Preparing students for the real world

MIT is a tight-knit community that offers small classes and easily accessible tutors. Pic supplied

It's that time of year again. Employers are on the lookout for bright young talent, and new graduates need to stand out among a sea of contemporaries looking for work.

Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) runs programmes that benefit both employers and graduates by ensuring students can stand out in a crowd and be "work ready" by the time they finish their degree.

Edwina Mistry, industry and community engagement manager at MIT's Faculty of Business and Information Technology, says all MIT faculties prepare students to be work ready, and in the Business and IT faculty they have implemented multiple programmes and processes to prepare students for the real world.

"MIT is a tight-knit community that offers small classes, so students are exceptionally well supported from the outset," says Mistry.

"You're not a number, you're a person. Lecturers know students by their first names, and we have an open-door policy that allows students to meet with their lecturers. And because lecturers know their students, they can be very aware of how they're tracking in terms of their study and where they might need assistance. We can really support students with our mentors and our student services and career departments. And MIT has a texting policy, so if students don't turn up to class, lecturers will text them to see if there's a problem. We have students such as young mothers who have to miss classes because of sick children but many lecturers record their lectures, and with course material accessible on the internet, it's readily available for those students."

To prepare students for work, a capstone project in the final year of the Business and IT degrees includes a work experience internship in a real life environment. The Business project is part research and part work experience, and students conduct research in whatever industry they're working in.

"It's really good because it's done in conjunction with the client's requirements, so it benefits both the student and the client," says Mistry. Work experience over 15 weeks may involve 15-25 hours a week in the Business degree, and 30 hours a week in the IT degree where there is no research component.

Mistry manages the internships/placements for the Co-operative Education Project, which recruits industry partners and places students into internships. Students prepare by having professional, up-to-date CVs. MIT then provides an opportunity for a client who provides a brief on what they're looking for, and MIT matches students to the brief. The client selects students from their CVs, interviews them as though for a proper job, and provides MIT with feedback. Once students are selected, a proper contract is signed which covers everything and is an agreement of deliverables and timelines. An academic supervisor is then appointed to liaise between student and client.

As a result of feedback from industry partners, it had become apparent that students needed more guidance and preparation for the working world. "Although students have the technical knowledge and theory base, they lack the confidence to market their skills and abilities when going for interviews," says Mistry. To address this, she developed a programme, "Stand out in a Crowd", to give students greater confidence and awareness of personal branding. A key goal is to ensure that by 2017, 90 per cent of graduates are in employment or higher study within six months of programme completion. "The four-session programme is totally run by industry," says Mistry. "HR and management people come in and take the sessions, and students learn how to write professional CVs and do market research to market themselves. Also included are interview techniques and role plays for actual interviews, and work ethics."

This year, the business development team managed to place all 332 project students with industry partners. Mistry notes that 75 per cent of IT students that go into internships end up in jobs with that employer.

The Business and IT faculty maintains a close relationship with industry so graduates can keep pace with latest business practice. Guest lecturers come in to give lectures on IT, sustainability, security, management, and latest HR policies. Mistry says it's very important for academics to be in touch with what's happening in the real world, and many of their academics are also consultants in industry. One of MIT's Business lecturers is currently working on a consulting project with software development company Propellerhead, with two student projects feeding into it, and together they contribute to the overall business outcomes. Mistry says projects like this flow directly back into the classroom because the lecturer explains the nature of the project to make the theory come alive.

Employers with a potential opportunity for Business and IT students can email Edwina Mistry on emistry@manukau.ac.nz