Widening Participation with Lancaster University

At SRS, we’re passionate about supporting students to build their confidence and skills. That’s why we offer targeted events to help widening participation students achieve employability success and access more opportunities.

With more employers using digital recruitment methods, an opportunity to practise a digital assessment centre in a safe learning environment is invaluable for students. In July, we ran a digital assessment centre with students from Lancaster University, with the aim of increasing students' confidence for the graduate recruitment process.

Following the assessment centre, 100% of students felt either confident or very confident about applying for graduate roles, compared to 11% pre-assessment. See what students had to say about the event below…

Those who completed the digital assessment centre were also eligible to achieve a Level 3 accreditation in Employability Skills. This nationally recognised scheme allows students to showcase their achievements on their CV, and is also a great talking point with future employers.

100% of participants said they would recommend taking part in the assessment centre to other students. 

Find out more about our digital assessment centres HERE.

Get in touch to see how we can help to support your students.

All Aboard! SRS go international...

We’re so excited for the take off our our international expansion.

Free digital assessment centre for overseas universities

To launch our international expansion, we are giving one university in each country the chance to pilot our digital assessment centre, for free!

Our award-winning assessment centre simulations have been delivered to over 30,000 students from 30 UK universities, increasing student confidence levels by as much as 64%. Now, we want to support global student employability by giving more students the opportunity to attend an assessment centre simulation, where they can practise their skills in a safe learning environment.

What’s involved?

At the assessment centre, students will use our bespoke software to connect with professional assessors and take part in a group exercise, presentation, and 1:1 interview. The event accurately reflects the process used by graduate employers, making it an incredibly valuable experience. Students will also receive personalised digital feedback which highlights their strengths and development areas.

As we will organise and facilitate the whole event for you, there’s no need to worry about an extra commitment - all we require is the chance to share your feedback with other universities.

Ready to get on board?

Give your students a ticket to employability success - find out more and apply HERE by Friday 11th September.

New Employability Webinars

After the success of our first series of employability webinars, with over 1,800 students signed up, we’re so excited to be back for more.

We’ve got a webinar for that…

Our new webinars have been specifically designed to help students develop their skills in response to current challenges. The content also covers requests we received from students at the end of our first series. The new webinars are:

• Virtual internships

• Developing your online presence

• The skills employers are looking for and how to demonstrate them

These webinars contain insights from students, employers and industry experts. Each webinar is running three times to give multiple opportunities to attend. Find out more about what is included in each webinar HERE.

Second chance to attend

Alongside our new webinars, we’re also running the existing series again, so anyone who missed these webinars has another chance to attend live and take part in the Q&A sessions.

Register now

Register for the webinars HERE. Be quick, places are limited!

Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel, where we’ll be uploading recordings of the webinars, so you don’t miss out on any future content.

We look forward to seeing you on a webinar soon!

Highlights from Helen

Industry updates

Through webinars, podcasts, employer catch ups and virtual conferences - Helen, our University Partnerships Manager, has been keeping up to date with the latest innovations, changes and practises in graduate recruitment. This all feeds through into our workshops, webinars and assessment centres where we share and use the most up to date information.

Helen’s highlights

• Now more than ever, it’s important to reinvest in skills with an increased focus on demonstrating a growth mindset, resilience, learning agility and the ability to leverage change.

• Going forward, employers might spend less time talking to candidates on campus, but more time listening to them on social. Candidates and recruiters need to have a strong online presence and develop a good narrative that differentiates themselves from others.

• Interactions need to be more meaningful where we support students by not just giving them knowledge, but showing them how to learn, analyse and evaluate this knowledge.

• There needs to be greater connectivity and collaboration between schools, universities and employers. There are some great examples of this, where students have access to work-based learning opportunities that increase in authenticity and scope as they progress through their degree.

Don’t let a good crisis pass you by

We'll leave you with a final thought that resonated with Helen: ‘don’t let a good crisis pass you by’. So many universities have turned this challenge into an opportunity to rethink how they embed employability into the curriculum. Please contact us for a chat or further information on embedding employability into the curriculum. 

Follow Helen on twitter @SRS_Helen and connect on LinkedIn for more highlights!

Preparing students for employability success

It’s been a busy start to summer for Team SRS, helping students to develop their employability at digital assessment centres.

In the past month, we've loved delivering digital assessment centre simulations for three different universities. We hosted brilliant groups of students from Middlesex University, Queen's University Belfast, and the University of Chester for three separate digital assessment centres.

100% of participants who completed the digital assessment centres said they would recommend the experience to other students.

Students have given very positive feedback on their digital assessment centres (as above), focusing on how the events have given them invaluable experience of what to expect at an employer's assessment centre, as well as how useful their personalised feedback is for self-development. We also received fantastic feedback from university staff members on how the events were ran.

“SRS have been a joy to work with from start to finish, with all staff incredibly professional, highly attentive and very much focused on providing a rewarding student experience. Our first assessment centre at Middlesex was straightforward to set-up and SRS took care of pretty much everything from the point of handover to the day itself - whilst keeping us updated throughout. I'd recommend SRS to other institutions.” - Jack Tims, Employability Service Engagement Manager, Middlesex University

You can read the case study from our Middlesex University digital assessment centre HERE to learn more about this event. 

Get in touch to talk to us about how we can help enhance your students’ employability with digital assessment centres.