‘Are enterprising students & graduates more employable?’

1. ‘Are enterprising students & graduates more employable?’ © David Rae 2007 Professor David Rae Enterprise Research & Development Unit Lincoln Business School University of Lincoln drae@lincoln.ac.uk Entrepreneurial career planning

2. ‘Are enterprising students/graduates more employable?’ ..If so, how can we help them to develop: • A sense of the opportunities open to them and how to take advantage of these? • Creative ideas for starting and making their career? • Confidence and experience to develop their personal marketability? • From this session, you can consider how students could use a career planning approach to: • assess & evaluate their personal enterprise • review & develop their career goals • develop an entrepreneurial career plan • develop their skills in entrepreneurial and career networking Entrepreneurial career planning

3. Career challenges for students & graduates Or why it’s hard to get started! • Increasing numbers of students & graduates: • ‘How am I different?’ • Declining ’traditional’ career opportunities in professions & large organisations • Rise in agency, casual & temping – minimum wage • Competition for jobs with economic migrants • Graduate-small company mismatch in expectations • Graduates don’t display employable & relevant skills? Entrepreneurial career planning

4. Finding Career Opportunities According to Charles Handy (1990) “We should look for the work that needs doing and present ourselves to who ever needs it as the best way of getting it done.” “Although we may experience a shortage of jobs, there will never be a shortage of work to be done.” According to William Bridges (1997) Entrepreneurial career planning

5. Generic skills for personal enterprise & employability • Does having these skilIs make me employable? • Personal • Personal organisation and time management • Self-confidence and self-efficacy • Finding opportunities and taking the initiative to act on opportunities • Creative thinking and problem solving • Being able to take decisions and accept risks in conditions of uncertainty • Setting goals and persevering to achieve goals • Working independently • People • Participating in networks • Self presentation • Negotiation, persuasion and influencing people • Team working effectively with others • Task • Project management • Being able to adapt and work flexibly in different contexts • Taking responsibility for completing work to quality standards Entrepreneurial career planning

6. Or is it about who I am? • Who am I? What is my identity? • Who do I aspire to become? • What are my hopes and fears? • What makes me different? Unique? • What is my sense of self? • What stories do I tell about myself? • How aware am I of myself & how others see me? • How confident do I feel about myself? • What values and motivations are important to me? • What do I want to offer/give to other people? • How do I want to be rewarded? Entrepreneurial career planning

7. Opportunity centred entrepreneurship What do I want? Personal goals Skills & strengths Confidence & self efficacy Values & motivations Networking Creating & using contacts Communicating effectively Self marketing Learning from experience Planning: Goals What is success? How-to? Who with? Resources Creative thinking Exploring ideas Seeing needs as opportunities Taking initiative Entrepreneurial career planning

8. An enterprising approach to making your career is different, because: • Normal approaches are about changing yourself to conform to employers’ expectations • Being enterprising means creating or changing their expectations of who you are & what you can do for them • Think & act as an entrepreneur: your career is your own business! • You are making and shaping your career • To do this you need a plan… Entrepreneurial career planning

9. Developing your entrepreneurial career: why have a plan? • A plan puts you in control; you decide and direct where you want to go. • You are therefore much more likely to achieve your goals. • A career plan is your personal business plan; your entrepreneurial career is your core business • A plan will help you to develop and manage it proactively and effectively by ‘making your own luck’ rather than hoping to ‘get lucky’. • Planning enables you to create new possibilities and to think through how to achieve them. • The plan can help you to increase and maintain your personal value in all senses - individual, business, and financial. Entrepreneurial career planning

10. Your future career lies within yourself & is waiting to be discovered Entrepreneurial career planning

11. Entrepreneurial career stage framework Entrepreneurial career planning

12. Entrepreneurial career planning • What goals do you want to achieve, and why? • How will you accomplish your goals? • What is your personal value, how can you increase this? • What do you need to learn in order to achieve your goals, and how will you gain this learning? • What networks will be helpful in achieving this? • Personal value: • Self esteem • Value to others as a person • Value created by applying your abilities • Know-how • Reputation, social capital • Financial value Entrepreneurial career planning

13. Who do I want to be? What do I want…. ….to do? ….to offer others? ….to learn? ….to achieve? ….to earn? By when - milestones: For 3 months, 6 months 1 year, 2 years, 5 years? What do I not want? What do I prefer to avoid? Setting my career goals Entrepreneurial career planning

14. Personal development exercises for career planning (refer to chapter 3) • Entrepreneurial learning model: • Personal & social emergence • Contextual learning • Negotiated enterprise • Personal values, goals & motivations • Drawing your learning map • Assessing fit between ideas & personal goals • Personal orientation to risk & uncertainty • Entrepreneurial & management capabilities (toolkit) • Leadership & entrepreneurial teamwork • Mapping your personal networks • Review exercise Entrepreneurial career planning

15. Career plan headings • What I want to achieve • My goals and motivations • My Personal Vision for the future: • These are the values which are most important to me: • These are my Life Goals for: • Business • Career • Personal growth • Family • Social • Timescales for when each goal is to be achieved and how success will be measured • Increasing my personal value • My value to myself and to others is based on: • Ways in which I aim to build on my personal qualities to develop my career further: • Financial value • I aim to increase the value of my total net financial assets to: • I aim to increase my annual financial income to: • How I will achieve my goals • These are my plans for how I will achieve each of my goals: • Personal learning • These are my goals for learning, through which I will be able to achieve my life goals: Entrepreneurial career planning

16. Sources of entrepreneurial learning Entrepreneurial career planning

17. Seven suggestions for managing your career plan 1. Think of your plan as a dynamic agenda which evolves and changes as you learn and progress. 2. Reward yourself for your successes; use each achievement as a motivator to spur you on to greater challenges. 3. Encourage yourself to learn continuously and work at capabilities which you need to develop, engaging less favoured as well as your preferred ways of learning. 4. Find someone who can help you as your mentor, such as an experienced entrepreneur who is prepared to listen and coach you through critical moments. 5. Check regularly how you are progressing against your goals and the plan - review what works for you and what does not, and update your plan and personal theory. 6. Learn from achievements, setbacks and failure: analyse why they happened, what you could have identified earlier and how to act differently in future. 7. Keep moving forward; search constantly for opportunities, evaluate them, plan how they can be exploited, and act on those you judge to be the best prospects. Entrepreneurial career planning

18. Draw a map of your personal & career network Entrepreneurial career planning

19. Networking activity: action-learning to develop skills and confidence • Identify a need, opportunity or question you want to explore • Use your contacts or other research to identify a network where you can find out more about the opportunity • Negotiate your way into the group and attend the next possible meeting - face-to-face contact is vital • Talk to at least 10 people you have not met before • Find out their interests, connections with your interests, & who they know who could help you further • Review your success in starting a new network and exploring your opportunity • Keep your promises to your new contacts Entrepreneurial career planning

20. 3 big questions in planning to network • What do you offer? • What are the benefits & advantages you offer to other people, e.g. your skills, knowledge, business idea, what it does? • Who do you want to make connections with? • Customers, investors, partners, experts, recommenders? • Why will they be interested? What is their need, motivation or interest? • Is there a match with what you want, Y/N? • If you are listening, the question is: • How can I help this person? • Be honest if you cannot, there is no match & move on Entrepreneurial career planning

21. Entrepreneurial networking skills • Create a distinctive and confident personal identity • Who are you, what you are about, what is interesting and memorable about you? • Be strategic, purposive and focused in your choice of networks and investment of time in them – which ones are useful and which are not? • Work towards getting to know the decision makers, resource holders, experts, influencers and most useful people in your chosen networks • Practice conversational skills of listening and asking questions, finding out about people’s needs, interests and their networks • Manage contacts - keep a contact folder up to date, categorise groups of contacts, e.g. news media people Entrepreneurial career planning

22. Maintaining your networks • Your network forms an important resource, and will be more valuable if well maintained. Think about: • How can you sustain your network of contacts to promote their future co-operation? • Who could be your future customers and investors? • Who are the contacts you wish to develop? • How can you grow your network? • Do you need to develop more contacts in specific domains, such as industry contacts and potential investors? Entrepreneurial career planning

23. Evaluate your network • Is your network effective for your career goals? • Is it broad, deep, diverse, large? • Composed of people similar to/different from you? • Evaluate its structure, composition, focus • How does your desired network differ from your actual network? • How to improve on this - access? • Effectiveness, quality of relationships? • Constraints, opportunities & choices in your network? • Access to resources, support & information? Entrepreneurial career planning

24. Featured text: Opportunity Centred Entrepreneurship ‘Entrepreneurship: from Opportunity to Action’ © Professor David Rae: Palgrave MacMillan 2007 www.palgrave.com Chapter 1 downloadable on website Entrepreneurial career planning

25. ‘Are enterprising students/graduates more employable?’ • What do you think? • How can we help students develop enterprising approaches & skills? • ‘What works’ for you, for students, for employers? Entrepreneurial career planning