A guide to building lasting partnerships between students and industry

Universities are under increasing pressure to provide students with industry insights and career connections. To meet this challenge, our careers experts - known as the Future Space team - have developed a variety of approaches, focusing on building lasting and meaningful collaborative partnerships between students and organisations.  

How to show prospective partners what’s in it for them

Collaborative projects have always been a great way for students to gain career insights, grow their network and add valuable experience to a CV. But what’s the value for external stakeholders? 

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We’ve spent the past decade putting together a mix of curricular and extracurricular activities aimed at bringing real value to both students and businesses. These initiatives focus on operational and strategic growth, offering support through activities such as sector-specific research on market trends, sustainability and stakeholder insights and event management, content creation, client engagement and data analysis projects. They include:

• Curricular, credit-bearing modules powered by external stakeholders who play a key role in delivery, giving students experience working on real-world projects.
• Micro internships built around short-term operational projects that help organisations build capacity in key areas, while giving students valuable skills and CV-worthy experience.
• One- to two-day challenges set by organisations, where multidisciplinary student teams undertake 'sprints' to develop solutions and pitch back their insights and recommendations
• Site visit opportunities for students to connect with industry professionals and gain sector-specific knowledge, and for organisations to create industry-specific experiences that leave a lasting impression on students.
• Jobs fairs where organisations can share live opportunities and students can interact with potential employers and explore and secure future part-time or full-time work.

By offering a variety of different engagement activities, organisations not only gain insights from diverse, cross-disciplinary student teams but benefit from a fresh perspective to organisational challenges. They also have the option to engage in multiple activities in ways that suits their needs, across a range of operational and strategic projects. These collaborations have led to joint research funding bids, knowledge transfer partnerships and enhanced employment opportunities for our students and recent graduates.

Staying agile and adaptable

With a broad range of activities to support organisations – from entry point activities such as sprints, mentoring and micro internships to more substantial pieces of work such as collaborative projects and dissertations – we’ve found that organisations can engage with our students on a continuous basis, in ways that flex with their current and evolving business needs. This has helped us grow lasting and more meaningful relationships with our external stakeholders, especially when students go on to secure employment opportunities with partner organisations.

Regular conversations with external stakeholders to discuss current pain points – and where university support could add the most value – have been pivotal in maintaining these relationships. These discussions help us to find the right level of engagement and type of activity to support each business best. This, in turn, has created a steady year-round pipeline of employer engagement activities, which has benefitted our student cohorts massively over the years.

Having an offer with continual flexibility to address challenges in a changing world can prove very valuable to all stakeholders involved, and often gives rise to innovative problem-solving, lasting collaborations and new opportunities.

How to find and hang on to opportunities

Through regular internal and external dialogue with academic colleagues and external stakeholders, we can ensure collaborative projects remain up to date and relevant for changing or emerging trends in industry and evolving career aspirations in the ever-changing UK labour market.

Being able to adapt through these valuable initiatives can help to better future-proof working practices, with better alignment of activities for student career interests and organisational requirements.  

Our collaboration checklist

• Find the value: What’s in it for external stakeholders? Finding the value in collaborative working for external partners, and how to maximise benefit to an organisation, can be key to building meaning relationships with longevity.
• Stay flexible: Be adaptable in your approach to collaboration. Offering different ways for external organisations to engage, both in the curriculum and outside, can offer continued value to organisations, which invariably leads to enhanced opportunities for students.
• Keep it relevant: Speak to external organisations about their pain points and how your university and students can help them with these challenges. 

Amy Pyle is learning partnerships manager and Dan Robinson is Future Space projects manager, both at Loughborough University.

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