Creating careers across Liverpool City Region

Liverpool City Region Careers Hub, managed by Growth Platform, support schools and colleges in developing effective careers plans for students with the mission to help every young person to find their best next step.

Established by the national body for careers education in England, The Careers & Enterprise Company, hubs are tasked with delivering modern, careers education to ensure students are given relevant careers advice and to enable businesses to raise awareness of the skills and attitudes that they require from their future workforce.

As the COVID pandemic hit in early 2020, the Careers Hub very quickly saw that a new approach was needed to ensure that students could still meet with employers directly and have two-way interactions.

The need to develop online virtual experiences was key and the Hub needed to act quickly.

Creating Careers was launched. An employer led video series to inspire and inform young people.

Creating Careers features over 60 different job roles across ten sectors, including construction, creative industries through to health and life sciences, maritime and the visitor economy. So far, there are over 33 episodes on its own YouTube channel that have been viewed by over 5000 students.

Creating Careers also gave the Hub the opportunity to broaden the scope of its existing employer engagement and showcase the breadth of opportunities within organisations rather than concentrating on traditional roles. Key for the Hub has always been to show students the City Regions’ strengths in sectors and the wide variety of different career pathways available to them outside of, often, outdated stereotypical roles.

To make Creating Careers more meaningful for the students, the Hub developed student resources to complete before, during and after each session. Students prepare for each episode by completing the pre-work resource which is developed alongside the employer to provide an overview of the organisation. Students can evaluate each episode by completing the careers roadmap which enables them to consolidate their knowledge and understanding and to be able to make informed decisions about their future career pathways.

This online resource has been an incredible success not only with the schools and colleges but with the students themselves, with one student explaining:

“I’ve really enjoyed watching the Creating Careers series. It really helped me to think about jobs I’ve never heard of and the pre and post work made sure I didn’t forget what I’d learnt.”

Employers across the region have also been eager to support and have embraced this new virtual programme. So much so that the Hub will continue to expand the programme during 2022 with more employers and pathways being showcased to ensure students have a clear understanding of the variety of career pathways and opportunities that are available across the City Region.

Gill Walsh, Liverpool City Region

Careers Hub lead at Growth Platform said: “The Liverpool City Region Careers Hub wants to help every young person find their best next step. Creating Careers has enabled us to work with fantastic local employers to showcase the wide-ranging opportunities within our City Region to inspire our students through an interactive live and pre-recorded programme. We want to remove any barriers in order that all of our young people benefit from a good career’s education, developed and supported by local employers.”