Success story: University of Bristol

Ranked in the world’s top 50 in the QS World University Rankings 2020, the University of Bristol has partnered with Access Career Development for a number of years to help provide the best student employability support to over 27,000 students.

Access Career Development’s CV review tool CV360 has been adopted as a core part of the University of Bristol Careers Service’s support process for all students.

Caroline Darrall, the University of Bristol’s Careers Service Assistant Director, shares insight into how the university is using and benefiting from CV360.

Since October 2019, 6,500 student CVs have been scanned. During that time, CV360 has been promoted to students in a range of ways including the university careers website, within CV support resources, newsletters and on Instagram. It’s also been featured in presentations to students across their programmes of study and within their Career Centre.

Students have also been encouraged to use CV360 before booking a CV review with an adviser, resulting in the Careers Service seeing less students who are at an earlier stage of developing their CV.

Reflecting on the use of CV360 to support students, Caroline said:

“We believe CV360 has been a game changer in our offer to ensure students can produce high quality CVs before accessing a final person mediated review. We love it!”

Discover how you can boost student and graduate employability skills with Access Career Development.

When CV360 was introduced in September 2019 the university decided that in order to achieve maximum impact they needed to promote it in a variety of ways and connect it into a clear process of support as part of their Information, Advice and Guidance offer.

Their model is to provide a one-to-many approach to delivering information and advice so they encourage students to use:

i) their website and resources;

ii) to attend many talks and workshops delivered in their Careers Centre and across Faculties and Schools and

iii) if they still need support, to book for 1-2-1 help.

With the number of CV scans continuing to grow, here are details of how the University of Bristol is currently promoting CV360 to their students:

Featured on university’s website

By adding CV360 as a call to action in the section on our website dedicated to providing guidance on writing CVs.

Promoted via multiple channels

By including shout-outs about CV360 in newsletters, on Instagram, via presentations to students across their programmes and within Career Centre itself.

Incorporated into CV review process

By making a CV scan using CV360 part of the process for booking a CV review. Students are encouraged to book a 10-minute CV review with an adviser only after they have used CV360. This drives usage of the tool and results in fewer students seen who are at an earlier stage of developing their CV.

Incorporated into existing CV resources

By adding CV360 as a next step within the university’s CV Resources to help keep students engaged as they work through the CV support available.

CV360 scores a CV against over 50 checks that commonly trip up an ATS and frustrate a hiring manager, and provides students with detailed feedback on file, presentation, structure, content, skills, and language– including unique checks such as time-to-read, average sentence length, employability skills and skills dominance.

All of these are designed to free up time for career support services to focus on higher-value CV support. 

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