Graduate Employability: What Do Employers Think and Want - Essay Example

When it comes to the skills and capabilities that employers desire when recruiting graduates, the report states that all employers, irrespective of company size, prioritize soft skills over technical skills. Communication and team-working skills are especially delineated. However, this finding is not unique. Several surveys on graduate employability that have been undertaken before by other organisations have raised similar issues. The distinguishing factor of this report against those done previously is two-fold.

Firstly, this report unlike the others expresses views from a wide range of company size. Secondly, it contributes to the debate raised by two other reports – the Leitch Review on skills and the Science Review on science and innovation – on the question of the importance of graduate skills to the competitiveness of the UK economy in light of the increasing demands and needs of knowledge intensive businesses and increased international business. . The other marked difference in the skills and capabilities that employers look for was found to depend on whether the employer has international dealings or has an international parent organization.

According to the survey, international organisations generally sought a higher calibre of employees than companies with no international dealings. For example companies with international dealings or with an international parent were found to value overseas study experience and foreign language skills more than companies that had no international dealings. Nevertheless, when it comes to overseas professional work experience, close to two thirds of all the employers, irrespective of size or international business, viewed those candidates to be more employable.

The report goes on to show that in as much as employers valued soft skills more than technical skills, they were least satisfied with graduate recruits when it came to their possession soft skills. According to the report, employers are more satisfied with graduate recruits technical skills especially IT skills, postgraduate qualification and good degree classification. These three areas topped the employer satisfaction ranking. The largest satisfaction gaps indicated by employers across all organisations surveyed were graduate recruit’s low or lack of commercial awareness and relevant work experience.

Online recruitment is identified as the most frequently used and most effective method of recruitment especially by the large organisations. Other popular recruitment media identified to be effective, though viewed differently by large organisations and SMEs, are recruitment fairs and career advisory services. According to the report, more large companies than SMEs preferred recruitment fairs. On the other