Career Prospects for Post-Graduates


Just getting a university degree isn’t enough nowadays. Employers are increasingly looking for graduates who can hit the ground running. Postgraduate courses are monitored to match the needs of employers and make you “work ready”. Each degree has been developed in response to current market demnds for specific skills.

Employers look for graduates who can demonstrate both breadth and depth of subject knowledge. Combining subjects in a degree programme is a popular way of tailoring a course to reflect your career aspirations. Work experience plays a key role in making yourself employable. Some of the benefits are: the chance to put theory into practice; development of key skills; greater understanding of career choices; valuable career contacts for the future. Business is increasingly dependent on international trade, and employment opportunities demand well developed language skills.

The course of foreign language will provide a broad range of language training opportunities for all students whatever course they are taking. To find the right career for you, you need to think about the occupations and jobs available–the skills, qualifications, experience and aptitudes you need and whether they are right for you. A postgraduate qualification from the BSU will be one that is recognized globally and will provide an excellent route tobetter career prospects. Major companies say they would rather employ students from the BSU. The University’s graduates benefit from our tradition of strong ties with business and industry. We can say that our courses were more vocational, with students developing better jurisprudence, teamwork and communication skills.

The BSU’s high quality facilities and teaching and its interdisciplinary approach to research will enable you to make the most of research and learning opportunities available whilst studying for your scientific degree. It provides exceptional opportunities for research with commercial applications, drawing upon decades of working relationships with business and industry. All st dents here receive “appropriate and relevant preparation, training and support for their development, helping them both to complete a high-quality doctoral thesis and to develop a range of knowledge, understanding and skills necessary for their future employment”.

There are undoubtedly scenarios in which a generic or interdisciplinary approach would yield interesting results: for example, one could imagine hownetworking, team working, and some communication skills could be enhanced through contact with others outside one’s subject area. Such elements of training must, however, be carefully handled, because the current crop of PhD students are surely busier than their predecessors, and are being required to professionalize earlier. Not only are they working to finish their dissertations within the three-year period of their awards; but also often teaching, attending conferences, making research trips, attending meetings, and engaging in other activities entirely appropriate to their stage of career.

It is clear that development of communication skills and participation in are search seminar are linked to an important professional activity: going to a conference and speaking about one’s work. Students are explicitly prepared for this experience in a special session on ‘conference culture’, in which they are given pointers about how to propose and present a paper, and are taught the conventions of an oral text.

They are encouraged to use the conference as a way of raising their individual profiles, and as a springboard for future publications. The delicate issue of networking is also addressed. The session is also an appropriate opportunity to plant in their minds the idea of running a conference themselves, thus furt her enhancing their organizational skills. Conference activity forms an important part of the career of any academic; for postgraduates it is an important way of participating in academic debate, and ‘show casing’ their own work.

By the end of the second year of the program it can be seen together: the postgraduates are taught to make practical progress in the number of key areas of academic endeavor, with a view to having a significant body of experience by the time they complete their degrees. Introducing this information in the second year also helps to focus students’ minds on the key question of whether or not these postgraduates pursue academic careers, they will almost certainly be required to undergo an interview in order to obtain gainful employment.

It is therefore crucial to present them with opportunities to hone their skills in this area. By this stage of the programme they will have had experience of delivering their material in a public forum, and will have made an attempt to develop their presentation skills; they should also have had other opportunities to defend their ideas, making a substantial, original contribution to knowledge in a specific area.