Partner Article

A path for digital graduates

It’s Graduate Week on Bdaily, and we want to take a closer look at the relationship between SMEs and graduates. Cheryl Evans of DigitalCity Innovation at Teesside University writes about how the project supports graduates into employment.

Universities are increasingly recognising the role they can play in helping their graduates to find work beyond university, matching together excellent graduates with companies that need their skills.

Teesside University is a world leader in digital. We have produced world-class designers, digital animators, web developers, and programmers.

DigitalCity Innovation (DCI) was created to build upon that expertise and to work with business to make sure that the region can benefit from those graduate skills. To do that it was recognised there was also a need to nurture our own digital enterprise community.

At the same time, to help more traditional businesses in the region such as manufacturing and engineering to grow, we recognised we need to show them how digital graduates can support and help their businesses to thrive.

To this end DCI developed their industry placement scheme and DigitalCity Fellowships.The Fellowships were created to give support to graduates who wanted to set uptheir own business. The qualification being they had to have a digital element to their business idea and live in the North East.

They receive a £4,000 business start-up grant, business training and mentoringfrom industry professionals as well as 24/7 access to fellowship labs, equipment, hardware and software and access to film/sound studios.

Since the fellowships began in 2003 nearly 200 companies have been created and, through job creation, DCI puts £20m yearly into the North East economy.

That is a record we are rightly proud of. The North East has a history of business innovation and our DigitalCity programme follows in this honourable tradition.

DigitalCity industry placements were developed to give both graduates and employers a direct line to each other. Through these placements businesses can recruit the brightest graduates from Teesside University.

It is also a way in which traditional businesses in the region, which may be looking for ways to use digital to their advantage, can recruit.

Digital graduates can help businesses looking to develop their website, to look at ways in which digital skills can improve training, improve the reach of their business internationally or to use social media.

Digital in the North East is a growing industry and graduates are at the forefront ofthis digital explosion.

The programmes run by DCI, and DigitalCity as a whole, encouraging graduate entrepreneurship and putting together graduate skills with the needs of businessesin the region, are already paying dividends - and will continue to do so for tomorrow’s graduates.

Remember to check out our graduate week articles: If you want to see more articles from Graduate Week, take a look at these links: Clegg makes a visit to a Teesside graduate business; Bringing graduates into a small business; Don’t play job market odds, change the game; Graduate X: The truth behind the graduate scheme; Mike Hill talks graduate careers; Having a graduate on board; Bdaily speaks to CIHE chief David Docherty; and the graduate hotseat.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by DigitalCity Business .