Here is good news for all the international students. Irish Universities Association has launched a toolkit to make international students more employable.
In order to provide international students with additional support and make them more employable, the Irish Universities Association has launched up a toolkit known as ‘Employable You’. The objective behind launching this toolkit is to offer practical advice and tips to help International students embark on their professional journey successfully.
This toolkit will help international students enroll at Irish universities and have access to University Careers Offices. It will also try to figure out the challenges that international graduates face when they apply for jobs and provide advice to find internships, overseas experience, work-integrated learning, casual and volunteer work.
Speaking about the toolkit, Chair of the IUA International Directors Group and director of International at NUI Galway, Anna Cunningham, said “Employability and improving career scope for international students has always been a key priority for their International Education Strategy.”
Further, Cunningham added, “The Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on student routines including networking and job fairs. It is, therefore, now more crucial to make international graduates “as work-ready as possible.”
The toolkit is said to cover major competencies employers demand, such as transferable skills, communication skills, creative thinking, and field-specific skills.
Jennifer Cleary, Head of International at IUA, said, “IUA and the universities are working with government agencies to make sure that employers understand the value of and process to recruit Irish-based international students.”
At the beginning of this year, the Irish government announced that international students who were studying remotely due to the pandemic would also be able to access graduate work opportunities in Ireland.
The country’s Stamp 1G path, part of the Third Level Graduate Scheme, allows undergraduate international students to work in Ireland for up to 12 months from the moment their final results releases. Students studying Masters or Ph.D. programs from beyond Europe will also be able to renew their Stamp 1G for additional 12 months.
Cleary said that the IUA was delighted about the Department of Justice’s decision to let students outside the EU who could not travel to Ireland due to the Covid-19 pandemic but were studying remotely to have access to the Stamp 1G upon graduation.
