Swinburne Employability Award
In Semester 1 2025, Swinburne will launch the employability award, a dynamic upgrade to the previous Emerging Leaders Program designed to supercharge your future.
What is the Swinburne Employability Award?
The award celebrates your experiences beyond the classroom, helping you showcase your skills to employers and stand out in a competitive job market. Exclusive to Swinburne, it focuses on self-development and future-ready abilities, boosting your employability, career management skills, and confidence to secure Work Integrated Learning (WIL) placements and job opportunities.
Benefits of the award
By completing the award, you’ll get:
- a way to learn more about yourself, discover new opportunities and develop skills to manage your career
- official acknowledgement for undertaking campus and community experiences that helped you build sought-after skills
- recognition on your academic transcript
- an excellent way to provide a point of difference and showcase your unique experiences to future employers.
Your options
Career Development
This one is all about you. Take control of your career by learning more about yourself and your opportunities, making informed choices, and building connections that will support your future success.
Professional Development
Get ready for the workplace! This stream focuses on professional skill development, recognises the career experiences you’ve been involved with, and highlights the importance of a proactive mindset to navigate the challenges of the professional world.
Career Passport
Ready to showcase your professional self? This stream includes everything you need to present your best self to employers – your resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile, interview skills, and career story. It’s everything you need to elevate your graduate employment game.
How it works
Each stream exists as a Canvas module comprising a series of activities and reflections you can use to promote your unique experiences. You can choose to complete one, two, or all three streams. You’ll complete each stream by submitting a plan that, once approved, will award you with a digital certificate and recognition on your academic transcript.
Examples of the types of experiences you can use in the award include:
- Any paid employment (even if unrelated to your field of study)
- Placements and Internships
- Volunteering on campus or in the wider community
- Involvement in a mentor program
- University club participation
- Global adventures (including studying abroad and overseas exchanges)
- Attendance at industry events
- Professional association membership
- Participation in startup programs and activities
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Find your crowd on campus and in the community through experiences like volunteering
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Collaborate and learn with others as dedicated as you
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Swinburne Employability Award students
How to get involved
If you’re a Swinburne student and the employability award sounds like something you’d like to add to your studies, visit Canvas to register your interest.
Please note: Academic transcripts do not allow for multiple awards for the same experiences, so students who have already completed the full Emerging Leaders Program do not need to enrol in this employability award.
Frequently Asked Questions
All Swinburne students, vocational education, higher education, postgraduate and Swinburne Online can join the program.
The award is totally free to join.
You’ll receive a digital certificate after you complete each stream, and you will receive recognition on your academic transcript after graduation.
The program includes reflective responses that allow you to assess your progress and insights throughout each module. There is also one main submission per stream that you’ll work on and refine over the course of the module, allowing you to apply your learnings in a practical way.
You can register at any time. The program is self-paced, and you can complete it when it best suits your schedule. Most students complete each stream of the award in a few hours, provided they have already undertaken their experiences. If you are completing the Career Experiences stream, you will need to allow time to complete two experiences of around 30 hours each.
Students who complete all three streams of the award gain exclusive access to special opportunities designed specifically for award recipients, including invitation-only events and experiences.
The Swinburne Employability Award will continue to give recognition for a range of experiences. However, it is structured differently to Emerging Leader and delivered through a different platform (Canvas). This means that certificates cannot be transferred from Emerging Leader to the new Swinburne Employability Award.
If you haven’t yet completed the entire Emerging Leader Program, you have a choice to complete that or use your experiences and sign up for the new Swinburne Employability Award instead.
If you’ve already completed the Emerging Leader Program, you won’t be able to apply for the new Swinburne Employability Award. This is because there cannot be two completed programs on the transcript recognising similar experiences.
Keep on exploring
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Work Integrated Learning
Swinburne guarantees real industry experience in all our bachelor degrees in the form of placements, internships or industry-linked projects.
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Volunteering
Learn valuable new skills by taking on a leadership or volunteering role. You’ll meet new people and gain experiences that will make you more employable.
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Swinburne study abroad
Studying abroad gives you the chance to challenge yourself, explore new cultures and make memories that last a lifetime. What are you waiting for?
Stay tuned for updates
We’ll have more to share about the employability award in the near future, so keep an eye on this page for updates!
Have you got questions?
If you’d like more information about the Swinburne Employability Award, please contact us via email.