Leeds Beckett University joins forces with Unibeez to super-charge student career success

The partnership will help Leeds Beckett’s 28,000+ students to improve their employability through access to diverse paid experiential learning in the workplace, whilst supporting through the cost-of-living crisis.

Mark Stow, Director of Business Engagement, Employability & Careers at Leeds Beckett University, said: “The competitive job market and cost of living crisis makes it even more critical to equip students with a breadth of paid learning opportunities. This partnership gives our students an incredible head-start in their careers, connecting them to high-value, aspirational paid work that fits around their studies and that will help launch them into successful and rewarding careers.”

Unibeez was launched in 2021 and tens of thousands of students and graduates across the UK are already using the platform to apply for paid work opportunities. There are no costs to students and all roles advertised are in line with the living wage. Penguin Michael Joseph, Sky, DDB, Just Giving and Savills are among the hundreds of UK companies currently recruiting through the platform.

Leeds Beckett students will now have access to their own bespoke Unibeez platform. The platform will be used by Leeds Beckett specifically to support their business network to facilitate paid short-term projects for students and graduates, which will help to complement their Graduate Outcomes strategy. Students can access both local and national opportunities, and hirers have the option to directly search for students by their skills.

Unibeez students work ‘on demand’ around their studies, from as little as ten hours a week, gaining valuable real-world work experience, alleviating student debt, and helping super-charge their careers as they go on to enter the world of work after graduation. Leeds Beckett are utilising the Unibeez platform to expand their offering to employers in the city and region, by providing a new approach to engage student and graduate talent with paid short-term projects. The platform also opens up roles nationally as many projects can be done remotely allowing a diverse student cohort to take up opportunities.

In addition, the AI algorithms behind the platform have been designed to help eliminate hiring bias and level the playing field for all University students, regardless of race, gender or socio-economic background. Unibeez’s talent pool is diverse with almost 70% female, 35% STEM grads and 42% from Black Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds – which helps businesses achieve their diversity and inclusion goals.

Unibeez Co-Founder and CEO, Chris Keenan, said; “Students have historically been underserved by the jobs market, as a result often resorting to low pay or no pay work. This excludes many of the UK’s 3 million students from getting the kind of work experience they need to succeed in their future careers and undermines businesses’ access to talent and their diversity and inclusion goals. We are delighted to partner with Leeds Beckett University in this first-of-its-kind partnership. We’ve come together because Leeds Beckett shares Unibeez social purpose; to help all students regardless of background into rewarding, paid work that grows their skills and experience and kickstarts their careers.”