LCF Grad Futures: Essential Skills and Planning for your Career

This session is only for London College of Fashion students and graduates. It is aligned to your Graduate Futures careers and employability journey.

This session offers a strong introduction into fashion and the creative industries. Gaining insight into the current job landscape, you'll understand the importance of mapping the market, the top skills employers are looking and which areas of the industry your unique skillset can be used for.

We’ll guide you with the essential first steps needed to prepare for your career including best practices to leverage your transferable skills and increase your self-awareness to find the best role to match your own personal values.

By the end of this session, you’ll have tips on how to begin to draft a career plan and know how to work backwards from your dream job to complete daily practices and tasks to help you jump up the creative careers ladder. By attending this session you’ll gain access to the Graduate Futures Padlet, filled with resources, podcasts, videos and further reading.

• , Graduate Futures Careers Consultant: Leveraging over 30 years of experience as a Buyer, Headhunter and now Consultant, Melanie has worked with a number of brands including Christian Louboutin, Vivienne Westwood, AllSaints, Threads Styling and Sweaty Betty on projects relating to talent acquisition and executive search. Passionate about helping to build both brands and careers through putting the right people, in the right place at the right time she continues to use her industry expertise to coach and inspire the next generation looking to pursue careers in fashion.

In this session, you will develop the key skills of enterprise, proactivity, storytelling and communication as defined by the UAL Creative Attributes Framework (My_CAF). Before attending this activity, we suggest you:

• Check out the Graduate Futures Moodle page, (or for alumni the Graduate Futures Leavers Pack), which is filled with resources, learning guides, and podcasts.
• Students should explore the Graduate Futures Careers Padlet, which is filled with useful links, videos, and further reading.

Image credit: LCF Careers Fair 2025 with LCF Graduate Futures, UAL | Photography by Paul Cochrane

Host or Publisher LCF Graduate Futures