HATCH Design Challenge takes place on the weekend of 11-13 October.

Exeter event will provide fun and develop employability skills

Whether you have just started your degree at Exeter or are in your final year, most of you will have thought about what opportunities await you post-graduation. The question is, what skills are employers looking for in graduates? And how can you develop these skills to give yourself a competitive edge?

Strengthening your soft skills is one of the best investments you can make in your career and the rise of AI is only making soft skills increasingly important, as they are precisely the type of skills robots can’t automate. According to a research project by LinkedIn earlier in 2019, the top soft skills that are employers are looking for are creativity, persuasion, collaboration, adaptability and time management.

Hatch Start up Design Challenge offers the opportunity for you to develop all of these skills and more. From 11-13 October, participants at Hatch Startup Design Challenge will form teams and design innovative solutions to problems - either in their local community or further afield. Each team will take their startup ideas through market validation, rapid prototyping and business formation; aiming to form viable, sustainable new startups by the end of the weekend.  Expert mentors and coaches will be on hand to guide teams through the process and it’s an amazing opportunity to develop new skills, meet co-founders and ‘hatch’ new ideas.

Briony Davies from Corkscrew said: “The Corkscrew team are so excited to have partnered with Student Startups in the creation of HATCH. The synergy between the work that we both do and the shared passion to empower young professionals has been evident for a while. Through HATCH, we aim to combine the best of both teams to deliver an event that includes building creative confidence team learning, professional development and the creation of exciting, innovative but most importantly, viable and validated new business ideas!”

This is the first time that the Student Start-up Team has co-created an event with Corkscrew who offer programmes to boost the development of both personal and professional skillsets and co-working facilities via the Generator. Corkscrew’s main focus is on creating learning environments that empower people to challenge social norms and ‘business as usual’. This ethos fits neatly with Hatch, which focuses on personal development through the stages of building a business.

Tickets for the event start from just £20 including food. To discover more about Hatch and book a place, visit the Eventbrite page.

Date: 4 October 2019