Essex wins place on awards shortlist for employability

The University of Essex is up for a national award for its success in supporting students to develop and enhance skills for their time at Essex and beyond.

Essex is one of just four universities to be shortlisted for the Supporting Student/Graduate Employability category in the AGCAS Awards for Excellence.

The Chart My Path online portal pioneered at Essex features over 190 activities aimed at helping students gain skills. This is now integrated with our Big Essex Award to allow students to gain recognition for their extracurricular achievements on their Higher Education Achievement Report.

Staff can host and promote their activities, gain intelligence on student preferences, increase engagement in extra-curricular activities and understand what skills students develop when engaging with their activities. Underlying the platform is the Essex Skills framework, which provides consistent skills areas for students to develop in.

Head of Student Development Daniel Fox said: “As a team we are incredibly proud of the service we offer to support our students that we have developed since 2020 and feel we deliver a comprehensive 24/7 digital platform that is innovative and meet the needs of our students. To be shortlisted for one of our many initiatives is an excellent recognition of the work we do and reflective of the wonderful team we have assembled.”

Since launching in 2020, the platform has been visited 52,000 times, registered 18,500 activities and recorded 12,200 activities.

The activities are sorted into achievement levels and relevant activities can be put forward by the student for their Big Essex Award through the platform.

Taking part in the Award has a big impact on students. Those who take part in the Big Essex Award report significantly higher levels of career readiness and awareness of the employability skills they need for their future career.

Daniel said: “We believe that the AGCAS award panel clearly recognised the innovative approach we have taken to support our students to develop and grow and ultimately stand out to employers, through providing a platform to help them navigate and identify extra-curricular activity to develop and enhance skills enabling them to move onto positive graduate outcomes.”