Volunteering, Skills & Employability

Three students taking a selfie together

MSL Volunteering & Employability

Offer your student members more opportunities to develop skills and boost employability alongside their academic studies. Encourage different ways to participate with your own opportunities, student group roles and community partners - and support retention initiatives in the process.

MSL Volunteering & Employability helps you reach more students whether they are campus-based, remote learners or on placements - by providing access to a community of participants, opportunities and resources to showcase their skills.

Using MSL Volunteering & Employability to create a digital hub to encourage and recognise participation in activities outside of academic work has been essential for UPSU.

University of Plymouth Students' Union

Read the University of Plymouth Students' Union case study.

 

Provide participants with their own unique profile which grows as they participate in activities and provides an instant view of their progress and areas they need to concentrate on. Their profile includes:

  • Hours logged against skills
  • Skills attained
  • Training attended
  • Awards received based on hours and skills attained

They can set search filters and preferences within their profile so they only see opportunities that match their requirements and help them build specific skills.

MSL’s Volunteering & Employability system supports all the UPSU volunteer, provider and awards functionality. The ability to display engagement stats, which use real time data pulled in via an API, has proven to be a real draw for new volunteers. - University of Plymouth Students' Union
Read the University of Plymouth Students' Union case study

Move admin and paper based processes online so administrators can concentrate on employer and participant engagement and provide the best opportunities for students:

  • Promote recurring and one-off opportunities and training easily with activity templates and pre-defined activity periods
  • Give admin access to internal departments and third party opportunity providers to create/edit their own listings
  • Quickly approve or reject opportunities as they are created or updated
  • Monitor applications to participate
  • Set automated notifications to alert opted in users about new opportunities, new providers, their opportunity applications status

Progress

A volunteer's profile showing their progerss towards the skills they have prioritised

Boost your students’ CVs with a complete skills record containing all their roles, activities, training undertaken and skills gained during an activity period. Attendance at training courses is verified before it can be logged against relevant awards and displayed on the profile.

Awards

Multiple awards can be run simultaneously with each award based on number of hours logged and linked to criteria such as skill categories, qualifications and reviews the participant has received about their work or contribution to a volunteering scheme.

Provider Access

As well as building community links, giving your employers and opportunity providers online access means they can set up and manage their own accounts saving your own staff's time:

  • Upload mandatory documents such as proof of insurance
  • Post recurring and one-off opportunities
  • Approve or reject applications to participate in their opportunities

Messaging

Distinctive templates for your volunteering and skills communications ensure you stand out and allow engaging information to be sent to opted in students, volunteers and opportunity providers.

Opportunity providers can also be given access to directly message all of their participants taking part in their opportunities. Where participants have opted out of communications, they can still view any messages sent to them in their profile but they will not receive them in their email inboxes.

Automated notifications are also available to alert users about new opportunities, new providers, an opportunity application, an approved registration - amongst many others.

Say hello!

We treat our clients like they're part of the family -- when we say you’ll have our full attention, we mean it.