In episode two of the Prospects Luminate podcast, Anna Levett discusses the experiences of international students seeking employment in the UK, through the unique lens of her photovoice research project
The Prospects Luminate podcast is the place to come for in-depth conversations about the data, trends and research shaping how we think about early careers, employability, and the graduate labour market in the UK.
Subscribe and follow the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alternatively, listen to more episodes here. You can also contact us with any comments, suggestions or feedback on the podcast.
In this episode, Anna Levett talks about her research at the University of Hertfordshire, which asked participating international students to take photographs to represent the challenges, barriers and emotions of job seeking in the UK, and gave the students themselves the opportunity to propose solutions to the issues raised.
Listen now
Episode transcript
- Hosts: Dan Mason and Micha Smith, Prospects Luminate
- Guest: Anna Levett, associate director, career development & head of careers and employment, University of Hertfordshire
00:00:05 Dan Mason: Hello and welcome again to the Prospects Luminate podcast. My name is Dan Mason and this is our second episode and the second in our mini series in which my colleague Micha Smith and I talk to just some of the great careers and employability professionals whose research has just been published on Luminate over recent weeks having received funding from the Jisc careers research grant. Today we're going to be talking about an innovative project capturing the experiences of international students in the UK. But there are lots more of these pieces of research to read, head to luminate.prospects.ac.uk and go to the reports section to find deep dives into topics including the impact of overseas placements on student employability, how alumni can support students in their career transition, and student perspectives on enterprise, entrepreneurship and employability. You can also find out more about the research grant itself, just go to the about us page.
This time, Micha and I are joined by Anna Levett from the University of Hertfordshire, who used a technique called photovoice to help understand the barriers, emotional challenges and coping strategies of international students seeking employment in the UK. It's a really interesting piece of research, so once you've heard Anna talk about it, head over to the Luminate website to see the full report.
Don't forget to subscribe and follow the podcast on Spotify and all the other places you listen to podcasts and send us a message by email to editor@luminate.prospects.ac.uk with any thoughts or feedback. Now let's hear from Anna.
Micha and I are joined now by Anna Levett, associate director for career development and head of careers and employment at the University of Hertfordshire. Welcome to the podcast, Anna.
00:01:52 Anna Levett: Thank you for having me.
00:01:53 Dan Mason: So your research, which you can read on luminate.prospects.ac.uk , is international students seeking employment within the UK, a photovoice project, which uses visual storytelling to explore the lived experiences of students from minoritised backgrounds. Can we just start by talking about the motivations for this research, where the idea came from and that's both in terms of the topic you wanted to cover and this fascinating format that you chose, the idea of the photovoice project.
00:02:25 Anna Levett: Yes. So some years ago now, as is probably applicable to some other UK universities, we saw an increase in international students coming to study at the university and there's been a steady increase for us at Hertfordshire over the last few years of that. And of course, with the change of student cohort that comes different needs that we've tried to support and we've made quite a lot of changes I would say over the years in the service to make sure that we are supporting as best we can our international student community.
But I felt like there was still something that wasn't quite right. We were still getting some feedback from students that perhaps the support that was available wasn't quite what they're expecting or wasn't giving them the outcomes that they were hoping for. And I wanted to understand a bit more about that, I think to try and know what to do next, really, what else could we do to better support these students? Day-to-day in my role as the head of service I'm not always seeing students one-to-one in appointments or in workshops as much as perhaps I would like. So I was getting feedback as well from colleagues who are doing that valuable work. But I wanted to speak to students. I wanted to have that time to try and understand a bit more about their experiences of looking for work because I thought it would better aid my understanding and therefore my planning when it came to what we needed to offer them as a service.
In relation to photovoice, that was used as a method for the project, I did a lot of research and reading really when planning the project to think about what approach to use and I had, I had already done some interviews with students, one-to-one previously. But I felt that because of perhaps different cultural backgrounds, language barriers, different experiences, that it would be good to do something in a group that also had a slightly different approach that wasn't just kind of one-to-one interviewing, but maybe using a creative method that might deepen understanding or reflection and maybe bring some, a different element to the project. So it wasn't something I've done before. I was also quite keen to, you know, try something different, put myself out of my comfort zone a bit as well. Wasn't sure how it would work out, but I think it's good to try to try these things as well. So having done that reading and finding out more about different approaches, I felt that one suited what I wanted to achieve from the research project.
00:05:12 Dan Mason: Yeah, and it's really fascinating way of going about it that I hadn't seen before either. And once we get into talking about the, your experiences of doing the research and then the key findings, we'll get into that more. And it's definitely one we recommend that listeners go and look out on the website because it's a really interesting creative way of going about this research. So what attracted you to the, the applying for the Jisc careers research grant as a way of funding this project?
00:05:38 Anna Levett: I've been aware of the grant for a number of years, and I would say always admired people that had been able to get the grant, that had done this additional practitioner research, really added value to the sector, I think, and the work that we do. So I was aware of it anyway. What I would say is probably when I first started out working in HE and within the careers sector, and I would never have thought that was something that I was able to do, that that was something that was applicable to me. I was just sort of admiring other people that were able to do that. But I thought I'd have a go, again, you know, that kind of putting yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit. HE budgets are tight, as we know, at the moment. Really wanted to do the project, but I wanted to do it well. And I wanted to be able to support and recognise the contribution that the students were giving as well. So, I wasn't able to pay them for their time because of ethical constraints, if you like, and the impact of that. But having the grant meant that I was able to offer catering at some of the meetings and, you know, sort of give back to the student co-researchers in a different way and try and make sure I'm recognising the participation and the time that they were giving up. I was also, you know, a key part of photovoice, as perhaps we'll explore further, is being able to exhibit some of the outputs of the project, if the group wants to do that. But again, if you have a physical exhibition there, there are some costs involved with that, with reproducing the photographs, printing things, creating the space, and the equipment that might be needed for that. So I was conscious that there might be some costs associated to the project, to do it well. And so the grant was attractive for that reason, although my employer was very supportive of the project as well. Like I say, budgets are tight and it just meant that I could still carry out what I wanted to achieve.
The other couple of elements I would say that were helpful to me, you know, if you're lucky enough in getting a grant like that, you're kind of held accountable then as well aren't you. So actually having those kind of very generous but having deadlines to, you know, you need to produce a report or you need to at least feedback the findings from that research, actually it's quite motivational. It meant that I had to keep moving forward. I had a deadline now, which works quite well for me personally. And of course although at the heart of this has always been about wanting to improve my practice and within the team and the hope that it that might also be useful to other colleagues in the sector, you know, having this kind of opportunity helps the dissemination as well for the research. So hopefully it will be of use to someone else in the sector too.
00:08:45 Dan Mason: Yeah, definitely. And you know, we're delighted you did apply because it's a fantastic bit of research. And Micha, shall we start delving into this, the sort of details of the research?
00:08:57 Micha Smith: Yeah, sure. So would you like to tell us more about your experience conducting the research? Maybe we could start with what went well.
00:09:06 Anna Levett: Yeah. So, I think really key probably to most things, but for this in particular, was feeling really prepared as much as possible. Being very organised, planning things in advance, I would say with something like photovoice anyway, it just needs to be done well, needs to be organised so that kind of forward planning have put a lot of time into and from an ethical perspective and you know, understanding how to keep participants safe and so they understand the aims of the project, what we're trying to achieve and how to go about it, I did a lot of kind of pre-project stage work I suppose and reading and planning and I think you know that paid off. You never, you never really know what's going to happen to you when you're carrying out research. I guess that's kind of the point. You know you, I tried to go in there really with an open mind, which is good for you know if you're open in that way, I think it means that different possibilities can come forward. It's definitely helped me to develop different skills. Like I say, I was happy to try and put myself out of my comfort zone a bit and try something different, which was, you know, it's a bit scary, to be honest, especially in the early stages. You don't know if people are going to, you know, sign up and want to engage in the project. But they did, and I think it's helped me to sort of let go a bit of trying to control everything in the project and actually just being open to who knows what's going to happen? You do as much as you can to set things up in a positive environment, and then you have to sort of let the findings come from the group, I suppose and be open to whatever their feelings and experiences are.
00:11:03 Micha Smith: Right, that seems to be a key feature of the photovoice method because it, pretty much, puts a lot in the participants' control. like it allows them to shape the themes and findings themselves.
00:11:18 Anna Levett: Yeah. And that was, you know, that was a really key aspect to why I selected photovoice as well because, you know, even participants actually are referred to usually in a photovoice project as co-researchers. So you're really, you know, I went in there thinking of myself more as a facilitator rather than a researcher, you know, trying to, you know, you have to have someone to guide the project forward, but not someone that's just sort of looking and analysing and that kind of more traditional researcher role, but actually I'm there to we're all there to work together as researchers in the group and you know the student, the student voice and the student experience was key and that's what I hope has been really centred in the project and through the exhibition that we did at the end as well of their work, it gives the students, if they wanted to, a chance to, you know, share with a wider audience, actually, that this is what we're going through. These are our experiences. These are the things we'd like to change rather than it just being about my recommendations or findings. It's the group, are really key to that throughout.
00:12:33 Micha Smith: Right. And with photovoice being quite different from other traditional data collection methods, were there any unexpected challenges or ethical considerations that you had to navigate?
00:12:47 Anna Levett: I think there's always ethical considerations. But you know, with something like this it is a little bit different. We spent quite a bit of time at the beginning of the project talking about ethical considerations and actually keeping that conversation really live throughout the project as well. So you know thinking about privacy concerns. What you, what you're taking photographs of, people and identities and also you know, their own confidentiality and what may give away their identity. And you know how, how to think about those things within photographs and also you know how within photovoice often you're working with a particular cohort or community that are talking about their strengths and challenges and, you know, particular topic that, you know, their challenge that they're facing. And there's a feeling of representing your community, I guess. So we spent some time talking about, talking about that, but yeah, it was really important that the students understood exactly where their images might be used as well and that they felt like they had control over what to share and where it would be shared. So we spent quite a lot of time discussing that and I wanted to be reassured that the students, you know, really understood what would happen to those images and their contribution going forward.
00:14:21 Micha Smith: And, with the way that the photovoice approach centres the lived experience personal meaning of the co-researchers, how do you think that this kind of methodology can influence the way that we understand student challenges? Because it's one thing just looking at statistics, but by amplifying the student voices, researchers can gain a greater understanding of their experiences, like not just telling us what they do, but why. So how do you think that this type of methodology can influence the way that we understand student challenges?
00:14:56 Anna Levett: One of the things I liked about photovoice and perhaps is a bit different, although there are other creative methods that can achieve a similar thing, was the actual images themselves and the way that you see more in the report if people do have a look at the report, I've included a lot of the photographs because I feel that they're really powerful and actually it brings a different dimension that, you know, the report's quite long, no-one's going to have time to read through all of the details, but actually even if you just have a look at the images with the student captions, which is them giving voice to their image, it's very, it's a very quick way of taking in information I think and getting a sense of what the students have experienced and what they want, what they were wanting to share with the audience in a way that a written a long written report or a journal article perhaps can't. So all of those things have value absolutely.
But I think that the audience that can be reached through photovoice perhaps is expanded for those reasons and that you know, the students took photographs, but a really key part of it is the captions or the vignettes that they write underneath. So they're literally giving voice to the photographs that they've taken. And what that means to me at least, is that, you know, if you're displaying a photograph or a piece of art or anything else, the people that are looking at it can take their own meanings and interpretations from that, but actually where the students are writing a caption, which is explaining what that photo means to them in relation to their experience, they're giving voice to that. They are guiding the audience to understand what that meant to them and yeah, I was really drawn to that because I think especially for people that are very time pressured as well and have a lot of things on when you're trying to make change or get that message out into the wider community or to people, perhaps that have the power to make positive change having something that's quick and easy to take in is really powerful. And that's what we were hoping to achieve.
00:17:19 Micha Smith: For sure. And just to look at the findings a bit, in the report, you said that the findings indicate that international students face multiple systemic and psychological barriers when trying to enter the UK job market. Can you please expand on that a bit? What type of psychological barriers and systemic barriers do they face?
00:17:42 Anna Levett: A lot of the students were facing challenges finding work and actually in most cases I would say within the project they were talking about even trying to find part-time jobs and in some cases placements and we did touch on graduate jobs as well. But a lot of the experiences they were sharing were in relation to finding part-time work in particular. And they really felt that the limitation on their hours they could work on their visas, for example, was often a reason why employers need had to turn them down for work. So they, another reason that they were often given was that they didn't have any UK work experience or they didn't yet have a UK employer reference, and so there were barriers like that that I suppose felt out of their control. They just arrived in the UK, most of them, they didn't have UK work experience yet. How could they have? They were trying to get that. But the number of hours that they could work also was quite restrictive they reported for the employees that had the part-time jobs, so that that led to then them experiencing a lot of rejection. Which I don't think is always isolated just to international students. I think you know, the job market is very competitive, but there's also this additional element of a lot of the students in the project saying that they'd come to the UK thinking it was going to be really quite easy to find part-time job for example. So thought that it'd be easy to find a part-time job often that was linked to their career aspirations as well, so I suppose I mean more professional type part-time work rather than I think often in the UK it's quite common, isn't it, to work in retail or working catering or something because it's about having work to support yourself financially and so there were some, there's some expectations I think that the cohort and the project were coming with that just weren't seen out. So on top of feeling like it would be easy, facing a lot of rejection and it did start to impact on of how they were feeling, you know, in terms of stress levels, but also the impact of that then might be that they were struggling financially in some cases because they weren't finding the work, perhaps as quickly as they thought they would and of course that has an impact on how you're feeling, yeah.
00:20:21 Micha Smith: Yeah on confidence. Through previous research, we have actually come across that quite a bit where students complain about, how are they supposed to have the work experience that an employer is demanding if they can't get work themselves, and I imagine with this, with these barriers that international students face, it just makes it that much harder with like a 20 hour work limit putting employees off. Yeah, and in the report you mentioned, rejection fatigue as well, which can definitely be detrimental to your confidence.
00:21:00 Anna Levett: Yeah, there was a lot of talk about, yeah, this this fatigue that, you know, just bit tired and the amount of rejection and it became a bit of a saying within the group and they actually used it to as a heading of one of the themes of the findings of 'unfortunately'.
Because all the rejection emails started with 'unfortunately' and it became this kind of shorthand way of talking about it within the group that the unfortunately, or 'I'd get another unfortunately' and I think that was something that, yeah, really led to them feeling fatigued and you know it's hard to keep going when you're feeling that way. And I think before they were brought together in the group as well, there was a lot of students that were saying, oh, I thought it was just me. I thought I was doing something wrong. And actually by talking about it in the group that at least brought a different element that perhaps it isn't about them as individuals. It's bigger than that and structural and there are other barriers that are causing some of those challenges for them, rather than it being anything that they're doing wrong or something that they're lacking.
00:22:18 Micha Smith: And unfortunately, as I said, it led to a lot of the participants feeling, you write it as ambition downgrading. Can you tell us more about that?
00:22:31 Anna Levett: Yeah. So that was something I was quite struck by and students talked about it for themselves, but also talked about it quite a lot in relation to what they've seen in their friends or peers within their studies, is that after a while, if this kept happening and the, you know, it led to this kind of rejection fatigue if you like. That people did start to change their ambitions or their career plans on the basis of that, so one example that came up quite a lot was where, you know, because a lot of the students that, well, all the students, actually that I worked with in the project were studying at postgraduate level. So they were, most of them were coming with quite a bit of career professional career experience already, they were coming to study at Masters level they already had either a career previously, so it's either a career change or they were coming to just further extend their education in that area so they weren't, it wasn't like they didn't have any work experience at all or you know, they weren't already kind of qualified and yeah, professionals in their own right. But the plans that they've come with, they were changing because they just weren't finding that they were getting those opportunities or as quickly as they had hoped for. And because of the pressure that leads to, I guess financially in particular and or just the need to know, be able to plan, you know, know what you're doing within the short term future. Are you able to stay in the UK? Are you going to have to move?
They often were going into, for example, care work because it was more readily available. But you know the students were saying, obviously it's really important work we need carers, it's an amazing job, but actually for some of these individuals, it just wasn't what they wanted to do. It wasn't in their plans since in some cases they weren't enjoying it even so that to them, that was a, I suppose, a bit of a tragedy really. Others had gone in and got part-time care work, I would say, and were, and were glad of it, because it gives them the chance to earn some money, get some experience and a lot of the students talked about just wanting to give back, you know, in terms of contributing to the society, to society in the UK, to paying tax to, you know, whatever that might mean for them. They wanted to be a part of society here. So, but the ambition downgrading was something that they'd seen. They felt they'd seen in colleagues as well. And they were worried about that, that might be something that they would have to do as well.
00:25:21 Micha Smith: Right, yeah. One thing that was I thought was quite interesting was the point about there being a cultural translation barrier where students struggle to apply the careers advice that they received, in UK universities in their home countries.
00:25:39 Anna Levett: Students were talking about how different the recruitment practises might be in the UK compared to some of the countries that they travelled from. So I think it's, you know, obviously the advice is the same in terms of the UK labour market is what it is. Recruitment practises are what they are here, but almost like they needed to be a bit of a bridge between, you know, having an understanding of those practises where students had lived before and what they may be knowledgeable about and actually where they needed to get to be competitive in the UK labour market. And being a bit more sensitive to that as well. And I think you know some of the students were saying that they just didn't really understand what a career service in the UK would offer because that was sometimes different as well to universities in their home country. So and I'd say this is something even I was having a conversation last week, with our new student union president, and that is still something that a lot of our international students come in, thinking that we're more like a recruitment agency because that's what they're familiar with. And how can we work to better support students to understand what we can offer, how they can make the most out of those services so that they can access them and not just think that you know, we're a service that isn't for them or because we're not a recruitment agency there aren't ways that we can help them. So I think it's just trying to bridge that gap a little bit.
00:27:21 Micha Smith: OK, and what kind of recommendations came from the research? I see that a lot of these solutions were actually student generated, right?
00:27:30 Anna Levett: Yeah, so who better to ask what they would like to see and what they would need than the students themselves? So that was a really interesting part of the project where we did some participatory data analysis. So the group actually worked through and created the themes that they felt were relevant to all the discussions that they'd had throughout the project, rather than me going away afterwards and deciding what they should be. It really was driven by them. So yeah, they talked about, you know, improvements to career support and that we've just talked about I think, but also alumni mentorship, you know how impactful it would be for them to see international graduates that had already been through this and had found had found work or talk about their experience of navigating the UK labour market.
They wanted us to try and do more with employers in terms of misconceptions that might exist. I would say again, this was probably more in relation to some of the employers that were offering the part-time jobs rather than the big graduate employers that I think perhaps understand the visa implications better, but also more proactive outreach from the careers service, trying to engage students throughout their time at university. We do a lot of embedding of careers education now in the UK I think particularly for undergraduate students and with this group being more postgraduate taught, they were just really saying how important it is for them to have that within their programmes as well for things to be more hands on in terms of their degree programme, so it's really relating back their learning to the world of work as well.
00:29:29 Dan Mason: It's been a really fascinating insight into this, this research and a great overview and thought provoking topic as well. And obviously the question you know, questions around international students and engaging them and that kind of thing is you know, currently and always going to be a really, you know, important issue for universities. If we start to look towards the future then, do you have any plans for follow-up research or areas that you think you know other researchers might take this on and then just supplementary to that any areas, different areas of research that you think would really benefit from using this photovoice method?
00:30:11 Anna Levett: One of the things that we have done at the university in response to some of the findings of the research, so, for example, we talked about her students had found that not having a UK reference or any kind of UK work experience was a real barrier for them.
So we tried to think about how we could support them to get that. So we, you know, we can't just create jobs in the area, that's always going to be tricky. But we, we did start an internship scheme so that international postgraduate taught students in particular would be able to, if they wanted to, access a professional work experience internship to give them the chance to complete an internship with an employer either within the UK or globally if they have other aspirations in that area as well. But something that's related to their career plans as well. So we started that internship scheme in semester B in the last academic year and we're scaling that up this year to try and support students with that element that they were struggling with, so it's kind of early stages I guess, but it would be really great to find out more about the outcomes or the impact that that might have on these students. You know, does taking part in that professional internship and having the chance to get a UK or employer reference actually helped them to achieve their next steps in terms of finding work in their careers. So that's an element I'd be interested in in looking at as we go forward.
I think we need to do more work in relation to supporting graduates that do or that don't stay in the UK, so that do either go back to their home countries or elsewhere, you know they might decide to go to a third place, you know, how do we better develop our support networks there for those graduates and I don't have all the answers to that yet. That's tricky one. There's some things we've started to do. I know some of the universities do as well. But maybe research in that area to share best practise would be really valuable.
And you know we've talked, we've talked about some of the challenges the students faced in this project but one of the things I would say is absolutely struck by how positive they did remain overall like we've focused, I've focused a lot probably in this interview about what they did struggle with, but they were absolutely amazing at kind of having this goal that they were working towards, picking themselves up, you know, trying to keep, keep that motivation and resilience to go forwards with their plans no matter what. And one of the things that came out of photovoice method in particular and why I would recommend it is that even though I wasn't there to solve all the problems because I can't. But one of the more, perhaps one of the more unexpected things for me was that the solidarity and the support that they offered for each other as part of that process helped to pick them, pick themselves up again to support one another, to keep going. So even when we can't resolve all of these challenges, what more can we do as, you know, universities, this career sector, to support students that are facing repeat rejections, how do we support them with that resilience and wellbeing whilst they're going through that process. So they don't feel like there's something wrong with them or there's something that they're lacking or you know that they're not alone in this and that's one of the main things that I took from using photovoice as well and have started to talk to other people that have, I guess, seen some of the dissemination from the research and have asked me for some advice about how to go about it and I'm always really happy to offer that because I did think that process in particular was really powerful, even when I feel frustrated because I'm not able to give everyone a part-time job, but I could at least see that they felt like they were being listened to and supported and cared about. And I think that it's hard to make space for group work like that or reflection like that with students in this day and age, when there's so many kind of pressures and such a focus on just getting people into work, so I just think it's a really important aspect to remember in research going forwards and also in our practise.
00:34:57 Dan Mason: Yeah and I'm glad you raised there the positivity of the students, because of course we've talked a lot about, as you said, we focused on challenges and I think it was really, really good to just emphasise the positivity that comes through in this report as well. That's been a fantastic insight into the research, one last time, I'll say to listeners, do go and look on Prospects Luminate, take a look at the report in full. And hopefully be inspired to do some research like this of your own. Anna, thanks so much for joining us.
00:35:27 Anna Levett: Thank you Jisc and Luminate for the support and the grant as well. It's been really great to have it, so thank you.
00:35:59 Dan Mason: That's all for this episode. As I said throughout the conversation, it's really worth going to the website to see that visual storytelling, just go to the reports section on Prospects Luminate and do get in touch with any feedback by emailing editor@luminate.prospects.ac.uk. Thanks again to Anna and to you for listening. And Micha and I will be back with another episode very soon.
End of episode
Note on transcript
This transcript was created using a combination of automated software and human transcribers. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.
Written by
Was this page useful?
Thank you for your feedback