop or promotional activity between October – December and February – April. This option is particularly good for those wanting to meet students from a wide range of courses. For your session we will; work with you to identify the prime time to visit campus to meet your target audience, promote your session for you and take care of all of your event booking requirements. 

We are also able to support employers with any ideas they have for delivering their bespoke promotional activities either on campus or virtually. We have hosted everything from coffee carts to assault courses and always welcome the challenge these creative promotional activities provide! 

To talk to us about your session ideas or to enquire about date availability and the costs of this activity please speak with Fiona Raymont and Natasha Harrison, our Employer Engagement Officers, specialising in the design and delivery of careers events:

Email: employers.careers@plymouth.ac.uk

Phone: +44 1752 587729

Employer in the Foyer drop in stands

A foyer stand is a perfect way of engaging with our students for employers who are:

  • Wanting to recruit a lot of students – regardless of stage of course
  • Raise awareness of their organisation to a large volume of students
  • Wanting to raise their profile and share information with our students in one of our busiest places on campus.

Our ‘Employer in the Foyer’ drop-in stands take place at the heart of campus in Charles Seale Hayne Library entrance foyer, that at peak times can see up to 6000 students passing through the doors across the day. The prime time for these sessions are October – December and February – April and there are a limited number of bookable slots on Wednesdays throughout these months.

For more information on the costs associated with this activity and date availability please speak with Fiona Raymont and Natasha Harrison, our Employer Engagement Officers, specialising in the design and delivery of careers events:

Email: employers.careers@plymouth.ac.uk

Phone: +44 1752 587729

Engage with our students

Skills development activities
BOOST, is a skills development activity, launched for the first time in 2022. Open to students from all courses and stages, a business sets a real-life business challenge for teams of students to develop a business solution for. It has been designed to help students develop key employability skills and provide an opportunity for employers to engage with students in a unique environment that differs from traditional recruitment events. This is a great way to see students working in a team, undertaking workshops linked to the challenge, networking, pitching, leading a group and actively using their key transferable skills. 
If you would like to chat to us about sponsoring a skills development opportunity and benefit from students developing fresh, innovative and creative solutions for a challenge you’re currently facing, then please chat with us for more information

Email: employers.careers@plymouth.ac.uk
Phone: +44 1752 587 729

“I had a brilliant time working with the students and really enjoyed listening to fresh bright minds giving their take on my current business challenge. It really brought to life the issues and there was one suggestion that I hadn’t considered which was using a translator within the mobile app – we will be requesting this as an enhancement to the app, being rolled out as a new initiative across the Devonport site. The students will have made a real difference to the way we work!”
Tamsin Pyne, SAP Business Implementation Lead, Babcock

Some of our competitions

Professional Mentoring Programmes

Mentoring is a great way to benefit from a rewarding experience whilst also supporting a student. You could mentor with us to:

  • Engage with a mentoring Community
  • Increase your own skills whilst offering advice and information to others
  • Support and encourage others within your sector

We run several programmes across the year, please visit our website www.plymouth.ac.uk/mentoring for the latest programme times. All our programmes include training, events, digital handbook and support throughout the time you are a mentor with us.

For more information please speak either Annette Goddard, Student Engagement Officer or Hannah Pomeroy, Student Engagement Administrator

Email: mentoring.careers@plymouth.ac.uk

Connect with Annette and Hannah on LinkedIn

A two way process

Linking with the curriculum
Employers often ask if they can link with specific courses or subject areas and one of the ways to do this can be through a timetabled session in the curriculum, either with one of our Careers Consultants, Placement Officers or we can link you directly with the academic. You will work with the person delivering the session to plan your allocated time slot and content to enhance the session. Sessions for 2022/2023 are currently being planned so if you would like to be considered as one of our employers within the curriculum then please email employers.careers@plymouth.ac.uk, letting us know which subject and stage you would like to meet and ideas of what you would like to contribute to a session. 

Please note, these sessions are limited and will be offered to those who will be most of most benefit to the students, to enhance the subject being delivered. Session planning begins around April for the following year, so these limited sessions get filled quickly.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) – be an organisation of choice!
The University recognises that by valuing each other’s varied contributions we can all achieve more. That is why we support a diverse community through our equality plan, which recognises the good work we’re already doing to support under-represented groups of students, whilst setting new challenges and goals for the future. 
For the Employer Engagement Team, there is a strong link with many organisations we work with, who have a current focus on EDI and are embracing a range of ways to increase their social diversity. For some organisations, they will already be very comfortable with EDI. For others, this may be a subject they are less familiar with or are at the early stages of embedding within the organisation’s culture and strategy.  
Regardless of where you are with your EDI journey, we are here to help! We have developed a useful Good Practice Guide, beneficial to all of our organisations. As well as providing an overview of EDI and the benefits it can bring to an organisation, there are also some top tips and easy steps for embedding EDI within your organisation.
We would be happy to chat this through further with you: 
SME business support
Data shows that the South West of England is the most popular region for University of Plymouth graduates to live and work. 45% of students that live in the South West, will also study in the South West, and 86% will then stay in the region to work. Of those that lived in the region, but left to study, 49% will return to the region to work. Graduates in the region are employed in a wide range of sectors, with the most popular including: 

  • health 
  • education 
  • business
  • engineering 
  • research
  • manufacturing 
  • tourism. 

This reflects the region’s diversity and areas of expertise.

We recognise that SMEs may face different time, resource and budget challenges compared to larger organisations, when it comes to recruitment. However, our team understand these challenges and have several opportunities to help you engage with our service and students and maximise your time on campus, such as funded internships aimed at SMEs and our SME Careers Week. The Employer Engagement Team welcome you to contact us, so we can get to know your business requirements and can tailor your experience. For more information:

Email: employers.careers@plymouth.ac.uk

Phone: +44 1752 58 7729

The most popular region for University of Plymouth graduates to live and work

Engaging with other University services

As well as working with the Careers Service, your organisation could benefit from connecting and collaborating with the wider University. There are numerous ways to benefit from our resources and talent including accessing equipment and facilities, connecting with our expertise and engaging in professional development. Examples include;

  • Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs)
  • Degree Apprenticeships
  • Funded Projects (e.g. ERDF)
A wide range of business services can be explored via Enterprise Solutions or you can contact the Employer Engagement Team, so we can direct your enquiry to the right team by:

Email: employers.careers@plymouth.ac.uk

Phone: +44 1752 587729

Sponsor our women’s development programme, Bounce!

Bounce is a free two day personal and professional development programme aimed at current University of Plymouth Students who identify as a woman.

The aim of the programme is to build:

  • confidence in recognising their skills and strengths
  • personal power
  • assertiveness and impact when speaking
  • sense of mindfulness and wellbeing
  • ability to make personal and professional connections.
It’s interactive and each day guest speakers join the group to share their own experiences and invite participants to ask them questions.

What are the benefits of sponsoring Bounce!
We deliver Bounce! three times a year and participant feedback confirms that many have benefited greatly from the two day programme.

As a sponsor you will …
  • contribute to building a talent pool/ pipeline of confident and ambitious women
  • access students who may not yet have considered you as an employer
  • raise the profile of yourself and/or organisation on campus and engage with the University in a unique way; featuring on the website (logo, organisation details) and associated marketing materials
  • contribute to your organisation’s corporate social responsibility and diversity/ inclusion strategy outside of graduate recruitment initiatives
  • offer your staff a unique staff development opportunity by being one of our guest speakers. A guest speaker slot involves talking about professional journeys (opportunities and challenges) along with sharing tips gained along the way.

How do I sponsor a programme?
Whether you are a sole trader, SME or larger corporation we would love to hear from you and discuss your potential involvement. take a look at our sponsorship opportunities or contact Bounce! Lead facilitator Sarah Plunkett - sarah.plunkett@plymouth.ac.uk

If you have any questions or would like to register to take part in one of these activities, then please do not hesitate to contact us. We are also excited to hear about the ideas organisations have to interact with our students either virtually or in person and we will happily discuss how we can facilitate these ideas with you. We will look forward to working with you over the next academic year, in whatever capacity that may be!

<p>Careers Hub</p>