Exploring the new graduate labour market

1. Exploring the new graduate labour market A presentation to the Graduate Labour Market Forum, 15th December 2003, Westminster, London Kate Purcell, University of the West of England, Peter Elias, University of Warwick and Nick Wilton, University of the West of England

2. Structure of the presentation: • a brief outline of the development and validation of SOC(HE); • an exploration of labour market experiences of 1995 graduates Seven Years On using SOC(HE); • a comparison of the characteristics of those in different SOC(HE) categories, using data from both the survey and follow-up interviews – to investigate the extent to which graduates in the sample were using their HE skills and knowledge. Slide 3

3. The nature of occupational change • Scientific/technological development • Growth of disposable income • Organisational change The ‘knowledge society’ or graduate under-employment? Slide 4

4. Measuring occupational change in relation to higher education • Our approach • Examine occupational structure at the most detailed statistical level (300-400 unit groups) • Problems: • ‘Tautological definition’ – must distinguish between unit groups which become populated by HE leavers because of overcrowding and changes in the nature of work • Need to convert/recode data at the most detailed level to overcome problems of revisions to classifications Slide 6

5. SOC(HE) : a new typology of occupations • Traditional graduate occupations • Modern graduate occupations • New graduate occupations • Niche graduate occupations • Non-graduate occupations Slide 8

6. Traditional graduate occupations The established professions, for which, historically, the normal route has been via an undergraduate degree programme • Solicitors and barristers • Medical practitioners • HE, FE and secondary education teachers • Biological scientists/biochemists • Management consultants, actuaries, economists and • statisticians In 2001 – 2003 we observe >60% of graduates in 21-35 and 45-54 age groups Slide 9

7. Modern graduate occupations The newer professions, particularly in management, IT and creative vocational areas, which graduates have been entering increasingly since educational expansion in the 1960s • IT consultants • Authors/writers/journalists • Software and design engineers • Primary school teachers • Social workers Not Traditional and in 2001 – 2003 we observe >40% of graduates in 21-35 and 45-54 age groups Slide 10

8. New graduate occupations Areas of employment to which graduates have increasingly been recruited in large numbers; mainly administrative, design, technical and ‘caring’ occupations • Marketing & sales managers • Physiotherapists, occupational therapists • Accountants, finance managers • HR Managers • Product, project & development managers • Project engineers Not Traditional or Modern but in 2001 – 2003 we observe >25% of graduates in 21-35 age group and this % is >10% points higher than 45-54 age group Slide 11

9. Niche graduate occupations Occupations where the majority of incumbents are not graduates, but within which there are stable or growing specialist niches which require higher education skills and knowledge • Civil Service executive officers • Graphic designers • Hotel, entertainment and sports managers • Retail managers • Medical, dental and other scientific technicians • Nurses Not Traditional, Modern or New, but a significant proportion of degree holders in both 21-35 and 45-54 age groups, and we are aware of areas of employment in this unit group which are graduate entry Slide 12

10. Non-graduate occupations Graduates are also found in jobs which are likely to constitute under-utilisation of their higher education skills and knowledge • Call centre operators (16% of 21-35 year olds have degree) • Sales assistants (15% of 21-35 year olds have degree) • Filing and record clerks (21% of 21-35 year olds have degree) • Debt, rent and cash collectors (2%of 21-35 year olds have degree) • Routine laboratory testers (36%of 21-35 year olds have degree) (Non-graduate includes all remaining unit groups) Slide 13

11. Slide 19

12. Occupational structure of the UK labour force, 2001 - 2003

13. The Seven Years On research • Longitudinal survey of 50% of 1995 graduates from 38 UK Higher Education Institutions, including full work histories • 3.5 years after graduation, in 1998/99 • 7 years after graduation, in 2002/3 • Programme of telephone and face to face interviews with 200 second sweep respondents Evidence from the 1995 graduate cohort study validates SOC(HE)…. Slide 14

14. The movement of 1995 graduates into the labour market, 1995 - 2003

15. Occupational history of 1995 graduates (SOC2000 version of HE occupational classification)

17. Degree required for job held in 2002/03, by gender and type of occupation Slide 15

18. Percentage of respondents stating that their current (2002/03) job is a 'dead-end' job, by type of occupation and gender Slide 18

19. Graduates employed in traditional graduate occupations

20. Graduates in niche graduate occupations

21. Graduates working in non-graduate occupations

22. Skills used 'a lot' by 1995 graduates in current job at time of 2002/3 survey

23. Use of ‘organisational’ skills in current job, by SOC(HE) category

24. Proportion of 1995 graduates who spend most of their time supervising the work of others, by SOC(HE) category

25. Those in New and Niche Graduate Occupations are.. More likely • to work in the private sector & in a large organisation • to be using entrepreneurial skills, management skills and leadership skills • to supervise the work of others Less likely • to have done a postgraduate degree New graduate jobs were mostly done in male-dominated contexts/ niche graduate jobs in female-dominated contexts, and those employed full time in New graduate jobs were more likely than those in other categories to earn £40K+) BUT what do these graduates DO? And does it differ from the work that those in traditional and modern graduate jobs do?

26. We identified three ‘clusters’ of intrinsic skills in graduate occupations….. • Expertise • Strategic skills • ‘Emotional labour’ skills

27. Expertise • specific, specialist technical knowledge and skills that are essential/central to the undertaking of a job. This expertise is most often acquired on vocational degree courses, sometimes followed by postgraduate study or professional training and accreditation. Jobs positioned at the expert extreme are typically roles with a high level of emphasis on technical analysis, problem diagnosis and solution.

28. Strategic skills • the generic skills set required to plan, co-ordinate and administer processes and (usually) people. For example, most senior management jobs require elements of substantive expertise and interpersonal skills but at core, their successful performance relies on vision, capacity to evaluate risks and opportunities and take effective strategic decisions.

29. ‘Emotional labour skills’ • a high level of emotional intelligence and the involve a substantial emotional labour component (Hochschild 1983) – the ability to manage one's own or other people's emotions in carrying out the work objectives. Examples of jobs that require ‘hard’ interpersonal skills include negotiation, selling and persuasion. ‘Soft’ Interpersonal skills are associated with caring, counselling and welfare provision. Liaison skills require both elements.

30. Interview Sample (189 cases) - Mean skills scores by SOC(HE)

31. New Graduate Job – University Marketing Officer (female age 30 graduated in hospitality management from new university, £18-30K ‘If I am in the office, …, I am juggling a lot of things. It could involve liasing with the designer over the latest piece of publicity material, or liasing with the person who is providing content for that. . . I might be proof reading, or checking documentation. I would probably go to a meeting to discuss the various projects, or keep people updated generally on what I am doing. I am the only person that deals with marketing in the faculty. I spend a lot of time telling other people what I’ve been up to, or they are instructing me what the next policy things are going to be which we are going to have to meet. So meetings. Answering enquiries, maybe feeding stories through to the press…very, very varied. If I am not [in the office], then I might be at an event, in which case I am travelling to a venue, setting up the stands and then spending the next day, 5 hours, talking to students or potential students [about our courses, entry requirements, facilities,etc] and then packing up and coming home.’

32. New Graduate Job – Sales & Marketing Executive for a ICT manufacturer (female graduate in medical instrumentation & computing,new university, £24-27K) Respondent: ‘We deal with people all around the world so first thing in the morning there are e-mails from people in America or people in Singapore or whatever [from] people who are my accounts asking for information or quotes - or they’re people who are doing an evaluation and are asking questions: “How do you do this or that, how much does it cost?” ……. I also tend to co-ordinate a lot of things because …. the team that I’m in, we have a business development manager, a technical manager and then a technical engineer as well, and I tend to work between them keeping everything going and making sure the customers are all up to date on what’s going on, so there’s a lot of liasing. Then I might be on site visiting customers; doing a training course. I went to America last year to visit one of my customers and did a couple of days workshop/presentation on the new release of the software .. so a day isn’t that typical!’ Interviewer: ‘ It sounds [as if there is]…a significant technical element, even though you’re not necessarily involved in the software development directly, that you have a … kind of support role…’ Respondent: ‘Yeah I think we all do, everyone in the company because the products that we’re selling are very technical and very specialist so the people that we’re talking to are technical people - so we have to be able to converse at that level, so I think everybody has a technical background.

33. New graduate Job: Regional Sales Manager for Brewery ( Male, aged 29, with Psychology degree from new university, £36-40k) ‘Every day is different. I would say that I work from home at least one day a week. I would probably be in a meeting one day a week and the other three days I would be out in trade with my sales team…[at the moment he manages nine people]. That’s quite motivating to see people start off very raw, very inexperienced, and to train them and develop them to be competent, to perform in the role and then take them forward again, to move them on with the business. That, in itself, is rewarding. And also the challenge of achieving results’.

34. Niche Graduate Job: Technical Manager for food manufacturing company(female aged 28 with degree in food science/microbiology from 1960s university, £50-60K) “I get up around 6 o’clock, earlier if I’m doing a hygiene audit [when] you have to be on the site for 5 o’clock in the morning. But typical day: get up at 6 o’clock, probably leave the house just before 7 and arrive at work at 7.30…plug the laptop in, read the e-mails, delegate it, delete it, whatever. We have a management meeting at 8.30 every day where we go through key issues for the day and that generally takes around half an hour. Then the next couple of hours is spent dealing with whatever immediate issues are going on in the factory; there might be quality problems, issues with temperatures or whatever… So deal with those. Then typically a lot of my day is spent dealing with customer requests, so do that, responses to complaints, dealing with environmental health officers…… A lot of the day could be spent working on various large projects such as, in January, the whole industry is going over to a new packaging format so obviously that’s only just around the corner. …There’s no set structure to the day really, my role is overseeing everything that happens.”.

35. Non-graduate JobUniversity Admin Officer, graduated in Plant & Environmental Biology from old university, female age 29, £18-21K Respondent: ‘What we spend some of the time doing is going out to departments or to other institutions that we validate programmes for and then… so, we go out and monitor them from a quality assurance point of view. There’s a lot of time involved in planning those visits and then the follow-up from those visits, particularly the report writing. So, a typical day you might be spending a lot of time sitting in front of a computer writing a report on a visit that you did a week before but then you might also be going out and having a quick meeting with someone in the department, seeing how things are going or you’ll probably be meeting a couple of people planning future visits. [On a regular basis there is].. a lot of writing, meetings, committee meetings, liasing with staff from the departments, staff in designated institutions... Those sort of things…Checking that departments are maintaining academic standards, I guess is a way of looking at it’.

36. Implications • Traditional and Modern graduate occupations and New and Niche differ, but there are significant overlaps between them; • New graduate occupations mainly encompass new areas of management and administration that involve the need for hybrid skills that range from high to routine – reflecting ‘flat organisations’ and occupational restructuring; • Niche occupations most often involve junior management or specialisms within ‘non graduate’ areas; • The boundaries between graduate and non-graduate employment are changing in many areas of work; • A significant proportion of those in ‘Non-graduate’ jobs are using their skills and knowledge appropriately.