BOOST skills development challenge

Designed to help you develop and try out key skills needed for the workplace
A hand holding a light bulb with the word BOOST next to it in navy blue over a green background
Designed to help you develop and try out key skills needed for the workplace, Boost encourages you to work within small groups on a task set by a placement and/or graduate employer.
Challenges are chosen to reflect topics applicable to many employers, and are relevant to all students, no matter what course or stage.
Previous challenges have included such themes as:
  • community engagement
  • mentoring

What happens during the day?

Teams are invited to an in-person briefing the night before where there will be the opportunity to meet each other. You will be provided with the challenge and have time to start discussing it as a team, as well as ask questions.
The BOOST day starts at 08:45 and finishes around 17:00, you must be available for the whole day. A typical programme for the day:
  • Registration
  • Welcome and intro to the day
  • Students set clear business idea and goal and develop the business plan
  • Workshop 1
  • Reflecting on learning from workshop 1 and refining challenge idea
  • Workshop 2
  • Reflecting on learning from workshop 2 and refining challenge idea
  • Pitching top tips and what to include talk
  • Lunch (recommended as a working lunch for teams)
  • Developing/refining business pitches
  • Pitches – 5-minute pitches, 3 minutes of questions
  • End of day summary, reflection, announcing of recognition awards from the event
  • Networking

About Babcock International

Our partners for this event, Babcock International, provide the challenge and representatives to support you throughout the day, many of which will be University of Plymouth graduates. An interest in working for Babcock is not a prerequisite.
Babcock’s continued involvement with the BOOST event is linked to our desire to support students as they look to transition from education to industry and inspire the next generation. Babcock believe it is fantastic opportunity to offer students real experience of business environments, with a chance to develop new skill sets alongside the support of our professionals and the knowledge they bring. Each year Babcock set a scenario based on real challenges within our business environment and look for students to bring a creative and open mindset to help us find innovative solutions. We hope that you will join us for BOOST 2024.
Babcock logo

With graduate recruiters looking for more than just a degree, BOOST is the perfect way to complement your academic skillset with industry-related experience that grows the broader skills valued by employers.

Paul GillardMr Paul Gillard
Paul Gillard, Faculty Engagement and Careers Guidance Manager

Student testimonials

Adedoja Adekola

I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the BOOST event. It's a fantastic opportunity for me to meet great Babcock employees.
Meeting new students from all backgrounds and working as a team to attain a goal.
I'm overjoyed to be tackling real-life problems in the workplace and sharing my ideas while also learning from my colleagues.
This is one of the nicest things that happened to me in 2023, and I hope to attend more of them.
Adedoja Adekola
 

Emma Yates

I joined a team of other students I’d never met before which helped me with my confidence working with new people, along with my teamwork and collaboration skills.
We had to give a presentation at the end of the day, which while it was a bit daunting at first, I realised was so valuable because of it being fairly informal and the Babcock professionals made us all feel very at ease in doing the presentation. I think any opportunity to practice public speaking in a safe and comfortable environment will help in the long run.
It was a really enjoyable day, with a lot of structure, variety and discussion activities. It was designed to be quite formal but is 100% an opportunity to try something new and get valuable feedback on the task and your own skills.
The networking opportunity at the end was also a great way to be able to talk individually with both the careers team and the Babcock professionals and to get general advice on what else you could be doing to better yourself now, professionally, to help later on.
I’d definitely sign up to the event again and the feedback we got during the day, and particularly at the end, solidified its benefits from Babcock’s perspective and from a general skills development perspective as well.
Emma Yates
Careers Service