Your Award: Levels, Badges, Certificates & the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR)

Levels

We know different students are with us for different periods of time, so we’ve created six different levels of the Award, so you can achieve an award that suits your mode of study at Warwick.

Each requires a different number of Core Skills Points to be earned and, therefore, different amounts of activity.

The levels can look like a lot of skills development hours, but each Award stream is carefully designed to allow you recognise and claim for the activities you are already doing – find out more about what’s eligible for the Award in the Your Activities section.

More about the Warwick Award levels

Undergraduate: Gold

60 Core Skills Points

300 hours of activity

Students who begin the award at the start of their course and have at least three years to take part in 300 hours of activity.

Undergraduate: Silver

30 Core Skills Points

150 hours of activity

Students who begin the Award part way through their course, or those who don't manage to accumulate 300 hours of activity.

Postgraduate

20 Core Skills Points

100 hours of activity

PGT students who are new to Warwick, as well as those who studied at Warwick as undergraduates and previously earned the Silver or Gold Award, but who want to continue to develop their skills.

Exchange

20 Core Skills Points

100 hours of activity

Incoming exchange students, who are with us for at least 2 terms or a full year.

Apprentice

20 Core Skills Points

100 hours of activity

Apprentices including recognition for the skills developed in the workplace setting.

Foundation

20 Core Skills Points

100 hours of activity

For Foundation students. (If you progress to undergraduate studies at Warwick, your core skills points will be carried over.)

Share your Warwick Award: Digital Badges and Certificates

You can access your Warwick Award digital certificate in the same location as your other University of Warwick award certificates on the GradIntelligence platform. More information is available via the Academic Office webpages.

The Warwick Award Digital Certificates can be accessed via the Official Documents page from the GradIntelligence Homepage or the Student Wallet via the left-hand menu option. Please note that unlike your academic certificates, the Warwick Award certificate is only available in a digital format.

Any Warwick Award Digital Badges you've earned can be accessed via the Student Wallet.

Share your digital certificate

Share your digital badge

You can electronically share your official documents with any desired third party, such as future employers through the Gradintelligence service. The procedure for sharing your document is as follows:

Log into your account.
Access your My Documents option from the homepage or your Wallet and click on the ‘Share’ icon of your chosen credential.
Then specify the parameters of your share request, enter the recipient’s information, and click continue.
On the next page, check your details are entered correctly, tick the box if you consent to your document being shared and click “Share Now”.

That will then send an e-mail which includes a document access token, to the recipient’s e-mail address. The recipient will then be able to view your verified Warwick Award certificate.

Share your digital badge

Your Warwick Award digital badge is a simple way for you to share your achievement online. You can attach your badge to your LinkedIn profile, a website, email signature, or social network, and with one simple click, employers can easily view and verify your Warwick Award.

To Download your Warwick Award badge from your Student Wallet; simply view the badge and click ‘download’. Once downloaded they can then be uploaded to other applications.
Details of how you can add a ‘Licenses & Certifications’ section to your LinkedIn profile and then add digital certificates and badges can be found on LinkedIn's help pages.

Warwick Award digital badges issued by GradIntelligence comply to the IMS standard for open badges Open Badges v2.0 (imsglobal.org).

Share your Award in your CV, job applications and interviews

Referencing the Award

When you are drafting your job application it’s all about providing the most compelling evidence that you have the qualities required for that role.. You may believe you have the experience and skills you need, but so do many other graduates. So how do you really hammer home that you are the best choice for the job? One way is to reference the Warwick Award within your application and your CV or resume.

Purpose of the award, why the award was given, what does the award recognise?

The Warwick Award recognises the employability skills that a student has developed during their time at Warwick by engaging in a wide range of in-course and extra-curricular activities.

Students who have achieved a level of the Warwick Award will have focused on developing their experience and confidence in 12 core employability skills that employers have identified as valuable when they recruit early-stage graduate talent. These skills are: Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, Self-Awareness, Communication, Teamwork, Information Literacy, Sustainability, Ethical Values, Digital Literacy, Intercultural Awareness, Organisational Awareness, and Professionalism.

The Award recognises the considerable investment made by a student in their own professional development whilst at university. The Warwick Award requires a minimum of 100 hours of skills development engagement, rising to a minimum of 300 hours for undergraduates who have achieved the gold award level during their time at Warwick.

How to include the Warwick Award in your CV or resume

You can include your Warwick Award in either the ‘experience’ or ‘education’ section of your CV. You should include the following details about the award to assist the reader:

Name of the award, the awarding body, and the year awarded.

Your award name will be one of the following and your awarding body is the University of Warwick.

Warwick Award (Gold) – minimum 300 hours of activity for undergraduate students.
Warwick Award (Silver) – minimum 150 hours of activity for undergraduate students.
Warwick Award (Postgraduate) – minimum 100 hours of activity for master’s students.
Warwick Award (Exchange) – minimum 100 hours of activity for incoming exchange students.
Warwick Award (Apprentice) - minimum 100 hours of activity for apprentices and includes recognition for the skills developed in the workplace setting.
Warwick Award (Foundation) - minimum 100 hours of activity. This level is aimed at all Foundation students.

It’s important to mention the number of hours of activity as this helps to convey the commitment that completing the award required.

It's useful to briefly explain what you did to achieve the Warwick Award. E.g.: ‘Awarded for volunteering, being a Departmental Student Representative, serving on the institutional teaching & learning review panels, and completing four extra online training courses’ or similar.

You may wish to go into more detail about some of these aspects if they provide particularly strong evidence that you have demonstrated a skill which an employer is looking for.

You can access a wide range of resources to support you in writing a CV through our careers service. You can also book an Application Review Appointment to help you write about your award in your CV.

Job interviews

Your job interviews are another opportunity to sell yourself and an effective way to do this is through talking about your Warwick Award accomplishments. Select the most relevant skills development activities that you participated in and connect them to the specified job requirements to demonstrate your suitability for the role.

To help with this, remember that stories are powerful. Prepare a set of interesting stories about how you improved your employability skills during your Warwick Award participation explaining how your expertise and confidence has improved over the last few years and give specific examples drawing on the activities you engaged in. It is a good opportunity to demonstrate that you can grasp new ideas and concepts and put them to practical use.

You can find more information around how to prepare for interviews and create these stories via our Careers Service.

If you’d like to practise answering questions or talk with a member of the Careers Team about interviews, you can also book a mock interview through the Careers Service's Guidance appointments. WBS students can access similar support via CareersPlus.

Who can I contact for more information?

Please emailskills@warwick.ac.ukwith any questions and we will get back to you.

The Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR)

The Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) is your official record of everything you’ve achieved during your time at Warwick, both inside and outside the classroom. It includes your academic results, extracurricular activities, prizes, voluntary work, and roles in student societies that have been verified by the University.

It also highlights employability-focused achievements like the Warwick Award and your level of attainment.

The HEAR is a fully verified, electronic document accessible viayour Gradintel accountLink opens in a new windowthat we issue to all undergraduate and postgraduate taught students. You can see it as a companion to your degree certificate, and it shows the full record of your Warwick experience – beyond just your academic studies.

Although its status changes to ‘final’ after your graduation, you can access your HEAR at any time from the second term in your first year with us, and continue to access it beyond graduation, for free, for as long as you need. This is so you can use it to identify any gaps in your skills – and address those gaps by working towards the Warwick Award – as well as help you secure internships and write applications for jobs.

Find out more:

Read our FAQ about the HEAR Go to the HEAR's webpages Information for staff: How to get an activity recognised on the HEAR