/ 19 August 2008

Where graduates go

A university’s reputation and its location play a major role in students choosing where to study. Their choice of employer is also based on its reputation in the market place.

These are the findings of a survey by the South African Graduate Recruiters Association (Sagra), which was conducted in May this year. Sagra is a professional body dedicated to connecting and advancing the graduate recruitment industry. It has more than 100 corporate members represented by the country’s top talent management specialists and it raises awareness for the graduate recruitment profession, trying to enhance the careers of those involved in it.

A total of 1 435 candidates responded to the online questionnaire conducted by British company High Fliers Research. Three-quarters of the participants had finished their degrees by November 2007 or earlier and 13% had completed their studies between December 2007 and June 2008.

Sagra national coordinator Cathy Sims said: “The 1 435 graduates who participated in this survey are the successful ones — who joined 61 companies in South Africa, some of the largest employers of graduates in the country. It is not a reflection of the market, it should be used as a trend analysis of what the successful graduates are saying about themselves, their time at university, their job hunting strategies, their perceptions of employers of choice and their aspirations for the future.”

Just less than two-thirds of participants said that the reputation of the university was a driving force for them, while more than half felt that the location of the university was important in helping them decide where to study. Sims said students are brand conscious — they know that “if you want to study engineering then Wits or UCT or Pretoria are choices and if you want to study journalism, then Rhodes is the place”.

A university’s reputation is important and employers rely on past successful hiring practices and the success of the current staff in deciding from where to hire graduates, she said.

Johannesburg meanwhile confirms its status as South Africa’s economic hub as more than half the participants said their first job after graduation was based in this city.

Nearly half the candidates expect to have no debts when they graduate, while nearly a fifth expect to owe less than R40 000 on graduation. Six percent owed R100 000 or more when they graduated. Also, 14% of candidates had received both a scholarship and an academic prize during their time at university and 26% had completed work experience that would be directly relevant to their new employers.

Nearly half the graduates thought employers’ websites had been useful sources of information during job hunting, while employer presentations and career fairs held at their universities were also important.

Nearly two-thirds of these digital natives regularly use the social networking site, Facebook, and 17% use Youtube. But only 4% found this useful when searching for graduate jobs. When it comes to the job search they tended to value face-to-face communication with employers.

Meanwhile, 84% said the overall reputation of a company was important when deciding where to apply, while 81% saw training and development as important. According to Sims, the reputation of a company is based on a combination of what the media says about it and an awareness of the company’s commercial success and its corporate social investment.

The graduate employers of choice are PricewaterhouseCoopers, followed by KPMG, Standard Bank, Investec and McKinsey & Co. PricewaterhouseCoopers had the highest profile at six universities within South Africa, while 30% of candidates expect to stay with their first employer for more than five years. Remuneration, promotion and the chance to work overseas were the key factors in having a candidate stay longer with an employer.

Only 5% had made more than 20 job applications and 2% had made 16 to 20 applications. Twenty-one percent had made one application before being employed. About 89% of candidates moving into the mining engineering career had more than one job offer.

“Given the steady increase in vacancies, it is perhaps a reflection of the power shift away from the employer to the graduate that 60% of candidates had multiple job offers to consider this year,” said Sims.

The most popular destinations for female and male candidates are auditing, finance and consulting.

Sims said: “It’s really a market for the well-rounded graduate who has a solid academic track record, displays good leadership skills and gets involved in community development. The world is their oyster.”