Employability Champions will create high-profile impact for the Careers and Employment Service (CES). You will be working to achieve an increase in student and graduate engagement with the full offer from CES, for example increasing the use of online resources, awareness of vacancies and opportunities, and engagement with events.
The Employability Champions are the face of the Careers and Employment Service and are there to support and encourage students to use the service and be a first point of contact for students arriving at the CES student facing spaces. You will offer triage for the queries received in person, via email or by telephone signposting to the relevant staff members/resources accordingly. The Champions will also play an active role in CES events, promotional activities, and project work.
CES offers professional employability services to enable students and graduates to build successful careers, making the right choices for themselves and turning ideas into secured jobs, new enterprise, or further study. The CES team aim to work with all students to understand their skills, attributes, and career choices, raise awareness of opportunities available and to prepare for all stages of recruitment and selection.
Principal Accountabilities:
Front of house customer service:
1.Create a welcoming and interactive front of house environment, liaising with students and increasing footfall.
2.Staff the CES student facing spaces, becoming the first point of contact for service users.
3.Appropriately respond to student enquiries, booking appointments with Career Coaches and Careers Advisers when required, promote the service offering and engage students in the wider CES offer and signposting to wider University of Derby services as appropriate.
4.Familiarise themselves with the CES online resources, directing students to these as and when needed and be responsible for maintenance of physical resources in the student facing spaces.
5.Maintain records of interactions with service users.
Promotional work:
1. To support events and CES activities to create impact with students and to increase engagement and footfall.
2. Support student engagement with the CES service through various methods such as lecture shout outs and actively engaging with students and academics to support the promotion and marketing of the CES offer.
Associated duties:
1. Support additional project work, as and when requested and in line with the level of the role, including the collection and collation of the feedback.
2. To work with the Student and Graduate Engagement Officer on social media campaigns, including the content creation, production of videos and creating engaging articles for student dissemination
3. To manage email inboxes as requested providing student responses to mirror in-person support
4. To work with the wider service on collaborative projects
Essential Criteria
Experience/Knowledge
• Experience of customer service, or equivalent high standard of communication skill (verbal and written) – Essential
Skills & Abilities
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to relate effectively with students and recent graduates – Essential
• Active listening skills - Essential
• Ability to follow procedures -Essential
• High standard of written and verbal skills – Essential
Personal Qualities
• Flexible - Essential •
• Customer facing professional - Essential
• Committed and reliable - Essential • Professional approach - Essential
• Enthusiastic - Essential
• Willing to undertake work of a repetitive nature - Essential
Desirable Criteria
• Familiar with the Careers and Employment Service, its offer, and the team- Desirable
• Ability to perform research related tasks - Desirable
Working Hours and Length of Contract: We are looking to recruit an Employability Champion to work at least two 3-hour shifts per week (Monday to Friday) for a period of 33 weeks. Our expectation is that this work will be spilt across the team on a rotation basis. There may be opportunities through the year to support with other activity. The closing date is the 21st August and interviews will take place onsite.
The successful candidate will be expected to attend paid training before commencing this role.
Working Hours: 6 hours per week
Rate of Pay: £12.98 per hour as of 1st August 2025 (please note that recent
University pay uplifts effective from 1st August 2026
may affect pay rates. Where applicable, any resulting
back pay will be processed accordingly).
Length of Contract: Term time only from 14th September 2026 initially until December 2026. You will be required to attend training days on 9/9/26 and 10/9/26.