HECSU Blog

High Fliers

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:45:00 +0000

The HighFliers report is out today, so here's a summary.

First, let’s start by pointing out that the survey covers only the Times Top 100 employers and so is only really a snapshot sample of well-known graduate employers and shouldn't be taken as representative of all employers. But it is interesting for all that and, after all, covers the employers that students themselves find the most popular, so gives an important picture of those organisations and schemes that students are likely to apply to this year

The bottom line is that the employers covered are expecting, overall, to be offering more jobs than last year – a very welcome finding. It’s not evenly spread, though – reports of recovery in engineering and IT seem to be substantiated by the finding that the firms in these sectors look to be upping recruitment.

The Armed Forces are, not surprisingly, cutting recruitment, as are media, law and some professional services – although that may be because the latter recruited heavily last year.

Much of the press coverage has focussed on the report that half the recruiters interviewed have warned that graduates with no work experience will struggle to get selected. High Fliers haven’t actually stated that the employers want this experience to be ‘relevant’ or even necessarily at graduate level. The kind of experience students gain in term-time and vacation working is often very valuable, and there's no indication that employers aren't interested in experiences of this kind.

The 100 employers covered are collectively offering 11,296 paid work experience and internship places this year as well, so there are chances for students to gain experience before applying. Nevertheless, it's not a good time to be graduating with a thin CV and this provides a timely reminder to students that they need to have something to show on there to stand a good chance of a job on graduation.

84% of the recruiters interviewed have vacancies available in London, but more than half also have jobs in the North West and the Midlands. 62% expect to have jobs in finance, 57% in IT, and 40% in HR.

There is a section on salaries, but unfortunately because of the small sample size and focus on popular employers, investment banking tends to drag the overall average up to a level that isn't reflective of the graduate jobs market as a whole. There’s an interesting rundown of average salary by sector, and it seems that in most sectors, starting salaries remain flat.

We also have a rundown of applicant volumes, with many surveyed employers expecting more applications per vacancy this year.

Overall, I'm not dancing a merry jig with delight at the findings, but nor are we looking at a graduate jobs meltdown. The graduate employment market, judging by this sample, appears to be very slightly better than last year, albeit with the caveat that some very popular sectors, most notably media, may be even harder to get into than in the past. Other sectors are looking to expand and there are signs of the long-awaited recovery in engineering and IT.

I have to finish with an amusing direct quote:

“Just one sector – IT & telecommunications – has had a drop in applications so far this year, with an average of a fifth fewer applicants than in 2010-2011. Two recruiters from the sector commented that although the volume of applications had decreased, the quality of candidates had improved.”

Yes, I know n=2 is hardly the whole sector, but it's an interesting counterpoint to current criticism of IT teaching.

Happy New Year - and something from last month

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:40:00 +0000

Hello everyone, nice to be back. No, really, it is. Hope you all had a good festive period.

Anyone interested in how I think 2012's graduate jobs market might look, as well as hearing how I sound when I have the 'flu, check out this excellent Guardian Careers podcast from last month.

Charlie in the Guardian

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 10:02:00 +0000

Talking about What Do Graduates Do? and the current graduate employment market here.

How we used to live

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:15:00 +0000

Just throwing this one out there.

Data comes from the first destinations surveys of the respective years, from the Universities Statistical Record in 1991 and by HESA in 2010.

I'd like to include the types of occupation, but the economy was so different in structure there's no way I can do it meaningfully.

But we can do some small comparisons - in 1991, 13.5% of working first degree graduates went into science or engineering R&D. Last year it was 3.5%. In 1991, 17.1% of those employed went into financial roles (and that's not even counting management consultants). Last year - 7.5%. The proportions going into law and into health, education and social care (the latter three combined together into one mammoth category in 1991) are almost exactly the same, on the other hand. In 1991, there was no formal measurement of those going into computing and IT. It wasn't significant enough (although some did go in).

How things change.

What Do Graduates Do?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:02:00 +0000

What Do Graduates Do? our annual publication on graduate destinations, produced jointly with AGCAS, has come out this morning. You may have seen some of the press coverage.

For most UK graduates employment is steadily increasing, unemployment is slowly decreasing.

284,160 students graduated in 2010 with a first degree – a 3.6% increase on last year
69.7% (163,090 graduates) were in employment six months after graduation
Unemployment went down from 8.9% to 8.5%
Record number (100,265 or 63.4%) secured graduate level jobs

The figures show recovery in business and financial services with 7.5% of graduates working in these occupations, the same as that recorded in 2008. Marketing, sales and advertising was the occupational group that saw the largest percentage jump in graduates in 2010.

The graduate labour market seemed to be very slowly recovering at the start of 2011, and the first half of the year seemed to follow the pattern of painstaking economic recovery, so we've no real reason to believe much changed up until then. The present turmoil in the Eurozone started in earnest during the summer, but as GDP figures show that the economy was still slowly recovering up until September at the least, so the likelihood is that, as things stand, the employment market for this summers' graduates is, at worst, not likely to be too much different to last year's - in other words, not as good as it has been, but better than it was a couple of years ago.

New GMT Out

noreply@blogger.com (HECSU) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:56:00 +0000

Autumn 2011 GMT Launches

Marking the start of a new academic year, the autumn edition of GMT launches with the latest information, debate and research into higher education, graduate employment and careers.

GMT Autumn 2011 is published by HECSU and focuses on graduate employability with an inspiring collection of interviews, new research and debate. Highlights include:

· Graduate employability in 2012 – discussed by the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Service’s President Elect Dr Paul Redmond.

· How to enable a high-skilled economy which supports and prepares businesses to compete in a more demanding global environment – Yes Minister’s Director Dr Floyd Millen.

· Why higher education is so important to the UK economy, and the risks and challenges of attracting international students – the Institute for Public Policy Research.

· Reforms for creating closer working relationships between universities, employers and students – graduate employability expert, Judy Smith

The autumn edition of GMT can be downloaded free of charge.

And do look out for our now regular features in The Guardian HE Network!

For any questions, queries and comments please contact the editor: a.papadatou@hecsu.ac.uk.

Where should postgraduates expect to work?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:09:00 +0000

Ah, more fun with regional data.

It might come as no surprise to hear that if you've a PhD and don't want to work in academia, the most likely place for you to start your career post-graduation is London. However, what then gets interesting is where else people start.

If you're a medical scientist, graduates were next most likely to leave the country. Greater Manchester was the third most likely location place to get a non-HE job.

Almost all other PhDs were also most likely to leave the UK if they weren't in London, and then were likely to go to work in and around Cambridgeshire. Oxford, Greater Manchester and Hertfordshire were also popular with scientists. Bristol and Surrey with engineers and Oxford, the West Midlands and Tyne and Wear with arts and humanities. Psychologists showed less of a fascination for Cambridge, preferring the West Midlands, Kent and Surrey.

So, doctoral graduates, you might want to factor in housing costs post-HE.

For Masters graduates, with a rather different labour market, London's obviously the main destination - in fact, the Masters jobs market is more concentrated in London than the first degree market, with 29% of Masters graduates starting work there as opposed to 21% of first degree graduates.

But after that? You might be surprised. For biomedical graduates or engineers, the answer is Greater Manchester. For other graduates, it's leaving the UK entirely, followed by Greater Manchester and then the West Midlands - except for Masters graduates in the arts and humanities, where the next most popular place for graduates to work was West Yorkshire. Other popular regions were Tyne and Wear, Oxfordshire, Edinburgh and Merseyside, although there is certain deviation by subject.

But it's rather complicated and I'm aware that where to look for a job - and where you might be working - are important factors for young people juggling a budget. it's especially important that people who might be pursuing a career in a specific field, but come from an area where there are not a lot of local job opportunities in that area, are made aware of that so that they don't graduate, go home and then get frustrated because they can't find a job. This is going to happen a great deal in the difficult months ahead. We need to help where we can.

Turning data on its head

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:35:00 +0000

As I’m looking at regional information, let’s take a look at a way of examining information that I haven’t used yet.

One of the issues we have is that jobs are not distributed evenly around the country. If you’re looking for work and, say, you’re a computing graduate looking for a job in software design, and you’re from (sticks a pin in a map)….Stoke, what are your options? Where might you find a job?

Now, this is especially important for many young people, particularly those from less affluent parts of the country, because their options can seem quite limited – stay at home and seek work there even though there might not be very much, or look nationally and take a risk on moving somewhere with higher housing costs (they might not even be really affordable) even though you might not know the local labour market. It’s a tough choice.

But DLHE can help here, because it gives us an idea of where people went for their first job.

Let’s take a look at one especially tricky area at the moment – environment and conservation work. Only 360 graduates from last year were known to be working in a job of this nature (I have kept the criteria pretty narrow, so there are probably more in reality) six months after graduation. We could look at that entire selection, but there's one thing we need to do first.

Our graduate would like to get paid. The environmental sector has rather a lot of unpaid work, but we still have 220 graduates who got a paid job, so let's look at them only.

As we can see from this graph, the opportunities for last year's graduates are not evenly distributed. Whilst this is one profession where a move to London is not likely to reap instant rewards, our Stoke graduate (in the West Midlands) might find more opportunities away from home - perhaps as far as Scotland or Wales - or even out of Europe entirely.

Let's focus down further, though. Scotland looks a pretty reasonable bet to get a paid job in the environment. But Scotland's big. Where should our graduate look?

Well, examining the data, it looks like there are three potential places that might currently work best - Edinburgh, Aberdeen or Angus on the East Coast of Scotland.

If our Stoke graduate wanted to stay nearer to home, looking west to Shropshire might be more fruitful than staying within Stoke itself, and it does look as if there might be some opportunities in Staffordshire.

This is an approach we don't normally take in HECSU when we examine destination data - working backwards from the roles people might want to do, but with people finding local options to be limited, maybe it's something we can do a little more of.

New economic figures out

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:06:00 +0000

The Stats Office have just published employment data for the summer and, well, the labour market noticeably worsened.

Unemployment went up to 8.1%, the highest figure for 2 years, employment went down, just in time for new graduates to hit the jobs market.

It is going to be a rocky autumn for graduate jobseekers - let's give them all the support we can, and let's hope things improve or next year's destination data may not be cheerful reading.

Thinking locally

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:11:00 +0000

As anyone who saw me at AGCAS Biennial will now know, I've been working on a detailed examination of the graduate labour market down to sub-regional level and how it has been affected by the recession (the last one, that is, not the current economic circumstances that may or may not turn out to be the start of a new one).

I'm finishing the factsheets that some people have seen at the moment and then will get to grips with the major labour market report, which examines each region of the UK in turn, before doing some analysis of graduate mobility and regional retention.

There's a lot of data to be examined and a number of conclusions to be drawn. The recession has had an impact on local labour markets and made this kind of analysis more important - there are a lot of differences between London and the rest of the country, unsurprisingly. As the attached figure, showing the number of last year's graduates known to be working in each region six months after graduating, shows, London and the south east are important, but most graduates don't work there.

It's become plain that there's a need to keep everyone up to date with local developments and we're always keen to hear from people who maintain a watch on local labour markets and are happy to share information and resources. After all, you may be an expert on the Manchester labour market, but if you've got a student from Plymouth who wants to go home after graduation, you need to be able to get that data from somewhere.

Also, if people have useful links and resources for local labour market information, we'd be very keen to know so we can get together a good library of local resources for everyone.

Information sharing is the best way to ensure we all have the best tools for students, and we hope that the information we'll be sharing will be useful for the sector. More to come soon.

Longitudinal DLHE is out

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:57:00 +0000

Long DLHE is now out. It makes the finding that graduates in a recession did a little worse than those who were not in a recession, which comes as no surprise to anyone, I expect.

However, when you compare the unemployment rate for graduates from 2006/7 three and a half years after graduation, of 3.9%, with the youth unemployment rate at the time of the survey, of 20.4%, suddenly everything gets put into a bit more context.

This is particularly interesting when you consider that 41.5% of graduates (at all levels) unemployed at the time of the survey nevertheless say that they are satisfied with their career progression to date.

It's refreshing to see that the data includes a new destination category dealing with people who are working on a portfolio - this is something we'll soon be seeing in the six month DLHE as well and will be especially useful for the arts and humanities.

And there's an interesting section on migration which shows that most regions have done a pretty good job of retaining their graduates, which is good to see (although there's a drift to London which seems to increase the closer the region is to the capital).

So, well worth looking at the data in some detail, if you're interested.

Graduate salary figures from the ONS

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:59:00 +0000

Is this thing on?

About time there was some action here, eh? Apart, of course, from all the spammers (this blog gets a lot of spam since I turned the Capcha off).

Anyway, the Stats Office have just produced this examination of earnings at different qualification levels (which includes a download of the actual data, which is interesting).

Here's how current salaries (at December 2010) progress at the various percentiles by qualification rate.

Graduate earnings have increased by around 56% since 1993 as the proportion of the working population with a degree has gone from 12% to 25%. As a comparison, the proportion of the working population with A-level or equivalent has fallen from 23% to 21% and earnings have gone up by 60%. Hardly an endorsement of the 'there are so many degrees that they don't have any value' argument.

But we need to be cautious about two specific sections of the data. The first is that the figures are not segregated by age. Not surprisingly, with this in mind, it seems that the worst-paid graduates get paid less than the average of people who didn't go to university.

As the worst-paid graduates are almost all going to be newly-qualified and with little experience of the labour market, it would be extremely odd if they were getting paid more than experienced employees.

The other is the ostensibly-interesting section about skills levels in jobs. This bit concludes that the proportion of graduates working in high-skills jobs has fallen between 1993 and 2010 (although not with much of an effect on wages, which already raises alarm bells).

The Stats Office use a version of the Standard Occupational Classification that has 4 digits, and this is what is used as a basis for classifying jobs into one of the four categories, low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high.

All very interesting, but whilst 4 digit SOC is very good at representing the whole labour market - as, let's not forget, most employees don't have degrees - it's not quite as good at properly covering graduate employment, which tends to be clustered into areas of work that are not differentiated under 4 digit SOC. So, for example, all designers are counted as doing the same job.

For graduate destination data, a 5th digit has been created (and will be created for the upcoming SOC 2010) to better map graduate employment, and as a consequence a skills map that only works on 4 digits is going to lack some nuance. That way we don't have a heating engineer being accorded the same skills level as a skilled metallurgist (or, heavens forfend, that most vital of professionals, a brewer).

So, this is an interesting piece of work examining the range of salaries at a variety of qualification levels. Well worth looking at as long as you're aware of the caveats.

(Belated) Charlie elsewhere

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:51:00 +0000

Been a lot on recently, which is why I haven't said anything about DLHE (of course I have lots to say about it) and the AGR survey (oddly enough the Press didn't cover the bits where the AGR members thought that graduate quality was going up).

I have been bothering the readership of the New Scientist again, though, so if anyone wants to read me being sceptical about whether we need more STEM graduates or now, here it is.

Summer GMT is out!

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:47:00 +0000

IN THE NEWS: SUMMER GMT IS LAUNCHED

HECSU’s quarterly guide to the graduate labour market launched last week, offering perspective on the funding cuts and a sneak preview of the Real Prospects: Higher Education study.

HECSU researcher, Holly Higgins led the research from Graduate Prospects, which asked 22,000 graduates about their experiences of working life. In the summer edition of GMT she reveals some initial findings from the higher education report about what graduates want from careers services:

Also in the summer edition of GMT, Pearson Learning's head of policy, Steve Besley, puts the changes in higher education (HE) and career guidance provision in context and Professor Roger Brown from Liverpool Hope University concludes that the new free market discourse reflects an ideological bias.

Ernst & Young and Deloitte showcase their non-classic routes into graduate-level employment and the University of Bedfordshire investigates the embedment of employability into the HE curriculum. There is also an article from the University Alliance about how universities should address the challenges ahead.

View the on-line summer edition of GMT at:

http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/research_reports_graduate_market_trends_summer_2011.htm

Aphrodite Papadatou

More Charlie Elsewhere

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 11:59:00 +0000

Going to do another piece for the New Scientist shortly, but for now, why not get involved in the Guardian webchat on 'stop-gap' jobs, featuring yours truly?

Charlie in the New Scientist

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:07:00 +0000

Just written a piece for the New Scientist on the labour markets for MScs.

Anyone interested is encouraged to comment.

Forget my own head next!

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 27 May 2011 12:51:00 +0000

Doing the Guardian webchat on employability, er, now

Forget my own head next.

Getting the message out

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 20 May 2011 13:28:00 +0000

I've been thinking a lot recently about how we communicate LMI to the people who need it.

It's partly motivated by some of the things going on in a live chat at the Guardian about research communication, and partly by a piece I am writing for somewhere else (all will be revealed) on one of my favourite bugbears.

The new High Fliers report demonstrates the issues. Students expect a starting salary of £22,600 this summer. Now, this is a standard High Fliers report. It's interesting in its own way, but it takes a small sample of students from a small sample of universities, so a far better way of expressing it is 'Some students, who are not representative of the student body, expect to earn a starting salary of £22,600'. And some of them think they'll be earning £100,000 at the age of 30.

And the fact is that some of them will earn £22,600, but that many of them probably won't, because the avarage starting salary for graduates has been stuck just below £20k for three years and wage increases are such that they're unlikely to shoot up this year. And £100k at the age of 30? Well, good luck with that, guys, but let's be blunt. Anyone who manages it that is very much the exception and not the rule.

Somehow, students are getting these ideas, and it's great that they're enthusiastic about the labour market and good that some of the ridiculously overblown negativity about graduate employment is being set aside temporarily.

Most graduates get decent jobs and make a good living. Currently, average graduate earnings peak at around 35, and a salary of £34,500. Even in the finance industry, average earnings peak at £37,300.

It's exciting to focus on the big earners and talk about 'rumours' of £50k starting salaries (some new graduates might earn that this year), but we need to make sure people realise that most graduates get perfectly good jobs that don't earn anywhere near that much; and many will make perfectly respectable fulfilling, rewarding careers and never earn so much, and that that is ok.

So, how to get that message out more effectively?

Graduate underemployment

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:00:00 +0000

I was on holiday last week, hence no reaction, until now, to the Association of Accounting Technicians report, conducted by the CEBR last week.

The report casts doubt on the value of a degree based on their interpretation of DLHE data and some ONS data.

Now, the Work Foundation have already expressed scepticism in this blog post by Laurence Hopkins, and I’m going to expand on some of Laurence’s points.

The CEBR claim that in 2009/10 that 52% of new graduates are either out of work or underemployed. They seem to reach this conclusion (it’s not quite clear) by using DLHE data for employment outcomes, but then tacking on the unemployment data gained, not from DLHE, but from the ONS research we dissected here. This is an interesting decision as it takes a measure of unemployment immediately on graduation and combines it with an employment outcome measured six months post-graduation even though a measure of unemployment six months post-graduation already exists in the same dataset.

The way they calculate what jobs don’t require degrees is interesting as well. The authors state that ‘we regard the regard the following occupational classifications as not requiring degrees’, and then list, essentially, all SOCs from 4000 down. Now, that’s ok if you want a crude approximation, but it does ignore the fact that there is already a well-known measure of graduate level occupations produced by the IER and available from HESA as part of DLHE.

It might be a bit creaky, but it’s evidenced by some rather splendid research. I am not sure why the CEBR did not use this research to determine a rather more nuanced view of graduate level employment.

Using their measures, the CEBR show that in 2006/7, 32% of graduates were ‘underemployed’, rising to around 34% in 2007/8 and rising further to 37% in 2008/9.

Let’s do some analysis.

In 2006/7, 147,315 UK-domiciled first degree graduates were known to be in UK employment six months after graduation.

Of those, using what appear to be the author’s measures (I’d prefer a full SOC methodology), 46,730 were working in occupations coded with SOC 4000 or above – 31.6% of the employed cohort.

In fact, if you use the IER graduate job categories, 33.5% of employed graduates were in non-graduate jobs six months after graduation. Unemployment was 5.5%. Now, of course, you can’t add 33.5% to 5.5% and say ‘hey presto, 39% of graduates were underemployed’ because that 33.5% are only 33.5% of the employed cohort.

The whole UK-domiciled cohort was 209,115 graduates. In all, 60,705 of 2006/7 graduates were in non-graduate employment or unemployed six months after graduation in the UK, and that comes to 29% of the whole cohort. The CEBR report it as about 40%, presumably using a much higher unemployment figure from ONS data taken at a different time.

Doing the same calculations gives us 69,000 graduates from 2007/8 in non-graduate employment or unemployed six months after graduation in the UK, or 31.3% (the recession had started)). In 2008/9, at the depths of the recession, we have 75,385 graduates from 2008/9 in non-graduate employment or unemployed six months after graduation in the UK, or 33.5% of the whole graduating cohort. That is using the respective DLHE datasets, the commonly acknowledged measure of non-graduate employment and a measure of unemployment taken at the same time and using the same dataset.

Finally, the CEBR reaches the interesting conclusion that as the proportion of graduates in non-graduate employment grew between 2006/7 and 2008/9, it will therefore continue growing in 2009/10 and 2010/11, ‘given underlying trends and weaknesses in the UK labour market’. This seems to contradict reports of more optimistic employment prospects for graduates this year and I believe they’re wide of the mark. The economy is in recovery, albeit a sluggish and choppy recovery, and graduate numbers actually fell last year.

If you look at the data at subject level, the methodological information provided is not sufficient to reproduce the data in the report, but the subject groupings used suggest that the LFS data mentioned previously is being used to derive unemployment figures even though a more appropriate measure exists in the DLHE data used to derive employment data. If you do use DLHE throughout, you get a rather different subject pattern.

So, have employment prospects for graduates deteriorated as a result of the recession?

Unequivocally, yes?

Are they as bad as this report makes out?

No, I rather think not.

Anyway, we'll find out who is right about 2009/10 graduates in about six weeks when the new DLHE is out, and I'll tell you then. Keep an eye on what we have to say.

Recruitment agencies and recession

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:28:00 +0000

It is a beautiful day - as usual - here in Manchester.

And on a day like this I am sure you, like me, are thinking, 'Hmm, I wonder how the recession affected the use of recruitment agencies by graduates?'

Yes, I knew you were.

This is an area that has interested me for a while - the whole mechanism by which graduates find their first job and, in particular, how networking (that's another post) and recruitment agencies get involved.

It will doubtless come as no surprise to hear I'll be using DLHE, as it asks how graduates found their current job, it is ideal for the purpose.

So, to data.

The four commonest methods for graduates to find their first job are outlined above. As the recession took hold, the proportion finding work from existing employers rose sharply, and those getting work through agencies fell.

Now, obviously this was not a uniform fall. In fact, some parts of the country were more affected than others.

This shows the number of employed graduates (working after six months) in each region known to have found their job through a recruitment agency in each year.

Apologies to readers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - in fact with the exception of Scotland (modest fall), the already-low numbers didn't budge much, and Scotland had the lowest rate of use of recruitment agencies anyway. With the exception of the NE of England, which had an unusually low use of agencies, they are much more widely used in England. So we focus on them because there is more to see.

So, there is regional fluctuation and a pretty significant fall in the use of agencies in London and the South East.

So, which sectors were most affected?

Glad you asked.

This looks at the biggest falling industrial sectors by number. No point looking at a 100% fall in a sector where 8 graduates used agencies. At least 200 graduates got a job in each of the sectors through a recruitment agency in 2009.

Now, we know the recession has been a rotten time for the construction in general, and so it seems for agencies. Financial services, and insurance and related sectors also suffered very badly. But on the quiet, it also got a lot harder to get a job in publishing and advertising using agencies. And also in the public sector.

And bear in mind that not only is this a very important method for graduates to find work, but it is often the most important method for graduates who don't already have contacts in an industry to get into it. So one thing this could be showing is how much harder it became to get into some of these industries without a pre-existing contact as a result of the recession.

There is obviously a lot of extra work that could be done on ideas like this, but the recession is not just going to change the number of people who got jobs. It also affected - and will affect - the way they got them.

We will have to think hard about the details of the advice we give to students and graduates. And if anyone has any insight into how the role of recruitment agencies is changing then I'd be very interested to hear them. After all, this is one of the most important ways that graduates find work.

Graduate earnings

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:21:00 +0000

Apologies for the inadvertent once-a-month posting schedule. And I wonder where the readers have gone.

Anyway, two stories on graduate salaries out this morning. The first is this analysis by Incomes Data Services, finding that graduate starting salaries are likely to be static again this year.

The average starting salary quoted by IDS of £25,166, tells us that their sample is very blue-chip and probably London- and finance- focused, but the basic point is that the market remains tight for employers and, hence, graduates and will probably remain so for a little while.

IDS also mention that employers are looking to recruit more than they did last year - in line with AGR predictions, and also makes the unsurprising point that public sector recruitment looks set for a reduction.

Meanwhile, this analysis by the ONS is interesting. The ONS have analysed earnings data across the population (aged 22 to 64) between 2000 and 2010 and have concluded that degree holders, on average, earned £12,000 a year more than those without a degree.

To quote:
Earnings are similar for those aged 22 at around £15,000, regardless of whether they have a degree or not

For those without a degree, earnings increased for each year of age, levelling off at the age of 30 and peaking at the age of 34 at £19,400

For those with a degree, earnings increased faster for each year of age. They also increased for longer, levelling off at the age of 35 and peaking at £34,500 at the age of 51. After this point average wages decreased as it is more likely that the high earners were able to retire and leave the labour market

Some other interesting points:

graduates aged 22 to 64 had median salaries of £29,900 compared with £17,800 for non-degree holders. I would guess people would think median salaries were rather higher than that.
For women without a degree earnings levelled off at the age of 31, with earnings for women with a degree levelling off around the age of 33
For men without a degree earnings levelled off at the age of 34, with earnings for men with a degree levelling off around the age of 39. ("Bother", says 40 year old labour market analyst)
Highest salaries for both graduates and non-graduates were in banking and finance, with the graduates averaging £37,300 and the non-graduates £20,300

An interesting insight into the labour market and a useful demonstration that the benefits of a degree take some time to fully realise.

Letter in the Times Higher today

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 09:23:00 +0000

We have this letter in today's THES, regarding the need for contextualisation in the interpretation of data. For reasons of space, it was cut down, and so here's the full text for anyone interested.

Christine Buccella’s piece of the 24^th February (‘The pursuit of hire education’) was a timely and lucid reminder to the sector that students have a wealth of information and resources available to them as they make their university choices – and that not all of it may be to the liking of individual institutions.

It was good to see data from the diverse sources available, particularly to HESA’s Destination of Leavers of Higher Education (DLHE) survey of graduates six months after leaving university, a much under-rated piece of work that the sector is sometimes guilty of taking for granted. But whilst showcasing the utility and breadth of the data coverage, Buccella also inadvertently showcases the pitfalls of failing to adequately explain or contextualise data.

So , when she mentions, for example, that “six months after graduation, salaries for Southampton graduates averaged £23,160 compared with £21,220 for those from Manchester”, she fails to point out that Southampton and Manchester are two very different institutions, with different subject mixes, different student bodies and, crucially, different local labour markets; as many graduates choose to start their careers close to their institution of study (information which can also been gleaned from the DLHE) this data could well merely be highlighting the difference between average salaries in the south east of England and those in the north west – and not mentioning anything about the relative cost of living and hence disposable incomes. So, it is not actually clear what these figure actually tell us. Do they tell us that Southampton is a ‘better’ university than Manchester? No. Is that the impression that the author wishes to give? I doubt it.

There are other examples in the points made; the statistic about landscape design graduates fails to mention that it is half of employed landscape design graduates that went on to get a job in architecture (mainly landscape architecture, in fact), but that fewer than 60% of all graduates in the discipline were in work six months after graduation because the labour market for these graduates suffered badly as a result of the recession and they have an unemployment rate over 13% six months after graduation.

Good but complex information goes hand in hand with good guidance to help contextualise it. Online information resources for prospective students, such as that provided by our own site, Prospects.ac.uk, ‘What Do Graduates Do?’, HESA’s information provision and Buccella’s own site are extremely helpful to those seeking to enter higher education, but it is vital that we are precise about data and clear about context as it is easy to mislead students and advisors who may not be familiar with the caveats and clauses that are necessary to make sure the information is as useful as it can be.

Buccella is absolutely right to warn the sector that in a much more competitive, information-rich marketplace, one way that institutions will be judged, whether they like it or not, is on the financial returns they are judged to deliver for the investment a student puts in. Standing still is not an option. The challenge is to provide young people with the best tools and information we can muster so that their choices are as informed as they can be.

AGR survey gives cause for optimism

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:03:00 +0000

Onto the Association of Graduate Recruiters survey only a week late. Well, we can’t all run rolling news services.

The AGR Winter Survey, conducted by those excellent people at the Centre for Enterprise, came out last week. This is, of course, one of the key guides to graduate employment every year and, with the graduate job market still not as strong as anyone would like, this is a timely and useful piece of research.

The bulk of the coverage has been about the rise in jobs – AGR members recruited 8.9% more graduates in the 2009/10 recruitment round than in the previous year, the first increase since the recession began.

To compare, High Fliers report employers as expecting a 9.4% increase in vacancies this year, but whilst the AGR covers similar organisations, their survey sample is much larger – 222 employers replied to the AGR survey as opposed to High Fliers’ sample of 100.

It’s also worth noting that in the summer, AGR employers expected vacancies to fall by 6.9%, so recruitment went better than employers expected this autumn. This is more evidence that many of the graduates reported as 'unemployed' on graduation by the ONS last week will have found work by the time the destination survey took place in January - and some will be working in the jobs covered by the survey.

Most (92.8%) of respondent to the survey employ over 250 staff, and they are also disproportionately in London, in the private sector, and in the law, engineering and finance sectors. So, as with the High Fliers survey, this does not provide a complete reflection of the entirety of the job market, but is a very good guide to the highly sought-after blue-chip jobs that many graduates aspire to.

So, with the caveats out of the way, what else does the survey tell us?

Consulting and business services, insurance and IT/telecoms are all expecting large rises in numbers of vacancies, with law, construction, investment banking and accountancy anticipating falls in numbers. Public sector employers also see vacancies falling, but only by 2.4%, which is encouraging.

When asking why they were increasing vacancies this year, employers stated that they expected their business to grow this year and that they were putting more of a strategic focus on graduate recruitment as the two main reasons – with the third being the fact that their business had grown already.

Much the most important reason for reducing vacancy numbers was because of the current economic climate; there is little evidence of employers turning away from graduate recruitment as a business strategy.

One interesting finding is that graduates seem to be hedging their bets more; employers think their biggest challenge this year will be graduates applying for multiple jobs at different organisations and so dropping out of job offers. Employers are also concerned about the way graduates perceive their sector (I suspect this will apply to some more than others) – these are areas where careers services may be able to help employers by making sure students are well informed about their options.

The Survey also looks at two hot topics – the role of school-leaver entry programmes (most employers don’t have one and most who don’t, don’t intend to introduce one this year) and the impact of the Browne Review. This last is interesting, as employers think that the two main effects will be graduates expecting higher starting salaries, and that there will be fewer graduates from lower socio-economic backgrounds in future. As a result, employers are considering closer links with HE institutions and to start to engage students earlier in their studies.

Finally, as expected, the overall average starting salary at AGR members is expected to remain static this year.

There is a great deal more information in the survey, but what it demonstrates is that employers expect a slightly better recruitment market this year, that there will be more jobs available for graduates and that employers see an important role for institutions in recruitment in the future. It’s not full recovery in the jobs market, by any means, but it is more optimistic.

Storyboarding - An innovative technique to support the career development of researchers

noreply@blogger.com (Holly) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:30:00 +0000

The International Centre for Guidance Studies (iCeGS) at the University of Derby is currently piloting a new guidance technique called storyboarding. Designed by Bill Law, 3 Scene Storyboarding is a narrative technique which enables clients to reflect on the 'before, during and after' moments of a particular turning point in their life. Such reflection promotes greater self-awareness and ultimately helps clients to clarify their career goals.

Funded by Vitae, the iCeGS project is examining how this technique can help doctoral researchers and research staff to plan their career development. The project began in November 2010 when iCeGS invited careers professionals to learn more about the techqniue by attending a workshop. The careers advisers who participated in the workshop are now in the process of piloting the technique with their own clients and feedback from the pilots will be used to explore how storyboarding might be used with research staff in the future.

If you are interested in finding out more about the project, please email Kieran Bentley k.bentley@derby.ac.uk or visit the project website at www.derby.ac.uk/icegs/research/vitae-storyboarding-project.

Graduate unemployment 'doubles'

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:33:00 +0000

The ONS have just released an analysis of graduate unemployment, based on the Labour Force Survey that concludes that 20% of graduates from 2010 were seeking work in Q3 2010.

There's also a podcast available.

There are a number of things that need to be borne in mind about this analysis.

Firstly, the ONS actually looked at everyone with Level 4 qualifications, which is everyone from HNC up. You would expect this unemployment rate to be higher than that for first degree graduates alone. And it only examines 21-24 years olds, and does not include mature students.

Secondly, it comes from Q3 2010. This is immediately after graduation (in fact, it includes July so covers the period around graduation - for part of the quarter some of those counted as 'graduates' hadn't even left university yet). So another way of looking at the data would be to say that last summer, even with all the doomy predictions about the prospects for graduates, 80% of them had already arranged something for when they left university. When viewed in that light, things look rather less difficult.

Thirdly, this is not comparable with HESA's Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) data directly. The Labour Force Survey looks at the whole economy and not graduates specifically, and so is not necessarily going to be as accurate as a survey that looks specifically at graduates. DLHE also, obviously, take place after six months. If you refer to the graph the ONS have provided, you can see that in summer 2009, unemployment for graduates was not a very great deal lower than for 2010. Yet six months after graduating, the graduate unemployment rate was 8.9%. This tells us that between the LFS reference of Q3 (ie September) and the DLHE reference, many - probably most - graduates unemployed in the summer of 2009 found employment in the autumn. And we expect that to have happened for 2010's graduates when we get the DLHE data later in 2011.

Finally, the ONS also confirms that those without degree fared far worse than those with degrees.

What, in the end, does this tell us? The job market remains challenging for graduates, but that taking all the data sources, many, if not most, new graduates unemployed in the summer, will have found work in the autumn. We need to give the best support we can to help students have something lined up for when they graduate, and to help those that are out of work to compete for the jobs that are available.

And now is not a great time to be young, out of work and with low qualification levels.