Alicia Marriott, the Passport and Employability Coordinator, highlights a few societies that have helped to boost their member's professional value through their activities.
Our societies do lots of great things to upskill their members, but we don’t appreciate them enough! Being part of a club or society can really boost your employability for post-university life and help your professional development.
Your VP Societies and Media, Pippa Gentry, said: "Our academic societies provide an invaluable service to their members by allowing them to link up their academic studies with all of the skills that they learn through being engaged in extra-curricular activity."
"With more and more people securing degree qualifications, it has never been more important to make sure you stand out from the crowd in the world of work and getting involved with societies and sports clubs are a great way to do this."
"It’s clear to see that our academic societies are doing a great job at motivating and upskilling their members – a big well done to Law, Enactus, and PIR, keep up the good work!"
And with that, we want to celebrate our societies that have gone the extra mile to ensure that their members are prepared for the future. Here are just a few ways some of our societies have developed their members this year. Perhaps it will inspire you to join a society next year.
Law Society
“Employability is absolutely crucial for aspiring lawyers. To help Law Society members, I arranged for myself and 12 others to go to Charles Russell Speechlys (London law firm) for a careers event.
We had mock interviews with trainees, received application and assessment day preparation and ended the day with networking. This boosted our students' confidence and gave us a boost to start completing applications. I will definitely use that I organised this day on future application forms”.
- Molly Tatchell (Law President)
Enactus
“Throughout this year we have offered the team the opportunity to participate to over 20 events. These includes workshops from companies sponsor of Enactus UK such as Unilever, Amazon, Accenture, Barclays, EY etc.
We have participated to weekend trainings and organised short sessions related to project management, teamwork and developing a skillset useful to become more employable.
It helped our members to become more employable. Apart from developing a business mind-set, they also developed a strong professionalism when dealing with Business Advisors or when working towards national competitions organised by sponsor companies.
There is a strong positive correlation between students joining Enactus and leaving it with placements, internships and graduate schemes secured.
We have been nominated as one of the most improved Enactus societies in UK with 65 active members, £2100 raised, 14 Business Advisors in our Support Network and 6 applications to Individual Topic Competitions.”
- Marco Benedettelli (Corporate Relation Executive)
Politics and International Relations Society
"In the first term we managed to have a combination of alumni panels as well as workshops in order to show members what is on offer after university, and how to get there!
From the varying feedback from our members, the alumni panel we jointly conducted with the Careers Service was incredibly helpful as it provided a wider range of job avenues than our members thought was possible with their degrees.
Being part of a society has helped all our members this year to be able to extend their skills, holding positions of responsibility, as well as improving prioritisation of workloads!"
- Jack O’Neill (PIR President)
If you want to get involved in enhancing your professional development, a great date for the diary would be the Spring Careers Fair on the 8 March in celebration of International Women’s day.
This event is open to all and will be in the Event Space in the Emily Davison building. There will be a handful of employers who have been praised for their great equality and diversity practices. So come down in your revision break to find out what employers really value!
Additionally, we will having an evening event from 5:30pm - 7:00pm in the Event Space organized by FemSoc, LGBT+, Women of Colour and Labour Society about equality in the workplace with a guest panel. This should be a really interesting chat, so come down and get involved!
ALICIA MARRIOTT
PASSPORT AND EMPLOYABILITY COORDINATOR