5 ways to ensure employability provision reflects the realities of creative careers: learnings from UAL

The employability department at UAL isn’t solely made up of careers or guidance practitioners. It includes specialist teams that reflect and understand the reality of creative careers. That includes an enterprise team that supports students and graduates who want to start a business, a mentoring team and an employer and industry engagement team that oversees relationships with employers.

This range of expertise is essential, because creative careers don’t sit neatly in a single box. You can’t support a fashion designer, a filmmaker and a fine artist in the same way, just as you can’t pretend that employability is solely about CVs and job applications.

The UAL employability team is very honest with students about the realities of the paths they have chosen. Creative careers are rarely linear, and they often take a long time to gain momentum. Students are provided with tailored content and resources, both live and asynchronous, to help them gain a better understanding of the industries they’re hoping to work in.

It’s also important to remember that the focus isn’t just on preparing students for where they might be in five or ten years’ time. Instead, the role of the employability service is to help them embark on the very beginning of their careers. That means providing online support or talking openly about everything from imposter syndrome to portfolio working, adaptability and the basics of relationship building.

Networking is also a critical skill for our graduates. Figures suggest that up to 80% of roles in the creative sector are never advertised, so personal networks really matter. But networking can feel intimidating, so it’s important that students are prepared for that reality.

The UAL team uses the DOTS model: understanding yourself, reflecting, becoming opportunity-aware and planning before taking action. Students often rush straight to action, applying for jobs without doing the groundwork. The aim is to slow that process down, providing content and resources to educate and support self-determination.

The Graduate Outcomes Survey for creative careers can be a challenge.

Many graduates will be working on short term contracts, freelancing or building portfolio careers. Although our graduates are supported for up to five years, the official survey only captures a snapshot at 18 months post-graduation. It can take several years for creative careers to stabilise, so an 18-month snapshot doesn’t tell the full story. We also have a very international student body, but those graduates aren’t contacted to the same degree as home students to take part in the survey, so response rates are lower overall, and data is inevitably incomplete.

Graduate outcomes feed directly into the Teaching Excellence Framework, which has made the employability service even more strategically important. A significant amount of work goes into helping graduates understand why they’re being asked to complete the survey and how to interpret the questions through the lens of creative careers. The language used in the survey, particularly the occupational coding, can be misleading.

For example, describing yourself as a “maker” isn’t recognised as graduate-level employment, even though the reality of the work absolutely is. Graduates are supported to articulate what they do in a way that reflects the level of their work - and ensures that their work is accurately recognised.

For me, success rests on education, training and experience. Education develops critical thinking and broad understanding. Training focuses on specific functions, often linked to accreditation or professional standards. Experience is where the other two are put into practice.

Skills are talked about a lot, but the term is often misunderstood. Skills don’t come purely from knowledge; they come from experience. That’s why things like live briefs, placements and real-world projects are so important. Without experience, education and training don’t fully translate into employability.

Change is slow, but employability must become more of a priority. Academic achievement still matters, but profile, experience and real-world learning are just as important.

For many graduates in the creative and performing arts, career progression won’t follow a predictable or immediate path. Recognising that reality is essential when thinking about what success actually looks like.

The role of the employability service is to manage expectations and provide a realistic view of what the world looks like, particularly in creative and performing arts careers. That means helping students understand how their skills, networks and experiences develop over time, and ensuring they feel prepared for a career journey that may take longer to establish but should still be seen as equally successful and meaningful.