AS THE usual supply of graduate jobs dries up, students will have to be more "self-reliant" than ever when seeking work – according to one of Scotland's university principals.
Earlier this year, The Scotsman revealed that major firms in the financial and business sectors were cutting back their graduate schemes, a traditional key source of employment.
Pamela Gillies, the principal of Glasgow Caledonian University, recen
tly became a trustee of the Saltire Foundation, an independent charitable organisation set up, with support from Scottish Enterprise, to foster Scotland's most talented students.
The scheme has impressed her, and she believes the latest cohort could become the vanguard of economic recovery.
She says: "I've been really impressed at what it's trying to do. At a time when our economy is heading for a downturn, that's when we need to be quite bold and invest in our young people – our talented prospects.
"We have to make sure they can take advantage of opportunities that will come – the next executives, the next leaders in Scotland – so when the economy starts to recover, as a nation we will have invested in folk who can lead the charge to recovery."
A key aim of the foundation is to create people capable of enhancing Scotland's commercial performance, by equipping them with the business skills and entrepreneurial spirit they will need.
The scheme offers placements at Babson, a top-rated business school in America, at large blue-chip organisations overseas and at small high-growth entrepreneurial ventures in Scotland.
Online applications for a further 15 to 20 people to take part in the 2010 programme will open later this year.
Prof Gillies praises the scheme for giving Scots, with fairly limited opportunities at home, the chance to have international placements in world-class businesses. "They can go to another country, meet new people, engage in problem-solving and boost their confidence, so they come back here all fired up with enthusiasm and understand they can be leaders themselves and that they are as good as anybody else," she says.
Babson College, in Massachusetts, is one of the world's best business schools for entrepreneurship, with 80 per cent of its lecturers being experienced entrepreneurs themselves.
"Babson's is the best in the world, so attracts the biggest companies and gives people experiences they would never have managed in Scotland," Prof Gillies says. "I was lucky enough when I was younger to win a scholarship to Harvard. I come from a working-class, fairly modest background and the exposure at Harvard showed me I was as good as anybody else.
"Also, working in a new environment makes you stronger, because it's challenging all your assumptions of the world."
Her own university has grasped the entrepreneurship nettle and introduced programmes to make students more attractive to employers, while Aberdeen plans to reform its undergraduate curriculum, introducing new enhanced study courses, such as business or languages, embedded with the degree structure, to give graduates an edge in the increasingly competitive jobs market.
Edinburgh Napier this month unveiled Towards a Confident Future; a cash boost of £162,000 from the Big Lottery fund will allow it to expand an employer mentoring scheme for some 3,000 students from backgrounds that would not traditionally include university. The scheme will aim at third-year and fourth-year students and those coming to university from college, with support from about 180 local employers, who will advise students and help build their business confidence.
Edinburgh Napier principal Professor Joan Stringer says: "It has been a great success, and we are delighted we will be able to extend the programme to enable other students to benefit and gain the necessary skills to be confident and ready for employment, all so essential, especially in the current climate."
A pilot mentoring scheme was run to test the initiative. Scott Mather, relationship manager for RBS, which took part in the pilot, says: "Having academic qualifications and being 'ready' for work within a commercial company are two very different things. I think the Edinburgh Napier mentoring scheme is a useful bridge, allowing students to get insights to how companies work."
Laura Herr, a third-year business management student at Edinburgh Napier, who is involved in the pilot and being mentored by RBS, says: "Creating a professional CV, a mock interview based on the five-star technique and a meeting with a professional from my area of career interest were the highlights of the programme."
Prof Gillies believes this is the way forward for universities. "We are not alone in this," she says. "It's something universities, across Scotland especially, are going to be focusing on in the coming years, working more to what business wants, rather than simply picking down courses from the shelf. That's where the Saltire Foundation, with investment money, can come in and help support young people to grasp these opportunities."
The full article contains 814 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
