Part-Time Jobs Fair 2022

Posted on: 30 September 2022 by Paul Cullinan in Employer Connections Blog

The University of Liverpool Part-Time Jobs Fair returned to campus as part of the Welcome Week events in September 2022.

It’s been a long, long time since Careers & Employability held a Part-time Jobs Fair, so the suggestion of reintroducing the event, brought a (slight) element of trepidation.

Will employers be interested in attending?

If we get the employers, will the student demand be there?

How wrong we were to have those reservations…!

Careers & Employability introduced 6 themed TouchPoint events with the aim of maximising impact with students and delivering greater exposure for the employers attending, with the Part-time Jobs Fair, held during Welcome Week, forming part of TouchPoint 1.

For as long as I can remember, it has been recognised that students working part-time around course commitments is an integral part of the student experience.

As employability experts, we recognise the value graduate recruiters place on students being able to recognise the importance of developing key transferrable skills, through part-time work and regardless of the working environment they’re developed in. When it comes to applying for an internship, a year in industry placement, or a graduate level role, part-time work experience really does enhance a student’s application.

That said, students are not immune to the impact of the current cost of living rises being experienced by many - The MillionPlus research identifies more than 300,000 undergraduates across the UK will be the hardest hit financially, in the current academic year.

And it would be wrong to assume, that many of our students can rely on family (financial) support to get them through this difficult period, as no doubt many of their own families are experiencing a financial squeeze too.

The cost of living crisis has also thrown up a bit of a conundrum.  The University has always advocated that our students should only work up to 15 hours per week during term time.

Given the current financial difficulties students are experiencing, does this stipulation need to be revisited? The discussion on this one continues.

So given this, one of the main drivers for re-introducing a Part-time Jobs Fair, was because Careers & Employability wanted to recognise the financial difficulties many of our students are experiencing and we wanted to be seen (as much as we can) to be supporting our students to get through this difficult period – and so the Part-time Jobs Fair was reborn!

Whilst the event formed part of the University’s Welcome Week, and was predominantly aimed at incoming first year students, it's fair to say, the event was very well attended by students from all years of study, and it was also great to see many of our new international students in attendance too!

We originally set a target of having up to 12 companies at the event but it was great to see employer appetite exceeded our expectations and we were delighted to welcome 27 companies to the campus. They covered a diverse range of employment sectors, including:

Hospitality, sport, care work, contact/customer service centres, catering, the gaming industry, health care, hoteliers, leisure, tutoring and more.

“The fair was amazing!  We're so glad that we attended!” – FM Outsource

In excess of a 1000 students attended which took many of the recruiters by surprise - note for future events employers - bring lots of staff and freebies to deal with the demand!

“We had a lot of applications come through your fair, we are over the moon, and really hope we can work with you again!” – The Jockey Club Catering

As part of the event, Careers & Employability also dedicated a stand to support students in activating their Handshake career profile, with over 400 taking the opportunity to do so, which was a tremendous achievement in just a couple of hours!

Shout out to our staff, who covered this stand, we know this was intensive for you, but you were all brilliant!

“We really enjoyed the event and had great outcomes with interviews arranged!" – Autism Initiatives

It was good to see so many students being prepared for the event too, taking our (pre-event) advice in bringing along a copy of their CVs for the employers to consider.

And for those who didn’t bring a CV, many took the opportunity to visit the Career Studio, to take advantage of the support available to them on the day, delivered by our fantastic team of Career Coaches, who were able to assist the students in creating a CV suitable for part-time work – shout out to the Career Coaches being on duty that day, a real baptism of fire for your new role, dealing with such volume of students!

So, it looks like the Part-time Jobs Fair is back with a bang and is here to stay, with plans already under way to host another event, as part of our Love Liverpool event taking place on Wednesday 1 February 2023. 

We go again!