A new tool to help our students explore career ideas and plan for the future has been launched as part of the Successful Futures Strategic Major Project (SMP).Ìý
Successful Futures is a three–year SMP focused on embedding employability and enterprise skills into the curriculum with an overall aim to improve Graduate Outcomes. Ìý
The Successful Futures Pathway will support our students to reflect on their career ideas and plan how to develop the skills they need for these whilst still at University.ÌýÌý
Hosted on , our online careers platform which all students have access to, the Pathway guides students through the following steps:Ìý
- Reflect on their career idea(s), access support and guidance on different stages of career planning or to come up with career ideasÌý
- Complete the Skills Self-Assessment to assess how confident they are in the 14 employability skills from the Ìý
- Use the AI Chatbot to review how their skills and experience align with their chosen career path, drawing on skills analysis from regularly updated global recruitment data Ìý
- Review the skills that have been mapped to their Programme of Study to match these to the skills they need for their career pathÌý
- ¸£Àû×ÅƬ opportunities outside of their curriculum to further develop or start to develop the skills needed for their career idea that are not already in their ProgrammeÌý
The creation of the Pathway has been enabled thanks to the thoughtful work of Programme Leads and other colleagues within our faculties who have mapped skills to each of our individual Programmes. Working with academic colleagues, the project has also mapped over 200 opportunities outside of the curriculum to the Southampton Skills Model, creating a new repository for all students and staff to access.ÌýÌý
Our students will be encouraged to complete the Pathway at least once a year and will be supported by their Personal Academic Tutor (PAT) to understand how it can help them to plan for their future. Training sessions are available to prepare PATs for these conversations and . Guidance about the Pathway has also been included in this year’s .Ìý
Our careers consultants in Careers, Employability and Student Enterprise are also on hand to provide specialist careers support and help our students to build the confidence that will help them succeed after University.ÌýÌý
The Successful Futures project sits within the University’s Education and Student Experience Programme, and will support the achievement of our Education and Student Experience strategic plans.Ìý Ìý