Students up for the challenge

THE artistic director of a theatre company took centre stage to kick off University Campus Oldham’s Employability Challenge programme.

Jim Johnson, from Oldham-based Peshkar Productions spoke to 32 digital journalism, performance and technical theatre students about the skills they will need to stand out from the crowd with employers.

He emphasised that as well as their degree, students must show the other experience they they can bring to the workplace.

The challenge was set up by campus head Debbie Bridge to get employers to share their expertise and knowledge with students.

She said: “The whole idea behind the project is to enable students to learn directly from employers what skills they will need to get that all important foot on the ladder.

“By sharing his experience of cutting-edge work in the creative industries Jim was able to put across the good news, this is an excellent field of work to be in, and the bad news: it’s incredibly competitive and you need to work hard on creating and building a profile.

“If today’s session is anything to go by, the students are prepared to meet the challenge and put in the hard work.”

Digital journalism student Jan Krzesimowskia added: “Jim was very enthusiastic and clearly knew what he was talking about.

“At the end I had some new things on my mind and, most importantly, the session gave the opportunity for all the students to understand how important it is to know what you want to do in the future as there is no time to waste.”

The next employability challenge will focus on the legal profession.