Ethical Careers Policy

We promote best practice in employment by ensuring that all centrally supported paid internships are fully funded and paid at the Real Living wage. Unpaid opportunities are not promoted unless exempt from National Minimum Wage legislation. We recognise fair pay as essential to widening participation and to ensuring equitable access to work-based learning and internship opportunities.

We are committed to the levelling up agenda ensuring widening participation activities are particularly supported in recognition of our student population via our Career Readiness Support programme and Flourish, our female development programme, and our Professional Pathways Internship Programme. In addition, we also proactively promote opportunities offered by organisations such as Leonard Cheshire/Change 100, Creative Access, Employ Autism, International Women’s Day, 10,000 Interns Foundation and Sanctuary Graduates, and seek to work with employers whose recruitment practices support equality, inclusion and fair access to opportunity.

The Careers and Employability Service will not engage in relationships with, or promote opportunities from, third‑party employers where it is possible to identify that they meet specific exclusion criteria for ethical and environmental reasons.

In line with this approach, the Careers & Employability Service will look to no longer collaborate or hold relationships with the following industries/companies:

• Fossil Fuel companies listed in the Carbon Underground 200, including those explicitly involved with coal and tar sands
• Mining Companies – in the 100 coal companies in the Carbon Underground 200 and the 50 mining companies in the Transition Mineral Mining 50
• Tobacco companies and those that produce tobacco-based products

However, related roles may on occasion be uploaded by third party employers on to the Careers & Employability Service vacancy feed. We will not upload and/or we will decline to approve any of these roles where manual approval is required. Students will still be able to discuss these roles during guidance interviews and with careers advisers, where impartiality is contracted.

All opportunities coming directly via our main third-party vacancy provider ‘Target Connect’ have been screened and confirmed as legitimate. Direct opportunities are manually checked for legitimacy, alongside regular manual checks of our direct feed to filter out excluded companies. We also check to ensure working environments are safe for our students and graduates, that employers are abiding by current employment law, and that opportunities align with our commitment to promoting high-quality and ethical employment practice. We have a tripartite agreement for paid external placements arranged by the Careers & Employability Service.

The Careers & Employability Service supports students and graduates to understand and make responsible, informed use of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital tools in their career development. This includes promoting ethical, transparent and appropriate use of such technologies in activities including career exploration, job searching, applications preparation and skills development, while encouraging critical awareness of their limitations, risks and potential biases.

The Careers & Employability Service recognises that students, staff and employers may hold differing ethical views about organisations and sectors engaging with our careers activities. We support respectful dialogue and critical engagement, while ensuring that careers events and activities take place in environments that are safe, inclusive and welcoming for all participants, and that differing perspectives can be expressed constructively and without harassment or discrimination.

We actively promote roles that enhance sustainability and contribute to positive environmental and social outcomes. We also aim to ensure that many of our job-related social media campaigns promote roles, events and other opportunities offered by organisations focussed on creating sustainable communities and careers.

The AU Careers & Employability Service is committed to actively funding employability initiatives that both directly and indirectly advance sustainability. Our in‑curriculum provision and centrally delivered events reflect this commitment by offering students meaningful opportunities to explore the ethical and values‑based dimensions of career planning, which underpin all aspects of our work.

The annual Student Start‑Up Competition requires entrants to demonstrate alignment with one or more thematic areas: Sustainable Futures, Serving the Local Community, and Growing, Maintaining, and Nourishing the Land. Similarly, the Hackathon challenge is structured around the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, with student teams developing ideas that respond to one of the Act’s seven well‑being goals.

In addition, we support centrally funded student internships that incorporate a clear sustainability focus.

AU Careers & Employability Service is committed to actively funding employability activities which directly and indirectly support sustainability. For example, our annual CareerFest includes workshops with a sustainability focus.

We are also key partners in the design and delivery of the annual Aberystwyth University Student/Staff Sustainability Conference which takes place in the Autumn, ensuring a range of employers from the sector have representation.

We support centrally funded student internships that consider a sustainability focus.

We are committed to ensuring that our Careers & Employability Service merchandise for promotional activities to our target markets will be sustainable, for example made from recyclable materials and request that merchandise brought on to campus for events via third parties to also be sustainable wherever possible.

All catering and refreshments for Careers events are purchased through the University’s Hospitality Services. This ensures alignment with the University’s Sustainability Action Plan, which promotes environmentally responsible practices and a commitment to carbon neutrality.

The Careers & Employability Service operates a paperless office, wherever possible, printing only recycled paper if students have a reasonable adjustment requirement, if paper is the best method of advertising an essential service to students or a request has been made for documentary evidence.