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Employability

Working Group

Chair: Orla Bannon

Orla Bannon is the Director of Careers at Trinity College Dublin. She has responsibility for managing the scale and quality of academic and student engagement with careers, as well as partnerships with employers, to deliver a truly world-class careers service at Trinity. She provides leadership to the Careers Team, promotes the value of the Careers Service across the University, and acts as a centre of expertise, advising and contributing to the University’s objectives in terms of employability and skills development, and the wider student experience.

Orla holds a degree in Biochemistry from Trinity, an MBA from UCD/RCSI and a Diploma in Personnel Management (NCI). She has over 25 years of management experience in both the public and private sectors in areas such as healthcare, higher education, IT and publishing.

 

Vice-Chair: Annette Retsch

Annette Retsch is head of the Career Centre at the University of Würzburg since its inception in 2007. Her responsibilities include the strategic direction of the development, planning, evaluation of about 100 transversal skills workshops and lectures every year. She specialises in individual career consulting and methods for sustainable professional development. Furthermore, she was responsible for the conceptual development of an individualised Virtual Exchange Program and allowing its embedding in curricula.

Prior to her commitment to employability activities, she graduated in German and English Studies with the state examination for the teaching profession at secondary schools and completed her PhD thesis in German and English linguistics on paratextual elements in German literature.

Working Group Focus

We are living in fast-paced, dynamic, and uncertain times where economic, societal, and global needs are rapidly changing and where a highly skilled adaptable graduate workforce is essential. A strong knowledge economy across Europe needs opportunities for lifelong skills development for all, which matches the skills needs of employers, both now and in the future. These skills allow for new value creation and problem solving addressing the challenges of our time. Continuous innovation and agility in higher education and research is required to futureproof the graduate talent pipeline with the skills that will allow individuals, society and industry to flourish and develop continuously.

Enhancing students’ employability and equipping them with lifelong career management skills to meet both their needs and those of a constantly changing world is becoming a key focus of higher education institutions. In this context, collaboration and the exchange of experiences, knowledge and good practice across the Employability WG aims to:

  • Improve the visibility and recognition of the value of careers and employability services across Coimbra Group universities.
  • Increase joint collaborative projects on how career services are organised, deliver their services, and support their universities (professionalisation of career services).
  • Prepare students for the 21st century global labour market and lifelong learning through the acquisition of key future skills.
  • Strengthen our collective capacity to respond to emerging areas such as AI and its impact on work, sustainability and climate change, rapidly changing labour markets, and the evolving needs of doctoral students and students from underrepresented and disadvantaged groups.
  • Develop a vision for what career services will look like in 5-10 years and how we can proactively shape that future and be ready to meet those needs.

We are an active Working Group which constantly seeks to identify new areas for conjoint work, to explore common issues and challenges across our universities, to share our learnings and drive innovation for the enhancement of our services for the benefit of our students.

Priorities for 2026 – 2029

  • Develop a forward-looking vision of how we expect careers services to evolve over the next 5-10 years and plan to prepare our services to meet these changing needs, e.g. impact of AI on jobs and our ways of working, AI-augmented and hybrid service delivery models, need for timely labour-market intelligence, etc.
  • Develop a good practice framework for careers services working as consultants to academics (teachers, researchers, programme directors) and acting as facilitators of academic-enterprise engagement.
  • Using our defined key future skills, develop resources and content to support students to develop these both within and outside the curriculum, including tailoring to different student groups (e.g., undergraduate students, doctoral students, international students, etc).
  • Develop new strategies and exchange practices to provide tailored careers support and resources for students from underrepresented and disadvantaged groups who are encountering challenges and barriers when accessing the graduate workplace, e.g. students with disabilities, international students, University of Sanctuary and refugee students, etc.
  • Continue to increase our awareness and understanding of micro-credentials and the opportunities they present for careers, employability, and skills development within Coimbra Group universities and across European University Alliances.

Recent highlights since September 2025

  • Significant contribution to the Coimbra Group’s submission to the European Commission consultation on the EU Quality Jobs Roadmap: ‘Preparing graduates and lifelong learners to an ever-changing job market’.
  • Development of a Coimbra Group position paper on “AI and Digital Competence in Higher Education”, published in July 2025.
  • Publication of an article written by Working Group members on “The skills that matter most: What are the most important skills students need to develop today?” in the EAIE Winter 2025 Forum magazine.
  • Completion of an extensive survey mapping involvement in and experiences with micro-credentials across Working Group members, including recommendations for the future (end 2025).
  • Meeting with the European Commission’s DG EAC to discuss the new EU STEM Education Strategic Plan, which aims to address the challenges facing the EU in terms of competitiveness, innovation capacity and strategic autonomy.
  • Meeting with UNEP representatives to discuss Coimbra Group’s participation in the UNEP/UNICEF/ILO “Green Jobs for Youth Pact” as part of the implementation of the Durham Declaration on Climate Change and Sustainability. Following the Coimbra Group’s selection as a Pact member, the Working Group will take the lead in liaising with UNEP on related topics.
  • Extensive discussion on the landscape of national jobs markets across Europe (Brussels, November 2025) with Working Group members providing a brief overview of current economic and labour market trends in their countries to help inform our work with students.
  • Completion of a toolkit compiling a collection of best practices for teaching the key future skills identified by the Working Group, including ready-made, easy-to-implement examples that have already been successfully implemented in Coimbra Group universities.
  • Ongoing discussions with EURES (the European Employment Services) regarding potential collaboration to share knowledge and integrate the promotion of their services into Working Group activities.

Ongoing/forthcoming activities 2026 – 2027

  • In order to develop a future vision for careers services, several workshops will be held on the topic of “What is the future of Career Services?“. Areas to be considered include:
    • How are career services upskilling their staff to prepare for future change
    • How are graduate employer recruitment practices and jobs changing because of AI?
    • What gaps in knowledge/skills do you see for career services staff?
    • How can AI and/or automation be used to enhance the delivery of careers services?
  • Focus on “green skills” as a key future skills area for students and graduates. There is potential to collaborate with the Coimbra Group Education Innovation Working Group and the internal task group developing the new sustainability online module. This work will support the implementation of the Durham Declaration and the UNEP Green Jobs for Youth Pact.
  • Review, restructure and redefine the focus of the Working Group’s sub-groups and refresh their membership, with each Working Group member committing to active participation in at least one subgroup. At least two key deliverables/outcomes for each sub-group will be agreed in summer 2026 for delivery by summer 2027.
  • In order to share experiences and good practice, arrange demonstrations of software that supports AI-augmented and hybrid career services delivery to enhance both our offerings to students and our ways of working.
  • Explore ways in which insights and recommendations from our recent micro-credentials survey can be implemented by Working Group members.

Forthcoming activities 2027 – 2029

  • Explore ways to deepen the Working Group’s engagement with other relevant Coimbra Group Working Groups, such as Education Innovation, Doctoral Studies, Global Partnerships, Academic Exchange and Mobility, etc.
  • Contribute to relevant consultations and prepare position papers on topics of interest to continuously raise awareness of the increasing value of employability and careers services across Coimbra Group universities.
  • Prioritise the development of guidelines and resources to help staff and students develop AI literacy as it relates to careers and employment.
  • Create opportunities to share up-to-date labour market information among Working Group members in a world where jobs and skills are changing rapidly.

Contact person at the CG Office: Ester Zangrandi (zangrandi@coimbra-group.eu)