FAQ's

Any Queen Mary student can attend our Skills Sessions, even if you don't have a Students' Union role.

Please note that Reflection Sessions are for students with Students' Union roles only, as they are a requirement to achieve a Skills Award. Students without a role are not eligible to achieve an Award, but can still attend Skills Sessions.

If you have obtained an eligible role at the Students' Union since registering for the Skills Award, please email us at su-employability@qmul.ac.uk to let us know that you now have a role.

If you’ve already completed your Skills Award by attending a Skills Session(s) and a Reflection Session, you are still free to continue attending Skills Sessions!

• Committee Members for a society, sports club or Raise & Give
• Heads of Media and Section Heads for Student Media
• Part-time Representatives, Officers, and Course Representatives
• Students’ Union Crew and Help Squad
• Community Volunteers (including volunteering with QMSU Volunteering, our Volunteer Groups and Community Foundation leaders)
• Members of Student Council and BLSA Board Members
• Student Trustee
• Student Staff employed by the Students’ Union (if you’re getting paid by the Students’ Union, you fall into this category)
• Sustainability Champions
• Student athletes on Talented Athlete Programme

There are three requirements to be eligible for a Skills Award:

• Hold a Students' Union role of responsibility.
• Complete your compulsory role-specific training for your Students' Union role, if applicable.
• Attend at least one Skills Session and one Reflection Session. LinkedIn Learning sessions can also count as Skills Sessions, as long as they are at least one hour in duration and related to developing your employability.

The sessions vary from 1 hour long to a whole day. Some of the sessions are held online. All the in-person sessions take place on the Mile End campus in the Students’ Union Hub. You will be sent the specific room in the confirmation email after signing up for the session. Neither the in-person nor online sessions are recorded.

The sessions vary from 1 hour long to a whole day. Some of the sessions are held online. All the in-person sessions take place on the Mile End campus in the Students’ Union Hub. You will be sent the specific room in the confirmation email after signing up for the session. Neither the in- person nor online sessions are recorded. The sessions are a great chance to get to know and network with like-minded Queen Mary students who are also thinking about their career and developing their skills!

If you can no longer make it to a session you’ve signed up for, you can "Cancel booking" on our ‘Training’ page, where you booked onto the session. If you miss the cancellation period (until 48 hours before the session) please email to let us know. Extenuating circumstances such as illness won’t result in a strike. If you have no valid extenuating circumstance to explain your absence, you will receive a strike. Two strikes mean you will no longer be allowed to sign up for sessions.

You can email us with your ideas for what Skills Sessions we should run in the next semester and we will take your suggestions into account!

You can request a digital certificate of attendance for attending a Skills Session or Reflection Session. You can upload these to your LinkedIn to demonstrate your interest in developing your employability skills, and show your progress on the programme.

You will also receive a digital certificate at the end of the academic year if you are eligible for a Bronze, Silver or Gold Skills Award which can be uploaded to your LinkedIn profile.

If you achieve a Gold Skills Award, you will also get recognition of your Skills Award on your electronic transcript (called HEAR) from the university.

To achieve a Gold Skills Award, you must have completed ten hours of unpaid training. These hours will be made up of your participation in three Skills Sessions and one Reflection Session, and hours done in your Students’ Union role of responsibility.

If you are eligible for a Gold Skills Award, you will have participated in a minimum of 5 hours of Skills and Reflection Sessions - three Skills Sessions which are at least an hour each, and a Reflection Session lasting two hours. You must also have a Students' Union role, which will take up at least 5 hours of your time doing what your specific role entails. For example, if you are a Community Volunteer, you must have logged at least five hours of volunteering with QMSU Volunteering on your volunteer profile.

At the end of semester B, we will send everyone an Evidence Submission Survey to have a self-report record of what you’ve participated in. We will then verify this against our records and will email you a digital Bronze, Silver, or Gold Skills Award certificate. For those eligible for a Gold Skills Award, we will reach out to HEAR to let them know the Award can go onto your transcript.

This only applies to students with Students' Union roles that have compulsory training, such as society committee training or student staff training. If your Students' Union role has compulsory training, you will need to complete it to receive the Skills Award.

If you’d like your Students’ Union role to be Community Volunteer, you’ll first need to create a volunteer profile, which takes 2 minutes to do!

Go to the ‘Volunteering’ page under the QMSU website’s “Opportunities” tab. Click the ‘Get involved’ tab on the top left. Click the “How do I get started?” FAQ, then the “Create a profile” button, and log in to the QMSU website using your university login. From there, you can begin applying for opportunities listed on QMSU Volunteering’s ‘Browse Opportunities’ page. You can view your volunteer profile on the ‘Volunteering’ page. If you are logged into the QMSU website, you should be able to see the ‘Profile’ tab on the top right. On your profile page you should be able to see opportunities you’ve applied to, and begin adding your volunteering hours as you complete them.

Volunteering with our Volunteer Groups also comes under this Community Volunteer role. You can find all the details of our Volunteer Groups by going to the ‘Find a club or society’ page and filtering by Volunteering. As you don’t apply to volunteer for these groups via the ‘Browse Opportunities’ page, you’ll need to add this opportunity to your volunteer profile manually by clicking ‘Add Community Volunteering’ on the page that lists the opportunities you’ve applied to. You can then begin logging your hours volunteering with Volunteer Groups.

Once you add volunteering to your registration form when you sign up, or email us to let us know you’ve taken on the Community Volunteer role, we will be able to verify your role and your hours completed by checking your volunteer profile.

In case you didn’t know, QMSU Volunteering also offer Awards that will go onto your HEAR transcript! If you complete 25+ hours of volunteering by the end of the academic year, that’s a Bronze Volunteering Hours Award, 50+ hours is a Silver Award, and 100+ hours is a Gold Award. The Bronze, Silver, and Gold Volunteering Hours Awards all go onto your HEAR Transcript, whereas with the Skills Award programme it is the Gold Skills Award only that goes onto your transcript.

Create a volunteering profile on the volunteering page and add the volunteering opportunity you’re interested in or already took part in. Once you add volunteering to your registration form or email us, we will be able to verify your hours without any further action for you to take.

LinkedIn Learning sessions must be at least 1 hour in duration to count as a Skills Session and go towards the Skills Award. The sessions must relate to developing your employability skills.

You can link it to your personal LinkedIn account and display your progress with which sessions you've completed. Go to linkedInlearning.qmul.ac.uk and use your QM login to activate your account.

To log your completed Linkedin Learning session, you must email evidence of your certificate of completion to su-employability@qmul.ac.uk and then include the session as part of the evidence submission form which you will be required to complete at the end of Semester B when we verify students’ Skills Awards.

Click the button below for more information including a list of suggested Linkedin Learning courses. If any of your questions haven’t been answered, you can email us at su-employability@qmul.ac.uk.