Friday 13-03-2026 - 11:15

 

 

Written by Joseph Shaw

Joseph is an undergraduate Accounting and Management student and Academic Rep.

 

 

 

What tools are available through your University to give you an advantage over the competition?

Personally, the main priority from my time at University is to find the tools and credentials to have a good career. Sometimes I narrow down my thoughts purely to the curriculum of my degree, but what I’ve found is that there is a plethora of tools while at Lancaster University to improve your CV, get interview skills and increase awareness of career opportunities.

It’s natural as a student to feel unprepared or anxious about job opportunities but this article aims to show you how to become more aware, more confident and better equipped to secure the job you want.

In this article, I will showcase a myriad of ways in which you can develop your skills, build desirable employment skills and a strong, versatile CV.Your degree will build your foundational knowledge and show your aptitude, but these tools will help you take advantage of any opportunity and position yourself for companies you actually want to work for. 

 

CareersConnect 
The best place to start when discussing the tools available is CareersConnect. Becoming knowledgeable and capable with the tools available in CareersConnect is the most positive action you can take right now to boost your career, and it’s also the most versatile. It’s the Lancaster University Careers and Employability service’s main website and way of connecting students like you into career-driven action.

Once you’ve set up your CareersConnect account, congratulations - you now have access to booking career-based appointments, such as CV reviews, interview practice, and career advice, as well as events, allowing you to gain relevant experience and network with like-minded people. 

You also have access to a university-verified database of jobs, opportunities and placements relevant to your career, it also has a pathway page, showing courses to develop to become not just an employable version of yourself, but the best version of yourself, building your interpersonal skills and critical thinking as well as unlocking your earning potential. 

For any student who wants to compete and work for a better future for themselves, I cannot recommend becoming accustomed to the features on CareersConnect enough. If you take a few opportunities and appointments every term, the effect on your career would be substantial. For example, as an accounting student myself, CareersConnect has been integral in finding Spring week opportunities at investment banks and accounting firms. 

Check out CareersConnect here.

 

The Lancaster Award 
The Lancaster Award is a brilliant way of rewarding your extra-curricular activities with more extra-curricular accolades. The Lancaster Award is a scheme which rewards positive experiences outside of your academic experiences, it helps you build skills and confidence, which employers are looking for. 

The Lancaster Award requires you to get 75 points for actions associated with work experience, campus activity, volunteering and careers workshops. Once you gain the points required to meet this threshold, you will be assessed on your CV, a video assessment, an in-person interview and a skills-bank writing. These can be simply campus activities like regular participation in a society, already existing parts of your day like part-time jobs, or career-based workshops like CV building sessions. 

Put simply, the Lancaster Award encourages you to actively build the career you want. It makes all your extra-curriculars feel rewarding inherently as well as for what they contribute in your goal towards earning The Lancaster Award, it’s also a good way of keeping yourself productive, it will be more difficult to ignore your opportunities and obligations when you are enrolled in a course dedicated purely to your non-academic activities. The Lancaster Award incentivises action and participation. It’s a scale for how well you are taking advantage of the opportunities available to you. 

You can book an online session on CareersConnect to learn more about the Lancaster Award and then enrol with the click of a button. Find out more here.

 

Student Training 
Speaking of that student training page, there are two other options there I’d feel this article is incomplete without mentioning: the Digital Skills Certificate and LinkedIn learning. The Digital Skills Certificate is a way for you to become capable and efficient with electronic tools, from basic tools like Outlook, to complex tasks like programming with Python. Furthermore, it provides a certificate for you to show on LinkedIn or your CV. 

Learning digital skills such as programming, formatting Word documents and image editing are valuable skills which employers look for, giving you skills to add to your CV and the certificate itself, adding two positive impacts on your application, for the price of one experience. 

LinkedIn learning provides access to over 22,000 online courses, whereas the digital skills certificate is a university-made course. With LinkedIn learning you can educate yourself in any course you can find, and again, hold the accolades for future employers to see. 

The best part of these student training programs is their ease. You can complete these whenever, wherever if you have a laptop, you can complete these courses entirely online, making for a great contribution to your Lancaster Award, valuable experience and additional CV building. 

Completing the Excel and programming-related modules will significantly enhance the quality of my application to accounting firms. Certification strengthens both your skillset and your application and it’s a positive which you can do anywhere, anytime. 

You can access the Digital Skills Certificate here, and learn more about LinkedIn Learning here.

 

(How to) Get involved! 
No matter how many tools, courses and websites the students are provided, we are still met with a responsibility to make the most of our time at university, to actively engage in these tools, to actively engage with our acquaintances and colleagues. None of these tools does the work for you; your career will be determined by your actions. 

How does this come into improving your career? Well, there are teachers, academic representatives, career coaches, student unions and meetings all available at your disposal. I, personally, was a student struggling to engage myself until I realised how many people are willing to help. You, as a student, can email, talk and meet with anyone here with any of your ideas and transform them into reality. 

Your courses and work will always be important, however if you want to stand out to employers, to differentiate yourself from the crowd, take your ideas and concepts for the university and talk about them, fight for them, because when employers realise you have the autonomy to not just follow a strict path, but create something out of nothing, they can tell you apart from any other student with your grades. 

Email any career coach on CareersConnect. Apply to be an Academic Representative. Contact LUSU or organise a meeting. It could be anything, dare to go out and try to make something today that shows who you are and what you’re capable of to future employers, everybody can follow a course, but far fewer people in our age have the self-belief enough to make a change outside of a predetermined curriculum, there are more people willing to support, critique and develop you and your career than you might expect. 

The tools are at your disposal and you have peers who will support you and your ideas. Nothing shows hard work more than taking initiative and changing something.