At City, we take developing your employability seriously. That's why we embed it in your studies, throughout your degree. We aim to help you lay foundations for your future career before you graduate.
Studying for a degree is just the beginning of your journey towards a rewarding career. The best employers look beyond academic qualifications for the attributes and experience needed to hit the ground running and take every challenge in your stride.
Through initiatives like AdvanCity and our Career Activation Programme, we offer employability skills integrated throughout your degree from the point of application onwards.
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AdvanCity – an online employability skills course, designed exclusively for City applicants
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Career Activation Programme – employability modules within your degree, tailored to your career options
AdvanCity
AdvanCity is designed to give you a head start in your career development, before you begin your studies at City. Once you accept an offer to study with us, you will receive an email invitation with exclusive access to our online careers and employability course.
AdvanCity will take you through all the essentials of career development and employability, including information specific to international students and career changers. The course covers:
- Recognising your skills and values
- Understanding and researching your career options
- Developing your professional networks
- Producing effective job applications
- Preparing for interviews and selection processes.
If you accept an offer to study a postgraduate degree at Bayes Business School, you will be given access to a similar but slightly different course.
More information
Career Activation Programme
As a City undergraduate you will acquire experience, knowledge and valuable micro-credentials during your degree, tailored to your subject and career options, through our Career Activation Programme.
These skills are designed to enhance your CV and LinkedIn profile, helping you to get a head start on your career.
City is one of only a few universities in the UK to offer this kind of support at undergraduate level. This makes you unique and increases your chances of standing out in the competitive graduate job market.
The Career Activation Programme is delivered through modules that form part of your degree course. These modules might take the form of micro-placements, industry-led consultancy projects, summer internships, volunteering, mentoring and coaching or preparation for application processes after graduation.
The modules fall into two categories: Professional Experience modules and Career Focus modules.
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Professional Experience modules offer professional experience built into your degree
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Career Focus modules provide career education tailored to your subject
Professional Experience modules
We recognise that gaining professional experience in your spare time can be difficult, so City has a wide range of credit-bearing modules designed to enable you to gain valuable professional experience as a core part of your studies.
Most of our programmes offer a choice of these modules, in the second or third years of your degree, enabling you to choose a format that's relevant to your future career at a time and in a way that suits you.
Options vary across programmes. Types of modules offered include the following:
Micro-placements
Spending one month completing a project with one of our employer partners over the summer is a great opportunity to demonstrate your skills, make contacts and gain valuable experience in a professional environment.
We have over 100 employer partners – including Lloyds Banking Group, the House of Commons, Pinsent Masons, The Body Shop and Thames Reach – covering a variety of industries. Employer partners can change from year to year.
Our dedicated Micro-Placements Programme team will guide and support you throughout the process.
Industry projects
This involves working in a team to complete a consultancy project with one of our employer partners. You could be solving a business problem, writing a marketing strategy or working on an innovation project.
This is an excellent opportunity to put what you've learnt into practice, demonstrate your innovative ideas and impress your client.
Summer internship reflection
When you return to university following a summer internship, you will reflect on your experience so that you can effectively articulate to potential employers the new skills and knowledge you have developed.
This option will also help direct your future career goals by enabling you to review the positive and negative aspects of your internship.
Career Focus modules
All City undergraduate programmes include a credit bearing Career Focus module, designed to help you develop the skills needed to stand out in competitive application processes.
This module will typically be in either your first or second year and will guide you through an exploration of your career options. The module on your degree will be uniquely designed for your chosen subject and career pathways.
Being prepared for the future is important, which is why Career Focus modules are a core part of undergraduate study programmes here at City.
Graduate Attributes
The Graduate Attributes are our unique way of articulating the transferable skills students develop during their time with us which will support their future career success.
Each Attribute is linked to a set of skills as shown below. To reflect the importance we place on their development, all core modules in all programmes are designed to support the development of all of the Attributes. We also highlight to students how they can be developed in co-curricular activities.
Always learning
Self-aware, flexible and adaptable to a changing world, engaging in active learning to ensure readiness for new challenges.
- Having a growth mindset
- Curious and enquiring
- Ambitious
- Forward thinking and looking ahead
Technical and digital
Analytically skilled, paired with technical competence, enabling the selection of the right digital tool for each task.
- Analysing, interpreting and using data
- Using relevant technical skill
- Applying technology
Connected professional
Understand the skills required for your sector and role of interest and be ready to operate in a variety of workplace settings
- Commercially aware
- Emotionally intelligent and using social influence
- Building relationships
- Using professional behaviours
- Communicating
- Leading
Engaged in the world
Interculturally aware, responsible and inclusive citizen of the world, confident to bring your authentic perspective.
- Interculturally aware
- Inclusive
- Authentic
- Responsible
Creating impact
Self-starter seeking to initiate, driven to solve complex problems and build value for your organisation.
- Enterprising
- Driving for results
- Creative problem solving.
You can find out more about the Graduate Attributes by watching this video: