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This section of the website is devoted to live Q&A sessions with our own advisers or external employers. We will promote the Live Q&A’s in advance and you can also access session archives below.

Lincoln Award – Explore

This first section of the Lincoln Award is all about exploring your skills, strengths, motivations, and career options.

Step 1: Complete the 2 activities below

Skills Assessment

  • Log-in using your University email address.
  • This activity will take you 20-30 minutes and support you to reflect on your current skillset and identify areas you would like to develop.

Job Match Strengths Profile

  • Register for an account to complete your profile.
  • Prospects are a national organisation who work with university careers services to provide students and graduates with a wealth of information on career options, the labour market and recruitment practices. 

Step 2: Complete your Skills Map

Skills Map

Step 3: Submit your Skills Map on your Lincoln Award digital pathway

Digital Pathway

Log-in to CareerLinc using your University username and password. Click on “Pathways” at the top menu bar and your Lincoln Award pathway will show as available. Click “Preview” to see full details and then “Start Now”. Once on your pathway simply click on the Skills Map activity icon to upload and submit. 

Step 4: Continue onto the Develop section of the Lincoln Award

From your Skills Map you will have a clear idea of the activities you would like to complete to develop your experience and skills. See below for more inspiration on the kinds of activities you can complete in the next stage of your Lincoln Award. 

Skills Development

Below are some activity ideas for developing your skills – just click on the skill you’d like to build to see more.

This list is just a starting point – if you would like to discuss skills development further, our advisers are here to help. We have many events to support you which can be viewed and booked on our events calendar, or you can book an appointment with an adviser.

Commercial Awareness

  • Develop your general knowledge of the industries you wish to enter and your awareness of political and economic events.
  • Follow industry news.
  • Gain practical workplace experience via an internship or a part-time job to help you acquire commercial understanding. See CareerLinc for relevant opportunities.

Digital Literacy

Communication

Interpersonal

  • Act as a mentor for other students through Lincoln Connect.
  • Be an active listener by showing you hear and recognise the perspective of others and consider their contributions.
  • Help colleagues and fellow students perform well by creating a friendly and co-operative work or study environment.
  • Take on the role of moderator when colleagues or fellow students disagree. Have a discussion with both parties to help them resolve their conflict.

Teamwork

Problem Solving

  • Gain a part-time job to develop customer service skills and resolve problems for customers and your employer. See CareerLinc for advertised part-time jobs.
  • Solve a challenging problem for a company through an industry project such as our Graduate Skills Builder.
  • Strengthen your ability to think strategically and creatively through games such as Sudoku and chess.

Leadership

  • Get actively involved with a group activity and step up your responsibilities by taking on a key role.
  • Look for a Student Rep or personal tutoring role. See further information on the SU website.
  • Volunteer for extra duties during a part-time job, for example, deputising for your manager in their absence or training new staff.

Resilience

  • Be willing to face challenges and learn from setbacks and mistakes.
  • Don’t be resistant to change, but instead be open and adaptable to it.
  • Set confidence boosting goals – setting and achieving goals and seeing how far you’ve come are effective ways to develop resilience.
  • Look out for our Life Skills workshops to strengthen resilience through building strong communication skills, understanding the behaviours of others and managing conflict and stress. See our Events Calendar for workshop details.

Attitude and Initiative

  • Develop a positive attitude in the workplace by creating a clear and effective daily routine with regular breaks.
  • Take the initiative to work for yourself with activities such as freelancing and business start-ups. See the Self-Employment page for more information.

Perseverance and Motivation

  • Review your skills and strengths through the Lincoln Award to help you set future goals and stay motivated.
  • Achieve work and study goals by making them SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely).
  • Check out our Strengths Profile workshop to learn more about your strengths and ways to support weaknesses. Consider doing this workshop as one of your Employability Activities (10 points). See our Events Calendar for workshop details.

Organisation

  • Set yourself a clear schedule for university activities in order to manage coursework and revise for exams with a timely approach.
  • Complete an internship to give yourself a crash course in organising, planning, and prioritising in the workplace. For placements and internship opportunities see CareerLinc.
  • Take on a Student Officer role through a society or sports team and get involved in organising events.

Confidence

  • Build good habits and break bad ones to improve your self-esteem.
  • Review past achievements – your self-confidence will increase when you’re able to say, “I can do this, and here’s the evidence”.
  • Take on new challenges and try new things. Try our Breaking Barriers programme for more confidence boosting activities. See Breaking Barriers videos on demand for more information.

Negotiation and Persuasion

  • Become more active in discussing ideas within a group during work experience or a university team project. Support your ideas with evidence.
  • Get involved in raising awareness of key campaigns and charities through volunteering and civic engagement activities.
  • Represent the views of your peers by becoming a Student Rep. See the SU page for more information.

 

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