The Gold Award
A personal and professional skills development programme from the Careers Service, designed to help you identify, develop and reflect on your employability skills.
Primary page content
The Gold Award is a personal and professional development programme coordinated to help you amalgamate your studies with your career pathway through self-reflection, skills workshops, creativity, extra-curricular activities, and networking.
The Gold Award is open to all students at any stage of their degree and is designed to work around your studies with flexible support and a tailored experience.
How to apply and support available
What you will get from The Gold Award
- Increase your self-awareness of your skills through a range of workshops and activities
- Understand your strengths and areas for improvement
- Gain recognition for co-curricular activities you are already taking part in and have the opportunity to take part in new ones
- Create a portfolio of valuable experiences to support your career development, whether that be in employment or further study
- Have something different on your CV to help you stand out from others
- Become part of a supportive community of students
- After completion, The Gold Award will be officially listed on your HEAR – your academic transcript
What it involves
As part of the award, you must complete at least 40 hours of co-curricular activity. This can range from volunteering to part-time work, running your business, and mentoring.
We have an activity list on The Gold Award Learn.gold (VLE) area. You will need to record the hours you complete and actively reflect on activities you are taking part in on a reflective log.
You are required to attend at least four career-focused workshops. You can attend any workshop or webinar listed on CareerSPACE.
You must create and complete a LinkedIn profile as part of the award. You will be asked to submit a screenshot of your completed account towards the end of the award. We will run LinkedIn workshops and webinars throughout the year to support you in developing your profile.
At the end of the Award, you will be asked to submit a 1000-word reflective statement discussing your experience, learning and development throughout the year.
Key areas to reflect upon may be:
- What key skills have you developed whilst on The Gold Award?
- What challenges have you encountered and how did you work through them?
- What will you be taking into the next year as the most important learning through the Gold Award?
You will also be asked to reflect on your learning and development creatively. Your Creative Element can be a photography project, a scrapbook, a blog, a poster, creative writing, a storyboard, a cartoon or any other creative medium you choose. Please see our student's creative projects.
The Gold Award Ceremony is held in June each year and is a special event to celebrate your achievements. An exhibition is held at the Ceremony where all the creative elements are displayed.