In what remain turbulent and fast-moving weeks for both universities and many of our employer partners, King's Careers & Employability is today confirming our delivery plans and employer 'offer' for 2020-21.

King's will be open and ready to teach our new and returning students at the start of the next academic year as scheduled. Our plans are shaped so we can educate and engage despite anticipated safe-distancing and international travel measures. You can read further information on these plans on our offer holder pages.

In line with the decision to offer a blended combination of on-campus teaching with online delivery at least to January 2021, ensuring that our students can access the high-quality King’s education that is enriching and highly respected by employers around the globe, we will be conducting our engagement in a virtual capacity.

Whilst we can't directly replicate the networking opportunities presented by our physical activity, we've thought critically and carefully about our plans - instead of simply moving our existing provision online, we've completely reconceptualised our plans, providing an innovative offer bespoke to King's College London and supported by robust platforms and our expert teams, curating the right engagement for you.

Rather than plan just for the short-term, we know it's important for employers to understand how their engagement with King's might be delivered across the full year, so we're boldly announcing a plan that we hope will provide confidence to partners through to Easter 2021, with capacity deliberately built in to retain virtual provision, alongside increasing aspects of physical activity from January 2021.

We also hope we're being true to our strategy of continuously innovating our provision, providing bespoke opportunities for you to engage at King's and remain confident our offer represents the start of a journey towards a new form of engagement for partners to connect with us.

Refocusing your engagement

We realise that it's impossible to safely run our fairs as we would usually undertake - but that there's also much to be gained by not simply pivoting them online.

Retaining what's important - direct engagement with students, opportunities for conversation, sector and thematic focus, a continued drive on diversity and inclusion, and the high-quality interaction we know our employers value, we're launching new Focused Festivals held across the academic year.

You'll have the option to determine how and when you want to engage with our students within the parameters of our festival dates, alongside deciding when to host drop-ins across carefully chosen platforms, what content you wish to curate and whether or not you want to get involved in wider activity such as skills workshops, masterclasses, breakfast events shining a spotlight on inclusivity, drop-ins or other innovative events.

Our larger events will be hosted through a dedicated provider - Graduateland, with smaller Festivals hosted on our virtual learning environment, where students will be undertaking much of their learning.

It's also true that a number of our students will commence their studies at King's in a staggered fashion, necessitating a presence throughout the academic year in a way we may not have done previously, and that some students will be located around the world, so we've decided to offer many of our Festivals in both autumn and spring, reflecting what we're confident will be continuing changes in the graduate labour market.

With many employers making difficult decisions about their engagement during 2020-21, and lacking the resources to attend the breadth of physical activity as you may have previously done, we're keeping our costs as low as possible also.

Booking for autumn term festivals is now open - you can review our proposed schedules, express interest in delivering a range of masterclasses and start building your virtual stand.

Developing curriculum engagement

Working with colleagues across faculties, we're adapting our Global Placements provision and assessment opening alternative formats to students who may undertake a year-in-industry as part of their programme in light of the travel restrictions imposed and ensuring they continue to benefit from our support, wherever they may be located.

Together with our wider offer, our Careers Consultants are planning embedded events and further opportunities for more niche engagement if you're looking to focus on particular disciplines or programmes and we hope to share more details very soon.

Digital engagement packages

Alongside our vacancy board and targeted email service, we've developed a range of new offers to ensure you can continued to reach our audience. Later in summer, you'll also see a refreshed UI to our King's CareerConnect system, making it even easier for students to discover your organisation, focus their search and action their applications with you.

Our Focused Festivals provide opportunities to raise your profile by enhancing your stand through banner adverts, video content, guest blogs, new sponsorship opportunities and our social media packages maximising your brand directly with our students and members of our Recruiter's Club will benefit from a range of revamped packages designed to enhance your partnership with King's, our faculties and academics.

Creating meaningful work experience

Our King's Internships portfolio has been reimagined for 2020, and whilst this work was underway before COVID-19, it's enabled us to refine our learning journey and programming to ensure it remains relevant in both a physical and virtual offer, for students undertaking curricular or co-curricular opportunities.

We're working hard to unveil our new plans for bespoke group work simulation projects, work shadowing opportunities to aide career decision-making and a new stream of work building confidence for students from diverse and under-represented groups.

Further details will be announced in summer on our website.

Discuss potential opportunities

In line with our Employer Engagement strategy, we're keen to develop innovative ideas which continue to change the identity of our partnership, providing employers with solutions which work within your resource, budget and evolving recruitment plans.

Our Employer Relations & Development Advisers work with employers to support you in bespoke partnerships and their alignment to industry clusters provides a depth of intelligence across your market. Additionally, our King's Internships Advisers and Global Placement teams continue to seek new ways of curating opportunities for our audiences.

For a more strategic discussion, please contact:

• Andrew Wright, Head of Employer Engagement
• Phil Hardcastle, Employer Relations & Development Manager
• Cristiane Lima, King's Internships Manager
• Jonathan Goodliffe, Events & Experiential Learning Manager

We look forward to welcoming you 'virtually' to King's next year.