Employer

Reputation
Tracking:
Your Top 10
Questions
Answered
Everything you need to know about tracking your employer
reputation and how it informs the QS World University Rankings

www.qs.com/employerreputation
Contents

Introduction 1

Why is QS the only global rankings body that tracks employer perspectives and ranks for
graduate employability? 2

Why should you care about tracking your employer reputation? 2

What’s involved in the QS Employer Survey and how many people respond? 3

Does the Employer Survey just look at the most recent year? 4

How do these survey results inform my employer reputation and rankings position? 5

Is there a difference between my institution’s domestic and international employer

reputation? How is this calculated? 5

How can I compare my employer reputation to domestic and international competitors? 6

Why do my closest competitors have better employer reputations than my institution? 6

What can institutions do to significantly improve their graduate employability and

employer reputation? 7

Where is this area heading in the future? How is employer reputation tracking evolving? 7

Conclusion 8

About QS 9

II Employer Reputation Tracking: Your Top 10 Questions Answered

Introduction
An institution’s employer reputation is a critical component
of its success.

To compete in this tough global marketplace, higher

education institutions must continually measure, analyze,
and invest in their employer reputation.

To do so, institutions can examine how they perform

in global university rankings, explore the opinions and
perspectives of employers, and utilize technology and
analytics to gain crucial insights.

In this white paper, we’ll delve into the top ten questions
that institutions have when it comes to tracking and
analyzing their employer reputation.

Read on to discover the answers your institution needs

to significantly improve its approach to its employer
reputation.

www.qs.com/employerreputation 1
 Why is QS the only global rankings body
1. that tracks employer perspectives and ranks
for graduate employability?
The QS Employer Reputation indicator is unique amongst current international rankings evaluations as it recognizes
the importance of employability.

The majority of undergraduate students leave university in search of employment after their first degree, making the
reputation of their university amongst employers a crucial consideration.

Nunzio Quacquarelli, founder of QS, believes that universities play an important role in preparing graduates
for today’s global employment market.

“This means that the development of soft skills, like team playing and resilience, become as important as the technical skills and
knowledge acquired during a degree. Employers responding to the QS Global Employer Survey reiterate this message repeatedly.”

“Opportunities for internships, study abroad, extra-curricular activity, and active learning can all contribute to the development
of these skills.”

Why should you care about tracking your

2. employer reputation?
In our recent International Student Survey, we asked prospective international students what graduate outcomes were
most important to them when choosing a university.

Respondents chose a high graduate employment rate (58%), a high rate of students going into their preferred industry
(56%), and how quickly students find employment after graduating (56%).

It’s clear that prospective international students value graduate employability, and they’re already considering their
future career path before they’ve even set foot on campus.

As such, it’s crucial that your institution measures, examines, and proactively improves its employer reputation on an
ongoing basis.

This will allow you to demonstrate clear graduate employability and a strong record of successful employer relationships
to existing and prospective students.

Additionally, employability has a 10% weighting in the QS World University Rankings, and a 20% average weighting
across QS regional rankings. This means that employer reputation has a significant impact on your rankings position.

2 Employer Reputation Tracking: Your Top 10 Questions Answered

 What’s involved in the QS Employer Survey
3. and how many people respond?

The QS Employer Survey is the largest survey of its type, attracting around 45,000 responses for the 2020 edition of
the rankings.

The QS World University Rankings are based on hard data and the results drawn from two large global surveys: one of
academics (the QS Academic Survey) and another of employers (the QS Employer Survey). These are unique characteristics
of the QS ranking approach.

Since 2004, the survey has evolved substantially but it primarily follows the same underlying principles. The survey asks
each respondent to specify their knowledge at the outset and then adapts based on their responses, the interactive
list from which respondents are invited to select features only entries relevant to them.

An approach that many domestic rankings take when assessing employability is the graduate employment rate. There
are two reasons why this indicator doesn’t work at an international level.

The first is that the QS rankings examine the top universities in the world, which all have very high employment rates,
so it doesn’t provide very much discernment.

Secondly, since we’re looking at different countries, the results are dependent on local economic conditions and not
just the quality of the institution.

Therefore, QS chose to survey employers to ask their opinion on the quality of graduates from each institution.

The survey includes the following sections:

Ÿ Personal details: Name, company, email, country/territory.

Ÿ Company characteristics: Industry, organization size, recruitment levels, recruitment extent, and regional experience.

Ÿ Top domestic institutions: Respondents are asked to identify up to 10 domestic institutions they consider best
for recruiting graduates.

Ÿ Top international institutions: Respondents are asked to identify up to 30 international institutions they consider
best for recruiting graduates. The list consists solely of institutions from the region(s) with which they express
familiarity in the second section.

Ÿ Additional information: Respondents are asked to provide feedback on previous publications and the importance
of various measures in evaluating universities.

www.qs.com/employerreputation 3
The responses for the QS Employer Survey come from a variety of sources across the globe. These include previous
respondents, QS databases, and QS partners such as international media organizations and job portals who support
our employer research by sharing survey invitations.

QS also uses supplied lists from institutions; given that employers are encouraged to list a number of institutions, the
risk of bias is minimal. Nonetheless, submissions are screened, and sampling applied where any institution submits
more than 400 records.

Does the Employer Survey just look at the

4. most recent year?
To boost the size and stability of the sample, QS combines responses from the last five years, where any respondent has
responded more than once in the five-year period, previous responses are discarded in favour of the latest numbers.

Previously, the window for reputation measures was three years but this was extended to five years with the oldest two
years carrying a relative weight of 25% and 50% respectively. This decision was made due to the substantial growth of
survey samples over the lifetime of the project, resulting in inherently more robust reputation measures.

Any online survey will receive a volume of test or speculative responses, so QS runs an extensive filtering process to
identify and discard responses of this nature.

QS also runs a number of anomaly testing processes to screen for any manipulation of survey responses. If evidence is
found to suggest any institution has attempted to overtly influence their performance, any responses acquired through
institution-supplied lists are discarded.

4 Employer Reputation Tracking: Your Top 10 Questions Answered

 How do these survey results inform my
5. employer reputation and rankings position?
Once compiled, these survey results are then put through a rigorous process to determine accurate results.

Firstly, weightings are devised based on the regions with which respondents consider themselves familiar (these are
based only on completed responses). This is a complicated process as respondents can relate to more than one region.

Secondly, analysts create a weighted count of international respondents in favour of each institution, ensuring any
self-references are excluded.

They then derive a count of domestic respondents in favour of each institution, adjusted against the number of institutions
available for selection in that country and the total response from that country, ensuring any self-references are excluded.

A straight scaling is then applied to each of these to achieve a score out of 100. Combine the two scores with an equal
weighting of 50% for each of them.

Our analysts then square root the result. This allows us to draw in the outliers, but to a lesser degree than other methods
might achieve. They then scale the rooted score to present a score out of 100.

After these numbers are all crunched, the employer reputation score an institution gets carries a weighting of 10% in
the QS World University Rankings.

Is there a difference between my

6. institution’s domestic and international
employer reputation? How is this
calculated?
As mentioned above, equal weighting is given to your institution's international employer reputation and its domestic
employer reputation.

Comparatively, in the QS Academic Survey, the responses from international academics carry a weighting of 85% and
the responses from domestic academics carry a weighting of 15%.

To break down your employer reputation data, you can use an analytics tool, such as the QS Employer Reputation
Tracker, to better understand your results and the insights they reveal.

www.qs.com/employerreputation 5
 How can I compare my employer reputation
7. to domestic and international competitors?
You can also leverage the QS Employer Reputation Tracker to track the results of your key competitors.

The tracker dataset pulls exclusive data from the QS Employer Survey, allowing you to compare your performance
against a maximum of 15 selected peers.

To better understand the data provided, you can create your own visualizations with the support of our analysts or
through our user-friendly dashboards.

You can also filter responses provided about your institution by country of origin, subject, industry, or job title.

This provides you with a more granular analysis of how your institution is perceived.

To find out more about how your institution can make the most of the QS Employer Reputation Tracker, contact us
today: https://www.qs.com/employerreputation.

Why do my closest competitors have better

8. employer reputations than my institution?
This could be due to a multitude of factors, review the criteria and details shared in this white paper and identify areas
that your institution could work on this year.

The QS Employer Reputation Tracker can help your institution to:

Ÿ Analyze how its closest competitors are faring

Ÿ Explore how your employer reputation compares to institutional peers across a range of factors

Ÿ Identify a strategic plan for improvement

6 Employer Reputation Tracking: Your Top 10 Questions Answered

 What can institutions do to significantly
9. improve their graduate employability and
employer reputation?
Many institutions have been implementing significant changes to improve their career support services and the
opportunities they can offer students.

Work placements and internships are now commonly offered to students to provide them with practical experience
and industry connections.

Institutions are increasingly engaging with businesses and nurturing relationships with employers, facilitating both work
experience placements and potential job opportunities.

Moving forward, it’s important to consider how many hours of career advice your students are receiving, how many
students leverage opportunities for industry-specific work experience, and how your employer relationships are nurtured
and maintained.

Where is this area heading in the future?

10. How is employer reputation tracking
evolving?
Examining and exploring your institution’s employer reputation is an ongoing exercise that empowers your institution
to better serve its students and deliver the graduate outcomes they need.

Ben Sowter, QS Director of Research, had a few final words to share on employer reputation tracking and the
future of this space:

“The vast majority of students come to a university as an investment in their future. In many parts of the world, the ante, in terms
of fees, has risen dramatically in recent years. International students are trying to get one step ahead by adding a distinctive
international experience on their record to set themselves apart - along with the opportunity to secure the associative brand
of a recognized university in multiple markets.”

“While the individual must win any opportunity, it can often be the name recall of an elite university that helps put the opportunity
in front of them in the first place. This is no longer ironclad; however, historically sought-after universities are being challenged on
the preparedness of their graduates, and younger, more agile, more customer-centric institutions have emerged as challengers.
Any organization that fails to take the principal concern of its student stakeholders seriously (in this case, employer reputation)
will founder. To address this, QS undertakes the world's largest survey of employers gathering almost 50,000 distinct opinion
profiles over five years.”

www.qs.com/employerreputation 7
Conclusion
Employer reputation is a crucial component of any
institution’s ecosystem.

With prospective students becoming increasingly invested

in graduate employability and graduate outcomes, your
institution’s employer reputation is more important than
ever before.

As such, it should be treated as a strategic investment, one

which requires long-term planning, resources, and funding.

To ensure your institution nurtures and develops its

employer reputation, it must prioritize and invest in the
examination and analysis of the data that shapes it.

To find out more about the QS Employer Reputation

Tracker and how it can transform your institution, get in
touch with our expert term today:

https://www.qs.com/employerreputation.

8 Employer Reputation Tracking: Your Top 10 Questions Answered

About QS

QS Quacquarelli Symonds is the world’s leading provider of services, analytics, and insight to the global higher education
sector, whose mission is to enable motivated people anywhere in the world to fulfil their potential through educational
achievement, international mobility, and career development.

The QS World University Rankings portfolio, inaugurated in 2004, has grown to become the world’s most popular source
of comparative data about university performance. Their flagship website, www.TopUniversities.com – the home of
their rankings – was viewed 149 million times in 2019, and over 94,000 media clippings pertaining to, or mentioning,
QS were published by media outlets across the world in 2019.

Beyond QS’s publication of the world’s market-leading university rankings portfolio, QS also compile the QS International
Student Survey – the world’s largest survey of the sentiments, motivations, and preferences of prospective international
students. Their student-facing event series – The QS World Grad School Tour, QS World MBA Tour, and QS World
University Tour – gave 225,000 prospective students the chance to meet admissions directors at some of the world’s
top universities, across 365 events worldwide.

The QS Intelligence Unit – QS’s research and professional services division – provides universities across the world with
bespoke comparative performance analysis according to metrics central to each institution’s mission: teaching, research
impact, reputational standing, student employability, and internationalization.

They also oversee QS’s international conferences for higher education leaders. These include:

Ÿ Reimagine Education: The world’s leading award program and conference for teaching and learning innovation

Ÿ EduData Summit: A space uniting the world’s leading practitioners at the intersection of data and education

Ÿ QS APPLE: Asia’s foremost convention for higher education leaders

Ÿ And a range of subject-focused summits held with QS’s partner universities

In 2019, as part of its commitment to sustainability, QS became a certified CarbonNeutral® Company, reflecting their
efforts to reduce its impact on the environment through a range of efficiency initiatives and offsetting unavoidable
emissions through a verified carbon offset forestry project in Brazil.

If you would like to stay up to date with the latest insights and industry intelligence, please register for email alerts and
follow QS through LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

www.qs.com/employerreputation 9