Enhancing employability through an authentic experiential learning exercise

The contemporary university is charged with producing graduates that are employable and career ready. Yet universities are often criticized for failing to cultivate such attributes in their graduates. Placements and internships arguably best support students’ development of employability knowledge, skills, and behaviours. As the numbers of students opting to, or able to, take internship or placements decline, alternative approaches to supporting students to develop such knowledge, skills and behaviours are vital. In this instructional innovation we outline an authentic experiential learning exercise, Northern Skies Coffee, which offers workplace-equivalent experiences from within the classroom. It positions students as HR consultants to advise on a real-world HR policy and practice challenge. The exercise is highly flexible and adaptable. Evaluation, using a survey recording students’ perceptions of their learning, and instructors’ perceptions of their students’ learning, has shown that through the problem-solving process, students develop creativity, teamworking, negotiation, problem-solving, and critical thinking. Their HR subject-knowledge, and importantly, their learning is transformed as they develop their self-knowledge and understanding and start to craft their identity as an HR professional.