In a special guest blog that forms part of a series reflecting on the Arfor Challenge Fund, Owain James, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Darogan, discusses how efforts were made to attract students back to the Arfor regions after studying outside these areas.
Darogan began, like many good ideas, as the simple answer to a big problem. While studying at Oxford University, my co founder Theo and I intended to return to Wales to start our careers after graduating. But as we attended local job and careers fairs in Oxford and the surrounding area, we noticed something. Despite Wales’ growing industries and the huge pool of talent eager to work there, Welsh employers rarely reached graduates across the border. London and recruiters from other major cities continued to dominate the scene, and potential talent was slipping away.
Our solution was simple and ambitious: a graduate hub designed to connect talent with great opportunities across Wales.
Darogan is Wales’ Graduate Hub, the only platform dedicated to graduate careers in Wales. Through the digital platform, in person events and other services, Darogan connects graduate talent with employers in Wales.
The main aim of the project was to address one of the biggest challenges facing the ARFOR region: the high number of young people leaving the four local authorities to live and work elsewhere.
The pilot had two strands. The first provided direct, short term solutions to the problem by running face to face events for students outside Wales, promoting the ARFOR region and the opportunities available there. The second strand focused on long term impact through a research element, with the aim of developing future interventions. To better understand the barriers young people face when returning to ARFOR, surveys and research interviews were carried out with students from each of the four local authorities.
Following additional funding, it was possible to expand the work of facilitating events and to run the ‘Cwis Mawr Cymru’ series, which allowed us to experiment with an alternative structure for our engagement activity. A series of quiz nights was held across Wales and England, in partnership with Welsh societies, with an informal and social feel. These evenings provided an opportunity to give a short introduction to ARFOR’s work and to share information about employers in the area directly with the students and graduates attending.
The scheme engaged a total of 1,259 students interested in careers in Wales/ARFOR as part of the activity. These individuals are now part of Darogan’s database and network, and therefore receive information about jobs and career opportunities in the area. Each of them received information about ARFOR by email when registering.
Feedback from employers: “From the event, we registered four individuals for our business start up support service as well as spreading valuable information.”
This project has enabled Darogan to develop an event planning template for graduate engagement, which will guide our future engagement strategy as we continue our work to attract graduates back to Wales.
The research contributes to our long term activity and enables us to shape our plans in a way that suits our target audience of students and graduates from Wales.
In particular, through the co design workshops held as part of the research, we now have a number of ideas from young people to explore for the future. For example, using VR technology to showcase the area’s history and opportunities to those who have moved away.
