My first year working as a Careers Coach in Higher Education - This one is for the students and young people nationwide!

Having already worked with the LUMS careers team in my capacity as an Agency recruiter, I felt I knew what I was getting myself into when I joined the team myself as a specialist Careers Coach last October. I knew the students at Lancaster were passionate about professional and personal development, I also knew that Lancaster University has an outstanding reputation for Careers support, particularly imbedding employability work in curriculum. I was also very aware that Lancaster's reputation in the professional world for talent was strong, and seen as a true destination for talent across many specialist sectors, including Accountancy, Finance & Consultancy. "The case for early talent has never been stronger than now", Neil Carberry mentioned at the recent ISE conference this Summer, and he is absolutely right. I was ready to coach all my students to success!

I was also incredibly aware of the skills and talent shortages in the Accountancy world and beyond, as well as the requirement for SME's to desperately attract new talent in order to grow and innovate over the years to come. I was also aware that LUMS students wanted to understand their variety of options post graduation, and also ways in which they can develop practical work experience, whilst studying, to sharpen skills, and boost their own graduate outcomes. I was prepared to tackle all of these challenges and pair our talent here at Lancaster, with those seeking skilled graduates, whilst providing my experienced hire expertise, to ensure our students had just as much of a chance as anyone else in the competitive graduate recruitment market. I believed this would be my main challenge during my 1st year in post, how wrong I was!

What I wasn't prepared for, is that whilst the motivation of our students, employers, and that of the team has remained unchanged, the world has not, and the effects it is having on our young people entering the world of work is larger than most realise, even post covid.

Life post covid for our young people starting out is complex and in seriousness hard to relate to, as much as we can try. We are talking about a cohort of students who spent part of their University life, not on campus, but at home. The dream of moving away and gaining independence, meeting new friends, joining societies, developing interpersonal skills, and starting your career journey, snatched away or put on hold by a global pandemic. Whilst our new starters to the University are now able to safely enjoy campus life, these young people don't forget, still faced struggles during their vital final few years of secondary education, and have also spent some of their formative years in isolation from the world. Our international student population have encountered even harder issues, such as travel problems, having to quarantine, not seeing family for years in some cases, or not returning to the UK at all to study. Our students have also seen how the pandemic affected their wider family, parents, siblings and friends, people of all generations and backgrounds have been having a difficult time over the past 3 years, and much of this invisible weight is being carried on the shoulders of young people, the trauma is clear to see when our students open up to us.

How does the above link to careers and employability? In every possible way you can imagine. Many of our students were unable to go to their Internships and Placements due to lockdown, graduate jobs offers retracted, and in general our students lacked the facetime they so crave and deserve with Employers, Careers, Teachers, Friends etc. What this has meant, is that many young people have been deprived of meaningful social contact, and have been unable to develop their interpersonal and communication skills as much as they may have liked, which ultimately can lead to lack of confidence, resilience issues, and then on to more serious issues such as mental health issues, which we see are on the rise for young people. The MD of Gradcore at the ISE conference discussed that loss of learning over covid seems to be a huge trigger to student confidence, and that a student's opportunity to develop soft skills through part time work fell during the pandemic, these are the skills our employers are telling us are in such high demand and the ones students feel they lack the most. Bring in the very serious discussion of underrepresentation, which further fuels students opting out and not feeling good enough, it is clear there is a gap in this area to support our students to become more confident, whatever "confidence" means to them as an individual.

There are positives, the graduate recruitment market is strong in many areas, and as the ONS data shows, there are more jobs than people to fill them, even in specialist high paying careers. The sheer determination and positivity our students, in these hardest of times, have shown me that although the pandemic has created challenges for our young people, they still want to get on with their life and have an eye on the long term goal at all times. Our students are tech savvy, commercially switched on, know what they want out of life, and won't settle for the status quo. They are very ready to make their mark.

To conclude, what do my students really need this year, is the question I have been asking myself over the past few months. The answer I have so far, is that many definitely need understanding, space to talk, facetime, as well as practical solutions to support them in developing resilience, soft skills, and confidence overall, in order to be able to cut out the noise and just go for it. We are delighted our teaching and events are all back in person at LUMS, our employers are coming back on campus to engage with our students face to face, and the halls are bustling again. Myself and my colleague Paul McCormick start out Mock Assessment centre workshops in a few weeks time and my 121 calendar is jam packed every week, engagement is high.

Gen Z, don't stop telling people what you need to get through, we need to hear you and the future is bright, although you may not always feel "resilient", the past few years have shown us you are, it is a blast working with you honestly!