Employability and your Year Abroad Research Project

What impact does your YARP have on your employability?

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Researching and writing the year abroad project presents you with challenges which are of particular interest to employers, providing you with transferrable skills to add to your CV and comment on in job interview. Your successful response to those challenges faced during the year abroad will also give academic staff a good basis on which to write a reference, which will support your applications for jobs or further study.

Employers are keen to identify prospective employees who have positive attitudes to work, show initiative, can work independently, can manage a project and can work to deadlines. Many of these skills are developed during research abroad.

For example:

  • Did you communicate effectively with your supervisor?
  • Did you plan the various stages of your project and meet the deadlines for the submission of drafts?
  • Did you demonstrate the ability to work independently?
  • Did you show initiative?

All the above are valuable attributes from the perspective of a future employer.

Whilst conducting your fieldwork and writing up your project, you have also gained valuable skills which can be commented on in your CV or job applications, for example:

  • The ability to work independently during your research and write up
  • Time management skills by planning your data collection and meeting YARP deadlines
  • The ability to commit to a large piece of work from start to finish
  • Showing initiative and originality by choosing your own topic
  • Problem solving and analytic skills when interpreting your data
  • A high level of written communication in the TL

To get the most out of your year abroad research, it’s important to think about the type of project you would like to undertake, and which transferable skills you will be developing as a part of that. We have further information on this website which will give you an idea of what each type of research can offer you in terms of transferable skills, so that you can make the best decision for your project in terms of your desired career.

The Southampton REALIE website has much more information about the year abroad and employability.

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