A Good Guide to Graduate Jobs….

There is no shortage of graduate employer guides aimed at students and recent graduates and designed to introduce them to opportunities across sectors and interests. While The TimesTop 100 Graduate Employers is the best known, there was an interesting addition to this field last month with the Financial Times ‘Graduate Recruitment’ Special Report. This was followed, four weeks later, by another FT Special Report, this time entitled ‘Best Workplaces’.

So what can eager and talented Oxbridge students learn from these guides in terms of the companies, sectors and opportunities available to them?

The best known guides....

Let’s start with the best known. The ‘Top 100’ is a list an annual ranking of public and private organizations, based on a survey by High Fliers Research. They asked 17,000 final-year university students which employer they thought offered the best opportunities for graduates.

For Oxbridge students it can represent the worst of both worlds, with too much emphasis on generic brands (McDonald’s, at 79, anyone?) and too little emphasis on various on the prestigious city firms who spend vast sums each year to target the best graduates.

Students want to know their options!

Fundamentally, bright and ambitious students want to know their options. The nature of a ‘Top 100’ means that it crowds out hundreds of small and medium recruiters, each with their own niche or area of expertise, that thrive on the ideas and energy of Oxbridge graduates. Small and medium sized employers do not have the scale in the graduate recruitment market, so they do not get their say in guides that are designed to tell students about challenging careers and good working environments. And yet it is the same small and medium sized firms that specialize in interesting niches and in providing an inviting workplace. Reading the ‘Top 100’ tells you nothing about the options available, and nothing about the 500 other firms mentioned in the survey but who didn’t make the list.

The ‘Top 100’ is fundamentally aimed at the wider graduate market across the UK and considers factors that apply across educational achievement. It’s like when Facebook went from being just for the top universities to all schools, and then to everyone. Yes it loses prestige, but more importantly it is sacrificing some of its usefulness for those who have become accustomed to an exclusive community of high achievers.

Analysing the FT Special Reports....

So, do the FT Special Reports improve on this?

‘Graduate Recruitment’ mixes articles and analysis with a series of rankings of top firms, primarily intended as an overview of the market. Its approach can be summarized by the first line: “What makes students choose one employer over another?” The data was prepared by the Trendence Institute, a research firm, and is a survey of nearly 15,000 students in the second half of their studies at 80 UK universities. The purpose is to uncover students’ own perceptions of graduate employers. While this is bound to reveal some real variations between career options, primarily it uncovers how effectively the big firms have spent their marketing budgets.

The approach is well summarized by Carl Gilleard, Chief Executive of the Associate of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), who is quoted: “Maybe a lot of graduates are bright, but a bit clueless”. He also speculates that there are a set of ‘fads’ in the list. While this maybe true, the obvious question must be, ‘why’? Students exploring their career options are left with lists and rankings of the largest firms, with information dominated by firms’ ability to spend. How are graduates expected to know their options?

The first article, putting Apple and the BBC on top (no mention of the difficulties in applying here!), also refers to PwC, Google, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, MI5, the NHS, the FCO and the Civil Service. The Report claims that this is a ‘diverse mix’ of the potential options for students. More accurately, it is a list of large organizations who have high profiles in relatively diverse sectors. It’s hardly surprising that familiarity with the BBC is at 98.4%, but what does this tell us about options for Oxbridge students?

Top Oxbridge employers

What distinguishes this supplement is its detailed look at the top universities and in particular the perceptions for Oxbridge candidates in particular. Even in the Oxbridge top-employer list, MI5, Google and the BBC make up the top three. Also making the list are McKinsey (5), Morgan Stanley (7), Penguin (9) and GlaxoSmtihKlein (10). Again, the analysis tells its own story, arguing that the top students, with higher salary expectations, still “are not entirely sure what they want to do”.

Oliver Viel, who helped to produce the research, is quoted:

“In the UK, you can stud history then go and work in an investment bank. But even then, you really don’t have to decide about your whole future at once.”

This is quite true. But a corollary of this is that many graduates who enter a mainstream grad scheme were not fully aware of their options before they applied.

Other findings....

What else does the report tell us? There is some interesting analysis that indicates that the popularity of investment banking has waned as perceptions of volatility and reduced bonuses have hit home. There is also an apparent correlation between the success of banks in the current climate and their popularity among prospective candidates. There is also a sector breakdown by IT and telecoms (IBN, Intel and Cisco) and engineering (Rolls-Royce, BAE, Airbus and Shell). The top engineering consultancy in the latter list is Atkins.

However, in many places, we do not learn not very much. For example, students interested in a career in accountancy, (unsurprisingly) put PwC, Deloitte, KMPG and Ernst & Young at the top of the ‘employer rankings’. Accenture and McKinsey top the management consulting table (although BCG also make an appearance). While some might find this a useful point of comparison, it is hardly new information for those aware of the market.

What can we really deduce?

What can we really deduce from these lists? Trying to rigidly classify firms by sector often misses the point. Students interests, passions and experiences will lend them towards the characteristics of different sectors at the same time. Students might be looking for firms that best cross divides. For example, can I do a good finance job without the hours? Can I find a job that meets my niche but still pays good money? The canniest students want to make decisions across these margins, and graduate recruitment guides do not allow for this.

Furthermore, how are candidates expected to find out what varied projects and sectors a consulting firm operates in? For example, McKinsey’s recent high-profile projects have included assessing carbon-dioxide emissions arising from data centres, or approaches to stimulate private investment in African healthcare. Graduates can take part in interesting work, but at the same time they should be aware that there are various small firms who specialize in these areas.

The ‘Best Workplaces’ Special Report is based on research conducted by the Great Places to Work Institute and supported by the European Commission. The approach is to evaluate participating employees on the basis of an employee survey (the Trust Index) and a management survey (the Culture Audit). Google also does well on this list.

This guide can potentially tell graduates more than the earlier one. While it is not aimed at the graduate recruitment market, it can provide an informative part of research into graduate careers. One interesting angle is its table of the 50 best small and medium sized workplaces. This might be Europe-wide, and so not directly relevant for many Oxbridge graduates, it is a recognition of how focusing on the largest firms can be limiting for many people.

While the FT guides are a little more informative than other equivalent guides, they are essentially part of the ‘graduate recruitment establishment’. In the earlier Report, one recruiter is singled out for its campaign giving away 12,000 DVDs and 18,000 bags of popcorn. Surveys that focus on the top end cannot identify problems and negative aspects of firms. What if you don’t want to work past 8pm every night? Is there a particular working culture I should be aware of? This information is scarcely available to candidates.

The AGR argue that there is currently an upswing in ‘face-to-face’ recruiting, with disillusioned students tiring of faceless recruitment processes. However, so long as only limited options are presented and information is restricted, recruitment will remain broad-brush. This is reflected in all graduate recruitment guides (not just the ‘Top 100’). Students really benefit from striking up personal recruitment relationships with firms through targeted research of all available options, big or small, and active communication. Luckily, this is exactly what beyondoxbridge offers…

Links:
http://www.ft.com
http://www.top100graduateemployers.com
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10339384
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11412495