University of Kent's Employability Points Scheme
The University of Kent’s Employability Points Scheme encourages students to engage with extra-curricular activities and rewards the most engaged students with internships, work experience placements, vouchers and much more.
For each extra-curricular activity completed, students can claim ‘points’ and towards the end of each academic year, these points can be redeemed for ‘rewards’ offered by the external business community. See: www.kent.ac.uk/employabilitypoints
My Employability Points
I have achieved 3160 employability points
Skills Workshop 115 Points
Last updated 11 June 2017, 0:27
Under my own initiative I undertook various skills workshop to gain more skills to help supplement my masters and also to help prepare me for work and future interviews and completing applications. I felt these were a useful refresher. One of the modules I completed was Developing Business Skills for Leadership as Part of my degree course. The module covered a variety of business skills which will be useful in future careers and interviews and time management particularly useful when in the work place and you have to manage your time planning your work to meet deadlines. Also about leadership traits and what made a good leader. Organisation politics talk about the good politics and the bad politics. A sessions on careers was useful and informative to know about openings in HR and how applications and interviews should be completed. Interviews Skills by HR was again useful and covered feedback questions that I had never thought of previously and we discussed interview skills and interview questions. What questions should be used and the star technique was used. Conflict management was new to me and taught me how to deal with conflict that may arise at work and what happens as a result. I also learnt about what triggers conflicts.
Roles and Responsibilities 115 Points
Last updated 11 June 2017, 0:27
Have volunteered to be a course representative to help upgrade my CIPD accreditation and to help improve my Employability skills. Am also a health and Safety as well as a faculty representative and a part time student officer. I was given the role of faculty representative by Kent Union who singled me out as an engaging and enthusiastic representative. These roles have enabled me to gain confidence to discuss a variety of issues with a wide range of staff across all levels and from different schools and departments. These skills will be useful when working in HR and having to consult staff and senior managers across the board with issues that may arise from staff and managers.
Part Time Jobs 55 Points
Whilst on the Employability Scheme I was awarded points for having 2 Part Time Jobs and for working at the graduation ceremony. This enabled me to develop my communication skills and team working skills and customer service skills. Also and graduation ceremony enabled me to put these skills in practice and I worked with different people from different backgrounds. understood the importance of listening to customers and ensuring they receive the best customer service. Also learnt how to cope under pressure and how to handle different queries from customers which included where to go for refunds or where stock was kept to payment queries.
Enterprise Award Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced with distinction 90 Points
These were designed to help with setting up a business and gaining skills needed for entrepreneurship. They covered 3 sections in the beginning Market research, intellectual property and competitor research and unique selling points. That was 15 points. intermediate level covered the business plan, finance and name your business for 20 points. Advanced and with distinction covered insurance, business rates and licences and health and safety. Also covered marketing and business plans. The course were simple to complete and required you to complete some quizzes. These courses were useful for when you want to set up your business for the future and gave me an useful insight into business plans and the marketing of the business to gain customers and knowing who your competitors are.
Profile information
I am a Part time MSC Human Resources Management student in my first year. I choose to undertake the scheme to gain new skills and also to develop existing ones. As a part time student wanted more than just my degree on my CV. I found the scheme and the different activities interesting and have learnt a lot from them. The scheme has let me gain points from workshops to taking part in study plus courses. Have received points from being course rep and faculty rep to having part time jobs. Have gained points from undertaking online courses at home to attending interview by phone and in person. Now working in HR at Kent union will enable me to gain the experience needed and develop the skills needed to work in HR.
- First name: Heenaben
- Last name: Patel
- Display name: Heena
- Email address: hrp21@kent.ac.uk
- Country: United Kingdom
Careers Award on Moodle 60 Points
Last updated 11 June 2017, 23:35
The careers award on Moodle gives you the chance to assess your employability skills. The course requires you to choose 3 assignments and complete some quizzes. The course taught me about choosing a career and researching careers as well as identifying your skills and strengths. The course also covered writing CV applications and interview techniques as well as deciding about work life balance. The analysis of the skills was useful and covered the star techniques. the skills learnt will be useful for looking for post grad roles next year.
Employability Skills 40 Points
This course was about CV, Application forms, Interview techniques and developing social and technological skills. The course was a mixture of theory and practical exercises. The course covered the above areas in depth and how social media can help with applications. Also discussed how to make applications and covered competency questions, star technique interviews and how to answer these types of questions. I found these useful and hope to implement these tasks in the future for job hunting and interviews and the section on strengths interviews was good along with websites that I did not apply to before. The course covered professionalism and etiquette and how these affect jobs and interviews and commercial awareness and networking help with job hunting. I am looking forward to implementing these skills when I graduate.