Huddersfield named Future-Ready University for careers dashboard
The University of Huddersfield has been named the Future-Ready University in the Springpod Impact Awards 2026 thanks to a dashboard developed at the University that gives students a clear view of where their degree can take them.
Graduate Career Explorer is an intuitive tool that uses AI to help students explore the breadth of careers their degree can lead to and where those jobs are geographically. It can help students easily widen their options, see which job titles to use in their career search and to weigh up the benefits of commuting.
The resource was developed by the University's Careers and Employability Service and Planning in partnership with Lightcast, a leader in labour market analytics, with support from colleagues across the University’s Schools.
The award submission emphasised the collective commitment across the University to support students’ employability, and in particular highlighted the role of Senior Planning Analyst Ben Hull, who invented Graduate Career Explorer.
Ben realised the University could utilise the labour market intelligence data from Lightcast to create a dashboard showing students graduate job adverts filtered by degree relevance and mapped to any local authority in the UK. He was also the technical lead during the year-long development of Graduate Career Explorer and continues to be central to driving the project forward.
In 2025/26, the dashboard reached more than 4,000 students through the University's employability award and careers education.
Dave Stanbury, Deputy Head of Careers and Employability at the University, commented: “GCE is a highly innovative system which expresses our RISE values. It respects the personal factors affecting career choices and supports students in making informed decisions. GCE is the outcome of the wholehearted commitment of staff across the institution to do everything possible to make a real difference to the career and life chances of all our students.”
Springpod is an early careers platform that helps young people explore education and career pathways. Its Impact Awards celebrate employers, universities and individuals that are making an outstanding contribution to preparing young people for the world of work.
The Future-Ready University award is the latest recognition for the University and Graduate Career Explorer, after the initiative won the Digital Education and Development Award at the Educate North Awards 2025 and the Innovation in Careers and Employability category at the Graduate Futures Awards 2026.