Employability
Intellectual development is the foundation of a flourishing career
Employers often say graduates are not ready for work. Part of the reason is that many students arrive having learned to rely on teachers for the single correct answer, a habit often built by exam-focused schooling. The workplace rarely offers single correct answers. Graduates need to weigh evidence in context, make judgements under uncertainty, recover from setbacks and keep learning for the rest of their working lives. That makes intellectual development an employability issue, not only an academic one.
Encourage intellectual development in students to improve work readiness
In Times Higher Education, Jenni Rose and Bill Moore of the Perry Institute use Perry's scheme to explain why students who wait to be told the answer struggle at work, and how educators can help. Their suggestions include open-ended questions with no settled answer, modelling respect for diverse evidence-based views, self-evaluation and reflective assignments, authentic assessment and real-world experience, all with plenty of reassurance as students learn to live with uncertainty. This is how resilience, self-awareness and judgement are built.
Read the article on THE Campus
Employability as social responsibility
We think universities should treat employability development as a social responsibility rather than transactional job preparation. In July 2025, Jenni facilitated a Wicked Problem Set discussion at the University of Manchester Teaching and Learning Conference with 25 academics and careers staff. It asked why the status quo needs to change, which skills we have a social responsibility to give students the opportunity to learn, and which small practical changes can make a big difference. The discussion identified six learning opportunities every student should have, and these were then explored with the Alliance Manchester Business School Advisory Board to compare academic and industry views.
An entrepreneurial mindset, encouraging innovation, risk-taking and opportunity recognition.
A professional network, with the skills and opportunities to connect with employers and alumni.
Social responsibility and environmental stewardship, developing an understanding of sustainability challenges, solutions and mindsets.
Cross-cultural collaboration, preparing students for global workplaces.
Holistic intellectual and ethical development, nurturing well-rounded people with strong ethical foundations.
Digital skills for the modern workplace, including the critical evaluation of technology and its outputs.
Co-creating with students
As Academic Lead for Employability at Alliance Manchester Business School until August 2026, Jenni worked to embed employability in the curriculum rather than bolt it on. Much of that work was co-created with students. Working alongside students meant they were not just recipients of careers advice but partners who helped shape it, and in doing so they developed intellectually themselves, learning to weigh competing sources, judge what their peers needed and make the case for change.
Together with students, the school turned scattered careers support into the AMBS Employability Guide for Students by Students, a clear roadmap from exploring opportunities through to preparing for interviews that covers CVs, volunteering, mentoring, AI use and coping with rejection. Curriculum mapping turned course content and assessments into CV-ready statements, helping around 500 first-year Management students recognise the career value of what they were already learning. A survey of 190 international students from 44 countries, followed by a student focus group, brought student voice into decisions about careers platforms and visa-specific job support. Alongside this, Jenni ran a lecturer roundtable on embedding sustainability and employability in the curriculum, set up a network of Academic Leads of Employability across UK universities, and created a service learning route for MSc Accounting students to volunteer with local Manchester charities.
Crafting your role in the age of GenAI
Around two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and generative AI could take on as much as a quarter of current work. Graduates need more than a list of skills. They need the confidence to shape their own roles. Jenni's job crafting workshop draws on Wrzesniewski and Dutton's research on how people actively craft their work. Task crafting changes what you do. Relational crafting changes who you work with and how. Cognitive crafting changes how you see the purpose and meaning of your work.
The session starts by asking what AI can do, such as speeding up outputs, and what it cannot do. It cannot give us the growth that comes from struggle, because we evolve through effort, not ease. Participants then map their own role, or the role they hope to have, and leave with a personal job crafting plan that puts their most human contributions at its centre. The workshop has been run as a keynote at the student-led AI Nexus event and works for students preparing for careers as well as for academic and professional services staff.
Book a keynote or workshop Read more about AI in higher education
Wrzesniewski, A. and Dutton, J. E. (2001) Crafting a job: revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201.
Coping with rejection
Rejection is part of every job search, and employers rarely explain their decisions. Our free active self-feedback worksheet helps students learn from a rejection and get back on track, even when they receive no feedback.
Download the worksheet for responding to employer rejections