The Graduate Labour MarketHelen Smith – Head of Careers, Employability and Employer

Engagement

Themes

• Graduate destinations

• Skills shortages and careers of the future

• How do we prepare our students?

• Careers guidance

• Work experience

• Developing skills and attributes

Graduate outcomes - UK

• Graduates are doing fine

• Most are getting good jobs

• Graduate salaries are rising

• Increasing demand for ‘high level’ skills

2014/15

What do Loughborough graduates do?

• 94.5% in employment or further study (2014/15 1st degree graduates)

• 91% in graduate-level employment (of 2014/15 1st degree graduates in full-time employment)

• Average salary £25,000 (of those in full-time, graduate-level employment)

• Reputation for placements and work experience

• Positive skills, behaviours and attributes

Loughborough

Graduate Attributes

resilient, reflective and inquisitive

active, collegial and inclusive

professional, creative and enterprising

Skills shortages - now

• In 2015 UK employers identified 209,000 skill shortage vacancies

• Skills related to operational aspects of the role, as well as complex analytical skills, were the main technical and practical skills lacking

• The main people and personal skills lacking pertained to

– time management

– management and leadership

– sales and customer skills.

• Changing demographic, and loss of retirees and their skills

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukces-employer-skills-survey-2015-uk-report

The hardest graduate vacancies to fill

• Quantity surveyors (77% vacancies Hard to Fill)

• Mechanical engineers (72%)

• Vets (64%)

• Nurses (58%)

• R&D managers (57%)

• Programmers/software developers (56%)

• Financial/accounting technicians (54%)

• Estimators, valuers, assessors (52%)

• Engineering technicians (51%)

• Civil engineers (50%)

• Design/development engineers (49%)UKCES Employer Skills survey 2015

How is the employment market changing?

• Latest CBI annual survey – increasing skills gap – 69% of the 500 employers

surveyed were concerned about not being able to recruit enough high-skilled

employees (55% last year)

• Sector skills gaps – and the value of subjects like sciences and engineering; but also creativity

• Leicestershire LEP Skills for the Future survey (2016) – confirmed largest forecast occupation increases in:

– Science, Research, Engineering and Technical Professionals

– Health and Social Care Professionals

• Cross-sector demand for enterprise skills and commercial acumen

The Future of Jobs – World Economic Forum – Jan 2016

• Focus on changing skills needs from 2015 - 2020

• The fourth industrial revolution – disruptive change to existing business

models – profound impact on the employment landscape

• In many industries and countries, the most in-demand occupations or

specialties did not exist 10 or even 5 years ago, and the pace of change is

set to accelerate

• By one popular estimate, 65% of children entering primary school today will

ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist

Data from a survey of CHROs and other senior talent and strategy executives from 371 leading global employers, across 9 industry sectors in 15 major developed and emerging economies and regional economic areas.

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_FOJ_Executive_Summary_Jobs.pdf

Job families in decline, and on the rise

Source: Future of Jobs report,

World Economic Forum 2016

And what about Brexit?

• Just the latest shock to the labour market

• There will always be jolts and changes

• Some of us have survived several recessions and a constantly

evolving employment landscape

• Global, economic and technological change all has an impact

It’s the pace of change that’s new

• The ‘fourth industrial revolution’ is the fastest yet

• No-one’s quite sure what we’re preparing our students for

• All we really know is that it’s unpredictable, and changing fast

• It’s a changing careers landscape

• With jobs that don’t yet exist!

© Wikipedia

So, how do we equip young people?

• Careers guidance

• Employer engagement and work experience

• Focus on skills

Careers guidance for an uncertain future

Guidance to develop student self-awareness, career awareness, adaptability and creativity - and their ability to reflect, re-focus and cope with change.

The Creative Industry – The career path that has no path Jeremy Garner – October 2016

“One of the most interesting things, I believe, about

embarking on a career in this business is the fact that

however it may appear today, you know that it will be

completely different in ten years’ time.”© 2016 FutureRising Ltd

Good Career Guidance Benchmarks

• A stable careers programme

• Learning from career and labour market information

• Addressing the needs of each pupil

• Linking curriculum learning to careers

• Encounters with employers and employees

• Experiences of workplaces

• Encounters with further and higher education

• Personal guidance

School Careers benchmarks

https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/posts/new-careers-guidance-tool

Employer engagement and work experience

Almost half of the top 100 graduate recruiters ..

repeated their warnings from previous years – that

graduates who have had no previous work

experience at all are unlikely to be successful during

the selection process and have little or no chance of

receiving a job offer for their organisations’ graduate

programmes.High Fliers Research

Employers offering work experience

38%offer work

experience

20% engage

with schools

12% engage

with FE

Yet 66% of employers reported that work experience was “critical” or

“significant” in what they look for when recruiting. (2014 UKCES Employer Perspectives report)

STEM

CBI Pearson Education & Skills Survey

• 2016 survey of 500 UK businesses http://www.cbi.org.uk/cbi-prod/assets/File/pdf/cbi-

education-and-skills-survey2016.pdf

• By far the most important when recruiting school, college and

university leavers:

– Attitude to work (89%)

– Aptitude for work (66%)

• Far above formal qualifications or which university they attended

• Must demonstrate being ‘rounded and grounded’

What generic skills will be important?

• Digital and data

• Resilience

• Adaptability

• Collaboration

• Enterprise and intra-preneurialism

• Creativity

• Self-awareness

Loughborough

Graduate Attributes

resilient, reflective and inquisitive

active, collegial and inclusive

professional, creative and enterprising

Making the implicit explicit

• AGR survey of graduate recruiters – only 29% of graduate intake

judged to be self-aware (AGR 2016 Development survey of 172 companies)

• Preparing students for their future, flexible careers

• Making implicit skills development more explicit – talking about skills

and attributes, all the time!

• Encourage self-awareness – skills self-assessments

The value of extra-curricular

• Volunteering, work experience, sports, clubs

and societies, family and friends

• It’s not just about having qualifications on a

CV – it really is about gaining skills,

networking and learning new things both

inside and outside the classroom

• Employers are looking for competencies

(skills) and ‘strengths’ (behaviours) AGR 2016 employer survey response

Introducing Generation Z

• Gen Z: defined as those born between 1995 and 2001

• Growing up on decidedly shaky economic ground - seems to have nurtured a distinctly entrepreneurial spirit

Chloe Combi, a former school teacher and consultant on youth issues for the Mayor of London, interviewed 2000 teenagers and young adults for her new book, Generation Z

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhntR9LwfME

– a presentation at Google’s London office

Generation Zs will change their world

Unlike the rather more entitled Generation Y, Gen Z

seem to have an innate pessimism – “there are no

jobs and everything is getting worse,” makes some

feel that hard work is a mugs game, but for others

this has been channelled into a pragmatic

acceptance that they’re going to have to create

opportunities for themselves. “They have an

instinctive understanding of technology, which the

brightest among them are applying to the big issues

of our times: healthcare, energy, education,” Combi

says. “These kids will create new jobs and industry.”

Any questions?