Lecture 2

Developing your
Professional Brand.
Kevin Heffernan

The Graduate Labour Market

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 The graduate labour market snippets
• Graduates hired down by 4.9% in 2017
• 8/13th recruiting fewer
• But 2018 cautious optimism..
• Starting salaries to remain unchanged
– Aldi: £44k
• ¾ employers provide paid internships
• 1/3 recruiters insist on experience for graduate
programmes
• ½ employers experiencing better applications
• 10% more job applications for top companies.
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 What do graduate recruiters want?

• A good degree from a good university

• Work experience

• Extra-curricular involvement

• The ability to ‘tell your unique story’

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% of first degree qualifiers obtaining each
classification
2012/13 to 2016/17 (HESA, 2018)

5
Starting salary by graduates by gender (2016/17) (HESA, 2018)

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The myth:
‘There are no graduate
jobs.’

93% of millionaires are

graduates/professionally
qualified (BBC News, May
2014)

Many graduate recruiters

do not fill their vacancies

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Graduate Destination: (ACGAS-2015)
Destination Percentage
Employed 82.3

Further study 3.1

Working and 2.3

studying

Unemployed 6.1

Other 6.2

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 Examples of starting salaries by career
area in 2011-2012 (AGR, 2013)
Investment banking £38,250

Legal work £37,000

Consulting £28,500

Marketing £25,250

Research and development £25,250

IT £26,000

Accountancy £25,000

What are starting graduate salaries now? Has it changed much?

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 How recruiters select:
• Degree classification: is used as a screening tool by a high
proportion of AGR employers (82.1%) when recruiting
graduates.

• The majority (81.3%) use the 2:1 as a cut off for most of
their positions,
– 15.0% use a 2:2 and
– a small minority (3.8%) state that it varies by role.

• BUT there are a range of other graduate employers

including SME’s for whom this is not such a significant factor
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Types of work entered UK.
(ACGAS, 2015)
Type of work Percentage
Marketing, PR 49.5 Lots of
and sales opportunities!!
Retail, catering 13.8
and bar work
Secretarial and 8.9
numerical clerks
Business, HR and 8.9
financial
Other 18.9

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Social Profile & Specific Company

12
The projected picture 2018

13
 Have you
thought
about the
jobs of the
future?
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 Marketing of the past:
1. To deeply understand their
users/customers/target audience

2. To have research tools to help them develop

that understanding of their users

3. To know how to use that information to sell

products or services
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 ..and of the Now & Future:
• Algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine
learning are at the forefront of a brand-new era….

• Requires:
– Analytical thinking skills
– Creativity to experiment & learn
– A data driven approach to making marketing decisions
• Previously just a finance thing
• 180,000 job postings requiring ‘digital’ skills’

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 Impact on current jobs?
• Estimated 7m to be lost in 15 leading
economies

• Chatbots replacing customer service

– No human interaction
– Need to learn email marketing and marketing
automation platforms.

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 Example: The Marketing Agency
For more information, click
The new jobs: the link:
1. Content Historian • https://www.for
– Corals information..a librarian of sorts bes.com/sites/fo
– ‘where can I find assets related to a certain rbesagencycounc
campaign’ il/2018/01/17/th
– What was that blog focused on user ree-marketing-ag
experience’? ency-jobs-of-the-
2. Analytics Storyteller future/#5818a91
– Understanding and making sense of data to 1e816
create a story
3. Trend Specialists
– How can you use the latest trend to drive a
marketing campaign

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 Jobs of the future??
• Content distribution expert

• Director of freelancing

• Audience advocate

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Have you thought about who you
might want to work for?

20
Best Big Companies 2018
1. EE
2. Explore Learning
3. Admiral Group
4. TSB
5. Marriott
6. Bourne Leisure Ltd
7. Savers Health & Beauty
8. Iceland
9. Halfords
10. EY
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Best 10 Mid Companies
1. Chess
2. MVF
3. Innocent
4. Churchill Retirement Living
5. Connect Catering
6. Charter Court Financial
Services
7. The New World Trading
8. Reassured Limited
9. UKFast
10. First Response Finance

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 LinkedIn’s choice…
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-
companies-2018-where-uk-wants-work-now-e
mily-spaven

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 Employees 10 worst rated companies:

• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/07/04/10-wors
t-companies-work-uk-according-employees/

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Top Employers in 2016

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 How to Future Proof yourself as a graduate
• Know yourself – be able to articulate and build on your strengths,
passions, skills, attributes, motivations and values

• Get experience –work experience, volunteering, clubs and societies

• New ways of working – Portfolio working, Social Enterprise

• Entrepreneurial skills

• The Luck Factor* – being open to and willing to seek new

opportunities

• Networking – 50-80% of all job opportunities are not advertised

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 Your task for next week
• Thinks about what career you are looking for
and reflect on the skills you have for this- do
some research!
• Read Highfliers report on Blackboard-  But
this a is just the start for assignment 1. .

• Questions?

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