Enhancing Creative Media Employability
“Employability is: ‘a set of achievements – skills, understanding and personal attributes – that makes graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy”
GEURS, (2021) The Drivers of Employability [Online]. Available at https://www.employability-ranking.com/drivers [19.03.2022].
GEURS, (2021) The Drivers of Employability [Online]. Available at https://www.employability-ranking.com/drivers [19.03.2022].
From this infographic we can clearly see that Media Students are most likely to find employment working in three areas:
- Content creation
- Marketing
- Sales
Schwab, K. Zahidi, S, (2020) The Future of Jobs Report 2020, World Economic Forum, https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2020.pdf (October 2020).
Five of the six roles in content creation are classed as Niche and would require a specialist approach to eduction. We actively use data like this to update our curriculum, assignment briefs and skills development goals.
We have already made a change to our Sound Production units to include podcasts as this meets an industry need and helps to improve the employability of our students. You can see testimony from Aoibheann Keenan below, discussing her development on HND Creative Media and the impact podcasting has had on her.
Schwab, K. Zahidi, S, (2020) The Future of Jobs Report 2020, World Economic Forum, https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2020.pdf (October 2020).
Developing Specialism – Podcasts
Showcase Student Success Stories
Sophie McDaid – NICMA Photography Winner 2020
Cathal Carlin – NICMA Ad Production 2nd Place 2020
“It is how you present yourself to potential employers, both through written and verbal communication, that will determine your ability to secure a position. This ranges from your choice of words to the way you dress to even the way you walk. All of these choices will reflect your individual preference and hence cannot be replicated by another candidate. As a result, it is important to recognise that, despite having the same employability skills, these will be adopted in different ways and conveyed using different experiences to reflect your individuality”
Project Based Learning
Accreditation of Skills
We want to award our our best students with HotHouze badges to show employers our belief in their abilities.
This links to students developing and being recognized for specialisms as well as graduate skills and digital literacy. I created this badge as a test version. The idea is that only our best editors would achieve this accreditation.
By limiting the number of recipients, we add prestige and could be viewed in the industry as our stamp of approval that employers could value and trust. It could also be used on students’ CV’s, websites, and social media profiles.
The future development of this system is to create badges for all key areas including and not limited to podcast, audio, camera operation, photography, project management and leadership.
Having shown this to the course team it has sparked idea generation around a HotHouze Alumni, a page on the website that highlights our top one or two graduating students for each academic year. This could have a significant positive impact on their employability.
