Putting Yourself Ahead of the Crowd: An Interview with RealWORKS
Could you give us a brief overview of the sort of services RealWorks provides, and how it might be a useful tool for students?
RealWORKS is your Award-winning University Employability service – and we work with all students and alumni after you’ve graduated to help you move into your career, start-up or further study.
A quick summary of the services we offer:
We work with all course teams, so you’ll likely have the team working with you as part of your core teaching – often multiple times while you’re here.
We run lots of workshops with students outside the curriculum as-well – these tend to be focussed on common areas we know students need to support with, for example job-hunting, application and interview support. There’s also lots of other workshops covering postgrad study option and business start-up and lots more running throughout the year.
We also host tons of employer events – mostly virtual, but some in-person throughout the year. Again, you can see these events and book in either through your student app, or directly through Handshake.
If you’ve got some quick questions or need some signposting, come along to our drop-ins (book via Handshake); or if you’ve got some more complicated questions or need some dedicated coaching, you can access our 1-1 service, for a 30-minute coaching session.
We look after the work-placements process, and help to make sure everything is safe and legitimate before you go on placement.
We also run a Micro-Internship scheme, where we offer paid, 30-hour short, sharp industry-facing projects for students that you can undertake alongside your studies and any part-time work you’ve got.
A big part of what we offer are digital services, and we’ve got some pretty smart AI tools that help you build and instantly check your CV (as many as you like) with detailed feedback you can work-through to make improvements. There’s also tools like our AI Interview simulator that asks you typical interview questions and gives you detailed feedback on your answer.
If you’re looking to study-abroad, we also manage the study-abroad schemes at the University – either short 4-week experiences in the summer, work-abroad programmes or longer semester abroad study exchanges. There’s often funding available to help support these experiences.
If you go on to Handshake you can see the directory of employers we work with (over 4000) most of these will be offering jobs, placements or internships available to students and grads. You can set up a profile (a bit like linked-in) and search for jobs, events or even network with students and grads from Falmouth and other Universities.
There’s lots of things that happen in the background which are pretty invisible to students, but keep things running smoothly – for example the national ‘Graduate Outcomes Survey’ that all graduates get sent around 15 months after leaving University to find out what you’re doing.
If you wanted to see a summary of the support on service and links on how to access, you can access our service guide: https://falmouth.joinhandshake.co.uk/attachments/20556/download?token=nw60ShWSw5nTNDaPYFuZsrY4WJ8gCs1QGmCLe2LWW5ElqPuX9Xm1oA
What can students do during their time at university to begin thinking about or taking steps towards their career?
A really common mistake students make is waiting too long to think about your career. It’s something you should start engaging with in your first-year and a bit like your studies building that work as you work through your degree. Lots of graduate jobs open for applications at the end of your second year or the start of your third year. If you miss those deadlines, it can put you a year behind if you’re interested in a specific role or company.
The short answer is -get involved and get experience. Part-time jobs, placements, internships, volunteering, societies are all really valued by employers. Have a look at some of the grad roles on Handshake and look at when they recruit.
What advice do you have for students who have no idea what they want to do as a career?
This is a good place to give you some stats. In the UK 70% of grads don’t work in an area aligned to their degree, and (luckily) 70% of graduate jobs are open to students from any degree discipline. You’re also really likely to have around 7 totally different careers (not just different jobs) over your working life, some of those will be in sectors and industries that don’t even exist yet. Very few people pick a career at University and stick with it for the rest of their lives.
It's really easy for students to give themselves a really hard-time for not being sure about what you want to do, don’t do that – but here are a few really practical things you can do:
I really like the ‘Prospects’ Job Match tool (https://www.prospects.ac.uk/planner) – it asks you a whole load of questions and based on your responses will give you some suggestions for the sorts of roles that might suit you. If nothing-else it will give you a list of the sorts of roles you might consider ,some of them might surprise you.
Don’t settle – You can feel quite well-off if you pick up more hours from your part-time job after leaving uni, or picking a job that isn’t hard to get. You’ve worked really hard for your degree and you should aim for a job that allows you to use the skills you’ve developed and that stretches you. Often students who do settle find it harder to get a graduate-level job later.
Try things out – Whether it’s an internship or a live-brief or placement in your course make sure you try out some different sorts of roles and companies and see what you like and don’t like.
What are the benefits of going on to study a Master's Degree and will this help with career progression?
The benefits to different forms of postgraduate study can be really strong, but it needs to be right for you.
If you just wanted to extend the student experience for another year, it’s probably not going to work out all that well for you. The courses often run in a more intense way, the level of study steps up a gear and there’s usually far-less free time.
Some jobs need PG qualifications to get. For example a PGCE for Teaching or a whole range of ‘conversion’ courses, for example in Law which allow you practice law, health-care, social work, psychology etc.
I often tend to advise against ‘doubling-down’ – if you’ve got, for-example an undergrad degree in photography, taking a masters in photography probably won’t help you to get a better job. There are some exceptions to this, for example if you wanted to be a University lecturer in Photography, you’ll need a masters and probably a doctoral qualification as-well.
It can be a really strong career-boost to combine subjects, for example an undergrad in Graphics and a Masters in Marketing can open up a whole range of opportunities for you – but pretty much any combination of subjects can be really powerful.
If you’re a UK student there are PG and Doctoral Loans available – these work a little differently to the undergrad loans, so it’s worth looking into. Some Universities offer ‘stipends’ for doctorates, where you earn money for studying and don’t pay fees. At Falmouth there are ‘Alumni Discounts’ available on most courses.
Finally, what careers can come out of studying English, Creative Writing and Journalism degrees at Falmouth University?
Really versatile course, and as mentioned earlier – you’ve got access to the majority of graduate labour market.
If we’re talking about jobs that directly link to your degree, there’s too many different sorts of roles to list, but could include roles in publishing, journalism, PR, communications and marketing.
One factor that’s really important to note – some of those areas listed are still really old-fashioned in their approaches to recruitment. You often find graduates from Oxbridge who’ve studies courses like History or politics taking up these graduate roles. That can be down to nepotism in the system, where these applicants have already got contacts in these organisations. Going-back full circle – as a student you’ve got a great opportunity to build your network, get some experience and put yourself ahead of the crowd.
Edited by FalWriting