For Employers

There are various ways businesses and University Centre Leeds can work together.

As an employer you can:

• Offer a work placement opportunity
• Offer a volunteering opportunity
• Join one of our 'visiting professionals' talks
• Contribute to curriculum consultation
• Offer to become a career mentor
• Sponsor a student

Foundation Degrees and Top-Ups

At University Centre Leeds we offer a range of full time and part time degree level programmes. For details click here. 

For more details about courses and applying, please contact the University Centre Leeds Team at admissions@ucleeds.ac.uk. 

Higher Level and Degree Apprenticeships

We have been successfully recruiting to Higher Level and Degree Apprenticeships since Sept 2016 and will be developing our offer further in the future to cover more sectors. For more details click here 

Offer a work placement opportunity

Work placements can be a vital part of a student’s career planning enabling them to develop a better understanding of career sectors and organisations. Visiting a workplace and being able to observe and possibly ask questions of the people who work there provides excellent insight. 

If you are interested in being involved in our employer engagement activities, please contact laura.macgregor@ucleeds.ac.uk.

Offer a volunteering opportunity

If you are a UK based third sector organisation, charity, community group or a public body and are looking to recruit volunteers, our students are keen to get involved, develop their skills and make a difference to their community. 

Benefits of hosting a student:

• Introduction of a motivated and committed employee; 
• Offering up to date industry knowledge; 
• Opportunity to be involved in curriculum development to better prepare and skill potential graduates; 
• Increased profile of your organisation amongst staff and students; 
• Taking one of our students on a work-experience placement will bring a fresh pair of eyes and a different perspective to your business; 
• You’ll also have the opportunity to nurture and help develop an emerging talent, and possibly even to spot a future employee.  
• Students can help generate new ideas; they have energy and enthusiasm and are keen to impress. 

Students who understand how your industry work, and have positive and developmental experiences of working with key organisations, can help contribute to the overall growth of one the few growing sectors in the UK economy.  

We also have a vacancy board and communications newsletter, distributed to students and upcoming graduates, if you would like to advertise any vacancies at your organisation. 

If you have a work experience opportunity, please contact: engage@ucleeds.ac.uk 

Employer Networking

We welcome opportunities to network with employers and industry partners, as well as actively promoting networking opportunities for industry representatives. Throughout the year, networking events will be hosted at the college and we would like to invite you along to meet other employers, key partners and college representatives. If you would like to find out more about our employer networking events, or would like to invite us along to one you are hosting, please email engage@ucleeds.ac.uk. 

Curriculum Consultation and Contribution

We continually seek to develop our courses, ensuring they are relevant, current, and meeting employer and market demand. As such, we encourage partnerships and collaboration with industry. By consulting on curriculum you will: 

• help us to continue to understand the skills you want from graduates, so we can continue to structure our curriculum to match this; 
• develop partnerships with curriculum for work-related learning and experience opportunities, real-life projects and competitions; 
• support your own personal and professional development; 
• develop excellent networking opportunities.  

There are a number of ways you can contribute to curriculum and the development of skills of graduates; from guest-speaking, to taking a student on work experience or developing collaborative projects, to developing current courses to maintain currency and relevance or developing a brand new course to help meet labour market needs. 

If you would like further details about how you, and your business, could get involved, please email engage@ucleeds.ac.uk. 

Some of the ways employers can engage with our students are:

Join one of our ‘visiting professionals’ talks 

Could you inspire others? We host ‘visiting professionals’ talks across all courses in regular seminars and lectures. We look for professionals to describe their first-hand experience, what life is like to work in that area after studying for a degree and offer advice on next steps in their career. 

Offer to become a career mentor

Wish to pass on your career knowledge and experience to a student who is interested in working in a career sector in which you have experience? We have mentoring schemes throughout our courses which create an opportunity for students to receive relevant and up to date career sector or employability focused advice and help. 

Sponsorship

Throughout the academic year, we run a series of exhibitions and events, as well as competitions and student engagement activities. Some of these are aimed at our student community, some at the general public; and some at industry professionals.  

Sponsorship provides a great opportunity to raise awareness of your business, and to promote your organisation directly to future graduates. 

We’re always interested to hear from potential sponsors, so if you would like to have an informal discussion about potential opportunities please email engage@ucleeds.ac.uk