Julia Paci – Employability Manager

I set all the plans and activities that happen throughout the year that involve bringing in alumni to talk about careers, work on organising bespoke careers sessions, listen and respond to new initiatives and deliver bespoke work in Law, IAIS and Politics in Penryn.

Hannah Murdock – Work Placements Officer

My role is mainly Politics and SPA-facing (Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology and Criminology) as I am part of the Q-Step centre. I look after placement modules in these disciplines and work closely with academic colleagues. I will be overseeing a new initiative - a Work Abroad Year (more details to follow soon!)

Emily Hayter – Alumni and Employability Administrator

I support Julia with delivering events, especially those involving alumni. My biggest event to arrange is the Teacher Fair for PGCE students in the Graduate School of Education. In addition to organising panels, mock interviews and workshops, I compile this newsletter and oversee our publicity and feedback.

Darren Green – Student Experience Administrator (Law)

I provide administrative support to Julia for a couple of days a week with events for the Law School such as setting up careers appointments and providing admin support for the extra-curricular activities. I have also been helping set up the workshops for Refresh Your Maths.

Refresh Your Maths is an employability skills training session, led by Maths students, to help you brush up your Maths for numerical reasoning tests.

There are two different types of Refresh Your Maths workshops:

90 minutes covering basic GCSE-level topics of percentages, fractions, ratios and graphs.
60 minutes covering practice numerical reasoning tests, and specific sessions on the PGCE Maths tests.
We advise you attend the 90-minute maths skills refresher before the numerical reasoning practice workshops.

These workshops are open to all students. Please check My Career Zone for details of dates and times.

Want to know what it's like to be an in-house solicitor?

On Wednesday 26th October, BT is hosting an in-house legal training contract recruitment event at its global headquarters in central London. You'll be able to take part in a commercial awareness workshop, hear from some of their legal graduates and have the chance to network with lawyers from BT after the event. The event will start at 5:30pm and finish at around 8pm. For more information and to register for this event, please click the button below.

Access to Internships

Access to Internships (A2I): Sign up for A2I to receive information, support and funding, up to £1500, to help you arrange your own paid internship. All the funding is issued on a first-come, first-served basis. It’s never too early to start arranging yours!

Welsh Careers Evening with PwC, Teacher First and the Welsh Government

Date: Thursday 20th October
Time: 6:00 - 7:30pm
Venue: XFI, Henderson Lecture Theatre

Welsh Society is excited to announce that we are hosting our first ever careers panel event, open to anyone interested in working in Wales in the future. It is an opportunity to find out more about the benefits of working in Wales and meet the people who work for these companies.

Student/Young Pugwash invites you to participate in their blog-writing competition!

Here at Student / Young Pugwash (SYP), we have just launched a blog-writing competition: Reducing WMD Risks!

The winning prize is £500 and the deadline is 9th December 2016. The question asks you to imagine you are advising the UK government on how to reduce the threat(s) of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Open to all.

Details can be found here and in the attached flyer. Please share the details with friends, colleagues and / or your university department.

Teacher Training Open Days

Open event: Thursday 27th October, 18:00 - 20:30 

Becoming a teacher will lead to an exciting and rewarding career. Quality teachers are highly sought after, and choosing the right teacher training programme is an important step in ensuring a successful career. 

If you have any further questions, please contact Ruth Waterfield.

Career Mentor Scheme

Looking for an insight into your chosen career? Check out these amazing career mentors to see if you could learn from their success:

Career Mentor Available: Sarah Toulalan – Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter

Career Mentor Available: Luke Pollard – Director and Formber Labour and Co-operative Parliamentary Candidate for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport

Career Mentor Available: John Slater – Chairman at the Comino Foundation

Applications work on a first come, first served basis, so don’t delay!

Global Showcase

If you are interested in either working or studying abroad during your studies or after graduation, do come along to this year’s Global Showcase which will be running on-campus from 31st October – 4th November. The Global Showcase will feature international employer presentations, interactive workshops and information about both working and studying abroad. It will also offer advice for International student studying here in the UK on how to make the most of your Exeter experience.

Alongside the Global Showcase, we will also be hosting the International Virtual Careers Fair from 31st October – 13th November. This is our opportunity to view all our international jobs in one online jobs portal for 10 days, 24/7. Jobs will be visible by sector and location so you can see in one click all that is available in the area or country that you are interested in.

James Bennett (BA Philosophy, 2014)

1. What is your current occupation? How has your philosophy degree helped you with your career decisions?

I’m working as a Fundraising Programmes Officer at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford), responsible for developing and implementing fundraising strategy at the annual giving/individual alumni level. 

Studying philosophy means that you learn how to deconstruct big, complicated problems that require you to think originally and creatively. This gave me the confidence to work in a strategic environment that expects independent thinking.

Fundamentally, studying philosophy necessitates being charitable to other peoples’ views while being able to criticise your own and that process definitely helped point me down this career path.

2. How did your career path develop whilst at University?

Despite having worked as a fundraiser both before my time as a student and in fact for the University as a student caller, it wasn’t the long-term plan. I’d had vague, uninspired intentions to work in law but hadn’t really done anything with it – meaning I was two summers of internships behind my friends who had.

Come third year, the job hunt began and I fell into the same trap that many final years do, which is to apply for literally ever grad scheme. A friend pointed me to a job at a fundraising consultancy in Bristol, which is where I started out after uni.

3. What advice would you give to current students who may want to follow in your footsteps? 

Higher Education Development isn’t a huge place, so getting to know people isn’t too difficult and as a student at the University of Exeter, you also benefit from the fact that the Development Office there is particularly big and runs huge telethons that you gain invaluable experience from working on. 

My biggest piece of advice is that if you’re going to study something non-vocational like I did then you need to be able to identify the skills that you have developed and how they translate into a work environment. Accruing work experience is especially valuable, more so than a first class degree from what I’ve seen. If you can manage both then that’s amazing, but don’t be afraid to shoot for a 2:1 if it means you have the time to work a temp job in the summer or a tutoring gig in the evenings.

How to contact your College Employability Team:

Email: ssis-employability@exeter.ac.uk
01392 723372 (Julia Paci) 
01392 726326 (Emily Hayter)

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