A recent survey of heads of careers services painted an unusually optimistic picture for those leaving university. 79% said that they felt that the market is "more buoyant" than the previous year, and many specifically mentioned that they'd observed increased engagement from small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and niche graduate jobs.
Many greeted this news with not a small amount of relief, grateful to have a positive statistic to cheer up application-weary graduates. That was until an application-weary graduate challenged me to translate that optimism into something more solid. Just because we've seen more SMEs post jobs at our careers services (here at Oxford a 38% rise in posted vacancies over the last year has been fuelled by SMEs) doesn't necessarily mean much at all.
So I went to find out. The only data I was at liberty to crunch was at the Careers Sevice at the University of Oxford, but even if not representative of the graduate labour market as a whole, I hope that it's a useful and solid insight.
Armed with our last three years of destinations data and classifications, I explored whether niche jobs were really becoming less niche, and if smaller organisations were becoming bigger players.
Firstly, there's more to niche than meets the eye. It's one of three categories to define work outside of traditional graduate-level jobs – jobs that even pre-1960s required a degree. The term 'modern graduate jobs' is used for those that began to require a degree from the 1960s onwards. 'New graduate level jobs' are where the expectation of a degree has emerged recently. 'Niche graduate jobs' require a degree, but generally in industries where most jobs do not. For example, a new graduate hired as a market research analyst for a swimming pool might be classified as in a niche graduate job.
I found that niche isn't that popular, with declining percentages over the last two years leaving just 13.7% of undergraduates finding a graduate job here – similar levels are seen in the modern and new graduate job markets. For postgraduates, however, there has been a rise in those in modern and new graduate jobs over the last three years with 25% now starting in this market, compared to 20% three years ago.
So niche isn't necessarily where it's at, at least for our leavers. But what about the optimism over SMEs?
Although the number of leavers has increased year on year, proportionately, there's not much change for jobs at medium-sized employers (50-250 employees), and only a slight rise in Oxford undergraduates joining small enterprises (under 50 employees). The 26% of undergraduates in small enterprises isn't a big jump on the 25% three years ago. For postgraduates, however, there has rapid growth with 15.6% of leavers joining small firms three years ago rising steadily to 21.8% most recently. So, SMEs are a steady source of jobs for postgraduate leavers in smaller firms.
Undergraduate recruits now, however, seem more likely to be taking non-graduate level jobs in smaller enterprises. Against an average of 23.6% in non-graduate jobs for all employers, 29.2% of undergraduates working for small enterprises are now in non-graduate roles, an increase from just 21.3% over three years. A similar trend is found in the destinations of postgraduates in medium enterprises, where now 5.2% are in non-graduate roles, an increase from just 2.1% three years ago.
So, is there still room for cautious optimism in the graduate job market?
I think so. Three years ago small enterprises employed 235 Oxford graduates in a graduate-level role. Last year that number had risen to 493. In appearing more frequently on university job boards, SMEs and niche graduate roles seem to be highlighting a more rounded picture of the opportunities out there.
Lucy Hawkins is a careers adviser at The Careers Service for the University of Oxford. You can find more of Lucy's blogs here
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