Widen Your Options round-up

Employability and Graduate Development recently coordinated the annual Widen Your Options event, with a series of activities and events across all three campuses. The initiative is designed to give students information on a wide range of career pathways, with access to industry professionals from a range of sectors.

This year’s event has proved to be a huge success with over 1300 attendees. An incredible 51 sessions took place over the fortnight, which ran from 27 February - 9 March. Of these events, 36 sessions were delivered by staff in EGD. Student feedback has been extremely positive with 77% of students rating the events as ‘good’ or ‘very good’.

Sessions included talks on careers in the charity sector and working in journalism with representation from companies such as the BBC and The Eve Appeal. International Week also provided a global focus, with a number of events for those interested in working or teaching abroad.

Spring Enterprise Week, a new part of the fortnight, was launched this year to support and encourage enterprise in Exeter students. Activities like the XING business planning and simulation day have had excellent feedback; one student said “I’ve learnt how to work in a team, compromise with others, time management, presentation skills and so on. These kinds of experiences will help me a lot in my future undertakings.”

The week was attended by 297 students and is the first of a range of initiatives to nurture budding entrepreneurs. Commenting on the new event, Head of Employability and Graduate Development Paul Blackmore said “we aim to make sure that our students are amongst those behind some of the brightest and the best new ventures of the future.”

Date: 23 March 2012