Developing your entrepreneurship skills and employability with careers modules

My name is Stephen Watt and I am one of the Careers Advisers at the University of Dundee

When you think of entrepreneurship, it might conjure up an image of sweaty palmed contestants on Dragons Den; go-getters putting their innovative ideas on the line to secure investment that will see their dream business become reality! While this is a fitting description, today, entrepreneurship and enterprise have come to mean so much more than the creation of a new business from creative ideas.

Today, employers across industries and sectors are looking for candidates to demonstrate ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ and ‘enterprise skills’ such as innovation, creativity and a ‘can-do’ attitude. There is now a pressing need for graduates to be able to think outside the box and challenge the way things are done.

It is now firmly woven into the fabric of employability – accordingly, EEE (Employability, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship) are big ticket items both for graduate employers and universities. Here at Dundee, the Careers Service and the Centre for Entrepreneurship have established a partnership approach to address these needs via a range of credit-bearing modules which give students the chance to develop their enterprise skills, foster an entrepreneurial mindset and ultimately enhance their employability.

Alongside careers-focused learning, students, in groups, generate and develop an innovative new business idea and present it to a panel of assessors. These modules, embedded in subjects like Engineering and Law, have been positively received with feedback such as ‘…the module I most enjoyed during my time at university’ and ‘the business plan inspired me to actually pursue enterprising ideas’.

In stimulating the development of idea generation, innovation, teamwork and communication, as well as allowing a practical understanding of business and entrepreneurship, this innovative approach is not only geared towards inspiring budding entrepreneurs, but producing high quality, confident ‘intrapreneurs’ for graduate employers across sectors.