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Listen to the Skillscast - our podcast!

The Skillscast is a podcast all about how you can learn and develop your skills while at University, and use them to set yourself up for a fantastic start to life once you graduate. It is brought to you by the team behind the Warwick Award and new episodes release every two weeks.

You can follow Skillscast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you listen. You can also find each episode on this page, along with an AI-generated transcript.

Season 2 has landed!

Season 2

Season 2 Episode 3 - Developing creative approaches to solving problems

Let the weirdness in!

What is problem solving, and how can you do it well? In this episode skills developer Zoe Pflaeger Young interviews Rob O'Toole about creativity, problem solving, and AI.

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Episode 2 - Developing skills as a Sports Activator

Active Lives, Healthy Minds!

Ever wondered how becoming involved with sports can help raise your transferable skills and make you more attractive to employers? Ever thought about building on your coaching experience while at Warwick? Georgie Pilling and KoKo Taylor Takahashi share their experience organising and participating in the Sports Activators program at Warwick.

Shorts Episode 1 - Preparing for a jobs fair

Not sure what to do when you go to a career's fair? Not thought about what questions to ask or who to talk to? Listen to our short with the Careers Manager, David Molyneux, for some tips to help you get the most out of conversations with employers.

Season 1

Episode 12 - Why you should register for the Warwick Award

This time we’re covering something that has been mentioned in just about every episode; the Warwick Award. To help you understand more about the Award and why you might like to register for it yourself, we caught up with Lauren Ketteridge. Lauren is now studying for a PhD, but she also achieved the Gold level of the Warwick Award while she was an undergraduate here, and has plenty of useful insights to share.

Episode 11 - How professionalism can help you stand out

Head of the skills team here at Warwick, Ali Collins, is joined by Giorgia McDonald, who is Warwick Business School’s careers manager for undergraduates. This interview is packed full of excellent advice about professionalism – what it is, how and where you can build it, and how it might help you stand out from the crowd of 500,000 graduates who enter the job market every single year.

Episode 10 - Developing your skills through volunteering

This time our focus is something that is great not only for skills development, but many, many other things too; volunteering. In this episode, we caught up with two people with in-depth experience of Warwick Volunteers, the official Warwick society for volunteering that has an impact across the local community all year round.

Episode 09 - The importance of reflection

This time we’re focusing on a key part of learning skills, personal development and, as it happens, the Warwick Award – we’re looking at reflection, with two members of Warwick's skills team; Tom Greenaway is asking the questions of Steven Burke who has extensive interest in and experience of using reflection and reflective practice. He gives you some background to the art of reflecting, tips on how to do it, and explains how it can help improve so many parts of your life – including what you have for breakfast!

Episode 08 - How to be an entrepreneur

In this episode, we caught up with two former Warwick students who have found success setting up their own businesses – David and Sumit. Both offer great insights into why you might want to consider becoming an entrepreneur and tips on how to achieve success doing so.

Episode 07 - Why Sustainability is a vital skill to learn

This time we’re taking another closer look at one of Warwick’s 12 core skills – specifically, sustainability.

Episode 06 - How to learn a new skill

In this episode you’ll get to hear from some of my immediate colleagues in the skills team about something we’ve not yet covered here – what it takes to actually learn a skill.

Episode 05 -Skills development for women with Thrive

In this episode, we’re going to hear from four students who were part of Thrive’s pilot programme who will tell you more about the skills they’ve developed both on the programme and alongside it. More information about Thrive is available on their website.

Episode 04 - Developing your Digital Literacy

In this episode, we're joined by Jim Judges, who is an academic technologist here at Warwick and has more than 20 years of experience working in a digital realm. Across our conversation, Jim offers insights into why digital literacy is important, how it might change in the future, and why it’s important for students to think about while they are at university.

Episode 03 - Leading your own research project, with the URSS

In this episode, our focus is on the URSS and you'll hear the perspectives of four University of Warwick students who completed it in 2023.

Episode 02 - How to sell your skills when applying for jobs

In this episode, we meet Sam Merrix and Kelly Coles, both senior careers consultants at Warwick and both people who are well worth listening to if you want to give yourself the best chance of standing out to employers and kick-starting your career.

Episode 01 - How building your skills at university can help your land your first job

Our guest this episode is Fay Inverarity, who graduated from Warwick in the summer of 2022 and secured a place on the graduate scheme at Barclays Bank and who did an incredible amount of skills development while studying here.

In this chat, Fay shares some great insights about how to develop your skills while at University. Among other things, Fay shares how she’s found her first year of work, she talks about how she went about developing a range of skills while studying here, and reflects on the importance of, well, reflecting on your own skills development – particularly when thinking about applying and interviewing for jobs.

You can follow Skillscast in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you listen.

The artwork for the Skillscast against a gradient background. Below it are the logos for Spotify and Apple Podcasts.