Project: Developing an evidence-backed recommendations and a framework on what ‘work-ready’ mean to employers.

Partner: You Make It

You Make It (YMI) is an East London charity that supports young, working-class Black and Brown women to move from unemployment into fulfilling careers. They have been doing this for over 15 years, working with more than 700 women, around three quarters of whom have gone on to move off benefits and into paid work.

Their free 16-week programme tackles the structural and intersectional barriers these women face. It brings together weekly one-to-one mentoring and professional counselling, group learning sessions held across London’s professional spaces that build practical and interpersonal employability skills, and hands-on support including work experience, networking, a travel bursary, meals and wellbeing activities. This is holistic by design, because YMI know that confidence, mental health and soft skills matter as much as qualifications when a woman is building a career against the odds.

They are now piloting Make It Happen, a new inclusive recruitment arm that connects their 'work-ready' graduates with employers who want to hire more inclusively. This project sits right at the heart of that launch. 

‘Work-ready’ is central to everything YMI do, and it is the promise at the core of our new Make It Happen recruitment arm: They offer employers access to women who have completed a rigorous programme and are ready to succeed at work. At their recent board strategy day, trustees discussed what ‘work-ready’ truly means in today’s job market, and where the programme might go further to get women there. YMI identified a set of skills and capabilities that may matter. Some of these they already build into the programme, and some could become supplementary workshops offered to their alumni: 

YMI would like a student team to help them test and sharpen this thinking against what employers actually expect, so that their definition of ‘work-ready’ is grounded in evidence rather than assumption.  

What does ‘work-ready’ mean to employers hiring entry-level talent in their target sectors, where are the gaps for graduates, and which capabilities should sit within the core 16-week programme versus a supplementary workshop offer for alumni? 

Supporting Questions

• What do employers in sectors such as creative, tech, sustainability and events expect from an entry-level hire, beyond qualifications? 
• Which of the capabilities above, and any we have missed, are most valuable and how should they be prioritised? 
• How do social, cultural, institutional and sector-specific factors shape employers’ expectations of 'work-readiness'? 
• For each priority area, should it sit within the core programme or as a standalone alumni workshop, and roughly how might it be delivered? 

Task and Methodology 

• Desk research into entry-level skills demand and what leading employers and graduate schemes look for in early-career hires. 
• Primary research with employers: a small set of interviews and/or a short survey with employers in their target sectors, on what ‘work-ready’ means to them and what they find missing in junior hires. YMI open some doors through our partner network. 
• An interdisciplinary analysis of the evidence, drawing on complementary perspectives from Queen Mary Business School and the School of Society and Environment. This could consider how social, cultural, institutional and sectoral factors shape access to work and employers’ expectations of entry-level talent.  
• Benchmarking those expectations against the current content of our 16-week programme, using an outline we will provide. 
• Mapping the full set of capabilities, including the trustees’ list and anything new, into a simple framework. 
• Recommending which capabilities belong in the core programme and which suit supplementary alumni workshops, with a suggested order of priority. 
• For the one or two highest-priority workshops, outlining what good delivery could look like, including format, length, and who might run it. 
• A clear, evidence-backed set of recommendations and a framework we can build from is what YMI is looking for as outcomes from this project.

Deliverables

1. A 15-minute presentation setting out the recommendations and the evidence behind them. 
2. A one or two page handout bringing together the collated research, the ‘work-ready’ framework (core programme versus workshop split, with priorities), key employer insights, and a brief reflection on the factors shaping work-readiness.

Key Dates and Application Process

Stage 1: Online application - deadline is Friday 30 September 2026
Stage 2: Shortlisting and selection 
Stage 3: Application outcome notification by Monday 5 October 2026

Eligibility

• Current Queen Mary students 
• Highly motivated and teamwork oriented 
• Passionate about heritage and making a real impact in the world 
• Willing to dedicate a total of 15 -20 hours across the project, including client meetings, teamwork, and individual work.

We are committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse learning environment. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, as we believe diverse perspectives drive innovation and success.   

Apply

Apply by 23:45pm on Wednesday 30 September 2026.

We will contact you if you are shortlisted. If you do not hear from us by 5 October 2026, you have not been successful on this occasion. 

If you have any questions, please email:  history-qHeritage@qmul.ac.uk

We look forward to receiving your application!