Advertise Your Vacancies

The Career Service expects recruiters, employers and work experience providers to have checked that any vacancies submitted to the Service, either on-line, or in hard copy formats, comply with the requirements under English or European law, whether under statute or common law, including but not limited to the requirement to make payments of the National Minimum Wage and to comply with the Equality Act 2010. By submitting a vacancy, you are warranting that the vacancy complies with such legal requirements and you agree to indemnify the University of Oxford for any losses which it may incur in connection with a vacancy you submit.

Advertising of vacancies by the Careers Service does not imply approval or recommendation and where it comes to our attention that a vacancy may not comply with the relevant legislation we reserve the right not to publish it, or to remove it from our website, displays and literature.

For international opportunities, recruiters are also responsible for ensuring any vacancy complies with employment law (including any national minimum wage requirements) in the relevant jurisdiction and that they meet relevant good practice.

Once you have submitted or amended a vacancy it will be forwarded to the Student and Employer Engagement Team for checking. We aim to advertise all vacancies, submitted via CareerConnect, on our website within five working days. Please note the Careers Service reserves the right to edit, amend or withhold any vacancies received. Additionally we reserve the right to cap the number of vacancies any employer or recruitment/executive search agency can post.

Exclusions and additional information

• We do not advertise positions posted by private households.
• We do not advertise positions posted by or on behalf of tobacco companies.
• We do not advertise positions soliciting for current students or alumni to tutor candidates through university applications.
• We do not normally accept emails from webmail account providers (e.g. Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail) although we may make exceptions on a case-by-case basis.
• We do not normally accept vacancies from employers without a company website.
• Vacancies may be posted on the system for a maximum of 6 months.
• We will only advertise vacancies posted via CareerConnect. Any vacancies sent to us by email or post will not be advertised.
• We do not advertise full year internships or placements. There are no sandwich courses as such at Oxford University, although some undergraduate courses at Oxford University include elements where students may spend a year abroad, undertake short industrial placements or carry out research projects in industry. These are arranged within relevant departments. Oxford University courses do not have a requirement to spend time on placement in industry or business as part of a degree. Therefore we are only able to advertise placements that are available to students who have completed their studies, or that can be undertaken during the University vacations.

Helping Students to Make Informed Decisions

The University of Oxford Careers Service’s mission is to enable students to make well informed decisions about their career. As part of this, the Service is actively exploring ways to help students learn about organisations’ approaches to sustainability.

Drawing on the Oxford Martin Principles for Climate-Conscious Investment, the Careers Service has introduced a set of questions for recruiters, that allows students to find out more about a recruiter’s sustainability credentials. Students will be able to easily access an organisation’s stance on the climate crisis, its plan on how it will achieve Net-Zero by 2050 and remain profitable, and other relevant credentials in the area of sustainability. In future, students will be able to search on those employers who have answered sustainability questions in specific ways.

Any recruiter wishing to post a vacancy on the University’s CareerConnect system, will be prompted to answer the following:

Q1. Does your organisation recognise the climate crisis, agree with the science, and confirm that it will achieve Net-Zero by 2050, or earlier?

Q2. Does your organisation have a specific, publicly accessible plan, that lays out how it will achieve Net-Zero by 2050 or earlier? (Provide web address if available)

Q3. Does your organisation have a plan for how it will remain profitable while achieving Net-Zero by 2050, or earlier?

Q4. Does your organisation have any other relevant credentials in the area of sustainability of which you’d like to ensure students are aware? (Eg, B-Corp, use of renewables, etc) (Open text box to describe other credentials)

The Careers Service will consider using these data in future to highlight those recruiters who tick yes to specific questions, including in careers fairs’ booklets or similar publications. As a result, the Service hopes that those students for whom sustainability in the current climate crisis is an important factor in their decision making, will be better informed

We are unable to advertise vacancies that request candidates must have the right to work in the UK, as there is the potential for indirect discrimination if this information is requested as part of the application process rather than part of right to work checks on receipt of a job/internship offer.

It is very common for employers to state that they will only accept applications from those with the right to work in the UK. Companies have a legal responsibility to ensure that all employees have the right to work in the UK. To meet this requirement, some companies refuse to accept applications from anyone who does not already have this permission in place. However, because this requirement has a disproportionate impact on non-UK citizens, it has the potential to be unlawful indirect race discrimination.

Some employers also insist that candidates provide evidence of their right to work at application stage. This point is addressed in section 16.67 of the Statutory Code of Practice accompanying the Equality Act 2010:

“Eligibility to work in the UK should be verified in the final stages of the selection process rather than at the application stage, to make sure the appointment is based on merit alone, and is not influenced by other factors […] Employers can, in some circumstances, apply for work permits and should not exclude potentially suitable candidates from the selection process.” 

Further details can be found in the Statutory Code of Practice for Employers.

A number of important changes have been announced regarding UK immigration law. The most important of these relating to graduate recruitment are:

• Brexit: If you have pre-settled/settled status granted under the EU Settlement Scheme you can take up employment. If you missed the deadline of 30 June 2021 to apply for this status the Home Office is accepting late applications with a valid excuse. If you do not have pre-settled/settled status then you will need to have or apply for immigration permission to start work.
• Common Travel Area: The Common Travel Area remains the same as before Brexit. Under these arrangements, Irish citizens continue to have freedom to enter, live and work in the UK; and UK citizens will continue to have freedom to enter, live and work in Ireland
• Graduate Immigration Route: Since 1 July 2021, graduates from UK universities have been able to apply for a visa to stay on and work in the UK for two years (three years for DPhil) without requiring sponsorship or a job offer. You can apply for the visa once you have received your final results or Leave to Supplicate for DPhil, and the university has reported your successful completion to the Home Office. This visa route cannot be extended, therefore you will need to switch to another route (e.g. the Skilled Worker route or another work or visa route) to remain in the UK before the end of the visa permission.

For further information, please visit: Government Code of Practice and Prospects guide to jobs and work experience/working abroad.

We only post vacancies for specific opportunities; not for the purpose of signposting to the agency’s website. The name of the client/employer on whose behalf an agency is acting must be stated within the vacancy. However, a recruitment agency can be given as the contact for applications / information etc, instead of the client.

To ensure the students who apply via the agency can be assured that their application will be received and considered by the listed employer, we check that the agency has the agreement of the employer concerned to advertise on their behalf.  We may additionally contact employers to verify this.

If your client is already in direct contact with the Careers Service, we would need their confirmation (by email or letter) that they wish applications to be handled through an agency.

We are extremely grateful for all the fantastic internships and opportunities that we are able to advertise to our undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, and researchers. We advertise internships and opportunities, for free, in small start-ups to large multinational organisations, in sectors spanning Accountancy to Zoology.

However, we will not advertise ANY internships and opportunities which require our undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, and researchers to pay a fee to participate. We recognise that there may be some exceptions such as not for profit/charitable organisations who offer voluntary internship and opportunities overseas which require a payment in order to cover costs of accommodation/travel etc and hence enable the ongoing work of the charity.

We also do not advertise unpaid/unfunded internships and opportunities unless they are:

• Short term insight or vacation schemes of no longer than 2 weeks aimed at providing “work shadowing” or learning & development opportunities.

• Voluntary work with a charity, voluntary organisation, an associated fund-raising organisation, or a statutory body and, where the voluntary work is UK based, fulfil the conditions for voluntary workers under UK National Minimum Wage legislation.  Organisations will need to provide evidence that they fulfil this criteria.

For both paid and unpaid internships and opportunities, it is the responsibility of the host to ensure compliance with the applicable minimum wage requirements given the location of the role. If it will be a virtual internship, then regardless of the location of the host, we will also only advertise posts if the host states that it will be paid at least at the rate of the UK national minimum wage (or the relevant local national minimum wage if that is higher). 

If you are in the not-for-profit sector, we suggest you discuss your needs directly with the Internship Office (summer-internships@careers.ox.ac.uk) as we may be in a position to attach an internship award to particular opportunities. Our limited funding is allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. In any case, all not-for-profit sector partners must, as a minimum, offer a contribution, for example provide accommodation, reimburse travel or meal costs.

The Careers Service reserves the right not to publish any internship and opportunities we feel are inappropriate for our clients.