Graduate Business Start-ups Project Report - The Institute for ...

2. Existing Provision within Higher Education Careers
Services
Current provision
In responding to the Graduates Mean Business questionnaire,
Careers Services describe provision
! to raise awareness.
The most common are:
! talks by specialists, such as Business Initiative
! Business Link briefings
! including self employment in Careers Fairs
! workshops run by Careers Advisers
These are mentioned with equal frequency. Others include
careers education options for current students and one day
workshops for past students.
Careers Services often include graduates who have set up their
own businesses in career events. These may be targeted at
specific groups such as a Careers Day for 2nd year
undergraduates in Sussex’s School of Cognitive and Computing
Sciences, where recent graduates who have set up multi-media
and systems companies have been among recent presenters.
These may be part of a mainstream programme of career events:
with speakers from the Prince’s Youth Business Trust, recent
graduates talking through their own thinking and their own
experiences — there are a number of ways in which Careers
Services tackle the questions of raising awareness, and of
providing stimulus and introductory information, people and
resources.
Another approach is to include features on ‘Working for
Yourself’ in vacancy publications, to make sure job seekers are
thinking about the possibility of self-employment as well as
being employed. For example, Sussex University’s graduate
vacancy list ran a feature ‘42 of last year’s Sussex graduates are
working for themselves...’. The article pointed to both expected,
(computer consultant, journalist) and unexpected, (Alpaca stud
Graduate Business Start-ups: Project Report 25