UCA Hosts Fashion Brands for Careers Event
04-02-2016
The event saw the likes of River Island, ASOS.com, Urban Outfitters, Liberty and Arcadia meet with UCA’s fashion students to discuss job and work experience opportunities.
“We came to Fashion First last year and the reason we come to UCA is because it’s one of our main sources of graduate buyers,” said Aimee Morrison, Future Talent Resourcing Partner at Arcadia. “The day has been really good – we’ve met lots of students interested in merchandising, which is the main area we’re looking to recruit for.”
A number of the fashion brands presented to the students, giving them a chance to learn more about their potential employers, and the event also hosted a ‘CV clinic’, where students could speak to UCA’s Careers & Employability advisors for ways to fine-tune their experience ready for job applications.
Senior Talent Recruiter at ASOS.com Jenna Allen gave the students some key tips for applying to the international online clothing brand, which has over 1.3 million site visitors a day and ships to 240 countries and territories. Emphasising the importance of being able to proritise tasks and work in teams, Jenna encouraged the students to get work experience in retail to strengthen their applications to ASOS.com.
Other exhibitors included New Look, All Saints, M&Com, Vsanti and job site Fashion Workie, set up by BA (Hons) Fashion Promotion & Imaging graduate Andrew Loader.
Throughout the day, students could visit a professional photo studio to get head shot photos for online profiles and job applications, and the event concluded with a discussion panel featuring UCA alumni, who provided practical advice for finding jobs such as networking and building a professional online presence.
“The main thing I’ll take away from the alumni panel is to build my Linkedin profile,” said second year Fashion Journalism student Heather Ibberson. “They were also saying that it’s alright if you don’t know exactly what you want to do yet, and that though finding a job is hard, it’ll be OK. After graduating, I’m interested in doing lots of different things. Writing is something I’m confident in but I’d also like to explore photography.”
This year marked the third Fashion First event for UCA Epsom, which is growing in popularity each year.
