It comes as no surprise to hear that the jobs market today is fiercely competitive. While a good degree is often essential for graduate schemes, students need to be armed with strong work experience, eye-catching skills and something extra to give them the edge over their competitors. For many employers, that something extra is a postgraduate degree. For some businesses, it’s not just a nice-to-have: it’s an essential. A postgraduate qualification shows an ability to analyse and problem-solve, and a strong commitment to a particular career path. For many successful graduates, it’s proved to be invaluable in not only helping them stand out from the crowd but also boost their career prospects.
Samantha Lackey, senior curator (programmes), at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
While we look for people with all kinds of experience to work at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, roles such as senior curators require the expertise only gained by studying for an MA. An MA not only gives you knowledge about a particular art period, but it also requires critical thinking, a high degree of self-motivation and organisation, which are essential qualities for working in a really busy international art gallery.
The opportunity offered by an MA to really think about a subject deeply – and for a long time – is also incredibly valuable, especially as it’s unlikely that you will ever again get the luxury of an equivalent time period for sustained thinking.
Hopefully, an MA provides the toolbox to do this work as part of your future employment, alongside the experience that allows you to do it a bit faster. The self-motivation, dedication and financial commitment required to undertake an MA signals a real commitment to a particular role or career within the arts.
Melanie Clark, senior recruitment specialist – graduates and apprentices, WSP Parsons
We’re particularly interested in postgraduate students as we look for highly skilled staff who can start working straight away on complex projects. Our company focuses on challenging projects – ranging from tall skyscrapers to rail and road tunnels – which involve providing a high level of consultancy work across areas such as engineering, transport and the environment. Postgraduates are expected to work on these from day one.
We’ve found that postgraduates are well equipped to cope with these demands through the extra time they’ve spent in education. Also, we want all graduates and apprentices to become a charted engineer – or equivalent – professional, which requires a level of knowledge and understanding up to a master’s level. While a postgraduate degree isn’t the only way of demonstrating the necessary knowledge for chartership, we find it’s the most usual.
Richard Stone, chief executive and founder of engineering and technology PR firm Stone Junction in Stafford
Almost a third of our staff have a postgraduate degree. As an engineering and tech PR and content production company, we have to understand our clients a bit more deeply than a typical PR agency. People very rarely develop a strong understanding of those areas in their personal lives – unlike the team at, say, a fashion or sports PR agency. If you’re writing about things like strain wave gears, business process automation or clean-room construction and you aren’t a former engineer or software developer, your day-to-day experience before Stone Junction won’t prepare you at all. It’s not the kind of thing that’s on the Discovery Channel!
We look for employees with an MA or MSc as they provide enhanced critical and analytical thinking. If you want to genuinely understand something that you have little experience of, it’s essential.
Ian Fotheringham, managing director of industrial biotechnology firm Ingenza in Midlothian, Scotland
We often find that new, undergraduates lack hands-on industrial experience and general lab practice, while postgraduates have that additional experience under their belt and can more easily and efficiently transition into a commercial organisation.
We’ve recently hired two graduates with an MSc in industrial biotechnology from the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre. The course also includes a work placement. For a scientific company, this means that we get graduates with the required technical training who are ready to hit the labs and, as an small- to medium-sized enterprise, the industry experience they bring to the company is invaluable.
They come with the added understanding of the commercial nature of science as well as important business skills, such as communication, networking and budgeting. We’ve found that there can be a difference in the pace of work and the goals of graduates versus postgraduates, so although on paper the qualifications may be very relevant, in reality MSc students will most likely be the best performers in the working environment.
Prof Amar Ramudhin, director of the Logistics Institute, University of Hull
We have a team of master’s graduates working in the Logistics Institute on various research and industry projects. I value the expert knowledge my team can offer – and that is founded on the skillset they acquired through studying for a master’s.
From industrial engineering to logistics, the team brings the research and strategic skills that our academic and commercial partners need. But it’s not just about the information they’ve learned, it’s about their ability to work on their own initiative, their motivation, resourcefulness and their commitment to see a complex project through from start to finish.
Barry Davies, practice director at DJM Solicitors in Swansea
The final stage of becoming a qualified solicitor is to study a one-year postgraduate legal practice course (LPC) and this gives graduates a good grounding in many aspects of the legal work, such as criminal litigation, business law and property law they are likely to encounter on a day-to-day basis in practice. It’s a good stepping-stone from the theory of a graduate’s academic study to a career practising law. Someone who has done the LPC is not only more qualified than someone without it but they’re also likely to be more skilled in important practical areas like research, interviewing, advising and advocacy.
