Building Disability Confident Careers’ Services – Planning for Success in 2021/2

June 2021

The 2021 AGCAS ‘‘What Happens Next?’’ report uses data from the Graduate Outcomes survey to look at the outcomes of disabled students and ‘’provides real evidence of the effect of a disability on a graduate’s employment prospects.’’ It paints a familiar picture and reveals unsurprisingly that the proportion of disabled graduates in full-time employment is still lower than the proportion of non- disabled graduates.

To reverse this trend, we must all take responsibility to make time to understand the challenges faced by disabled applicants, and work to ensure that through our strategy, engagement and support, we are working to provide a level playing field where people can display their ability and talent and achieve their career potential.

So how do you effectively provide a disability confident service to the 15% of students who disclose a disability?

MyPlus Universities’ Club suggest 5 steps for you to consider

Step 1: Nominate a disability ‘champion’ within the team

Having a designated disability champion or lead adviser within the careers’ service provides valuable focus. Developing expertise and understanding the complexities of applying for jobs, internships and placements with a disability or health condition is mission critical. A key benefit is that there is a designated person who is responsible for gathering and signposting specialist information, careers events and resources that can be shared with colleagues and students.

Another benefit of having a designated disability lead is that they are able to foster relationships and partnerships both internally, for example with marketing and comms teams, and academic departments, and externally with organisations like MyPlus to develop their disability confidence.

Step 2: Work to embed disability confidence throughout the team

‘Best practice can only really be achieved if everybody at a service has experience of working with disability and it is embedded across that service’. Catherine Alexander; Careers’ Consultant and Disability Lead at the University of Cambridge

Finding a job is hard for everyone, however if you add in a disability or a health condition it becomes even more of a challenge. Disabled students look for jobs in the same way as their non- disabled counterparts and have similar questions about topics such as culture, career progression opportunities and training. However, they will also have additional questions and concerns that are specifically related to how to apply with a disability, and they are often unsure of where to start. It is vital that students have access to careers consultants who can equip them with the specialist advice and information enabling them to confidently apply for jobs, internships and placements and perform to the best of their abilities.

Step 3: Target & Engage

Cutting through digital noise is tricky and reliance on email campaigns, social media and newsletters is often no longer enough to engage with your target audience. Targeted communications are an effective way of marketing the careers service to a particular group. The key to success is identifying your audience and creating and sharing engaging, practical content.

Catherine Alexander, speaking at a MyPlus Universities’ Club webinar, says that the key to successful engagement at Cambridge has been working with the Disability Resource Centre. With student consent, the DRC shares student data with the careers service and this is then mapped onto their Handshake platform. A simple email is sent to ask students whether they would like to receive emails for the careers’ service about disability related resources and this email is reviewed and sent out annually.

Catherine also stresses the importance of ensuring that disability is normalised for all students by making sure that all standard communications are inclusive. This could mean, for example, asking if adjustments are needed when promoting an event via a blog. This not only sends a message that disabled students are not an ‘add on’, but it also helps to ensure that non-disabled students see disability as part of everyday life. As future managers, Catherine believes this is of utmost importance.

Step 4: Communication & Messaging

First impressions count. Promoting your commitment to disability to your students is about ensuring that all generic emails, newsletters, web pages, portals and platforms position your career’s service as ‘Disability Confident’. This can be as simple as one sentence that demonstrates the support that you offer all students, including the 15% who have a known disability, with links to further resources and support.

There is also the opportunity to create some designated resources on your careers’ web pages for disabled students that tackle some of the FAQs of applying with a disability, or direct them towards external resources such as the library of Disability Career Guides at MyPlus Students’ Club.

Promote disability confident resources and events on your social media channels and tag relevant student societies and academic departments asking them to promote and share.

Step 5: Collaboration-an opportunity to educate

Finally, disabled students will talk to people who they trust, and this can mean that their disability service manager or personal tutor will often be a first point of contact.

In her MyPlus blog, Lucy Crittenden, Head of Careers at Birkbeck, explains the benefits of close cross-collaboration between the careers and student services team. At Birkbeck 23% of full-time entrants have a disability and this approach has worked very well in terms of providing 2-way referrals, training, and support.

Birkbeck’s Ability Programme was borne out of research into students wanting to understand more about the challenges of getting a job with a disability and employers wanting to understand about recruiting disabled students. The successful programme has two key aims providing students with access to tailored careers advice & access to meaningful employment and for employers building confidence and putting in long term changes to be able to access best talent.

To read more about the Birkbeck Ability programme and the advice Lucy gives on how to build these relationships, please read her blog linked here.

The percentage of students who have disclosed a disability has risen from 11% in 2015/16 to 15% in 2019/20 *; this equates to 368,815 students in the UK. It has always been pertinent to provide these students with tailored careers advice to meet their specific needs however, with the current job market and economic climate being more challenging that it has ever been, providing this expert advice is more important than ever if they are to successfully transition into employment.

The MyPlus Universities Club programme aims to build capability and disability confidence within Careers and Employability teams, which will support them to enable disabled students to realise their career potential.

For more information, or to book onto a training webinar, please contact Emma Knox, University Partnerships and Marketing Manager at MyPlus at emma@myplusconsulting.com

*Data source: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/whos-in-he