Graduates' Work

Abstract

This paper discusses the findings of ‘Graduates' Work’, a major survey carried out in the UK to assess the future needs of employers in the context of widespread organizational change and to define what attributes graduates will now need to succeed in their careers. With supporting quotations from in-depth interviews conducted with managers and recent recruits in a wide range of organizations, the authors discuss the key changes in the work environment and organizational cultures and sets out the specific personal and interactive skills and characteristics that employers are looking for in graduates. It is argued that employers want employees who can be variously ‘adaptive’, ‘adaptable’, and ‘transformative’. Finally, the implications of the research findings for higher education institutions at the levels of the teaching/learning interface, the curriculum, and operating systems are addressed.

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References

The research involved 258 in-depth interviews with respondents in 91 organizations, both large and small, public and private sector. 84 respondents were strategic managers, 55 line managers, 84 recent graduates, and 35 non-graduates doing similar jobs to the graduates. See Harvey

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Even where programmes of study provide students with opportunities for teamworking, assessment regimes frequently encourage the identification of individual contribution. The culture in higher education is one of individual success and failure, reflected in degree classification, and teamworking in an academic context often exhibits an element of artificiality. There is a need to explore more meaningful ways of encouraging and rewarding group working as a process. For most students, a placement experience provides the only real opportunity to develop meaningful teamworking skills.

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