Networking and its positive impact on future MA’s students’ employability and adaptation journey to the FBS, has been my research focus since we started the ARP, however it was not easy to summarise it in a tittle which I recently finalise it:

How Networking can positively impact future employability for the MA Fashion Design Management Students as well as their personal adaptation journey to the FBS

I believe this interest came from my years working in the industry and with the eagerness of detecting new young talent which could help any business evolving.

Furthermore, I wish many years ago I knew the importance of connecting with peers, colleagues, industry professionals, inspirational leaders… I’ve always done it instinctively but I would encourage everyone to be conscious and to have a methodology. The benefits are endless.

I am aware about students struggle to find a professional opportunity once they finish their MA’s, lots of competition, less job offers… they approach me asking for support and if I have any contacts. At the same time, I know the BFS/LCF offer different opportunities of interaction among the students and with the industry. However, I was not fully aware and I had to start my research. That translated in the need of learning about different research methods and evaluate which would be better for my ARP.

In terms of investigating the different networking opportunities, I had different options and among them: surveys, semi-structured interviews or simply casual conversations. I started from scratch as I was not aware of all the networking tools offered to the students, and this is why I decided to maintain casual chats with relevant staff members in order to shape the conversation depending on the inputs I obtain during the discussion. I believed to have some pre-defined questions would have limited the outcome as somehow, I would have been guided it. This decision was finally consciously taken after reflecting on it for weeks, after already having casual chats with the only goal of exploring and after our third ARP workshop.

Without knowing that this would be part of my research toolbox, I’ve started these casual chats in July and so far it has been an interesting journey which will help me to better define my survey to the Ma’s Fashion Design Management students, which I wanted to be quantitative to provide some data to my ARP.

The picture below shows the handwriting notes I tool during the casual conversations I’ve conducted so far.

I would like to highlight one of the key struggles has been to identify with who to maintain these casual conversations. For that, I hold few casual chats with peers and students, in order to understand who were those key stakeholders for my ARP.

Kara, Helen. (2015) Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences:  Practical Guide, Policy Press.