What Counts Is Brain Power!

GRBs new survey has again revealed a fascinating dichotomy between this year’s graduates and employers. Graduated place a higher value on work experience than degree class when it comes to selection for jobs

This summer, news headlines have been dominated by the plight of graduates emerging into the labour market, the most striking statistic was that employers were receiving 69 applications for each graduate level vacancy they had on offer*. All of which presents employers with the practical challenge as to how to reduce the numbers to manageable proportions.

GRB, the UKs leading, independent graduate recruitment consultancy, decided to turn the tables and ask graduates what criterion they would apply to narrow down the field if they were an employer. From the four options offered, an impressive 61% selected work experience as their preferred option. A further 21% voted for the degree classification, while 17% opted for the university attended. Only 1% of respondents thought it a good idea to use ‘A’ level as a selection tool.

Dan Hawes, co-founder of GRB, commenting on the findings, was impressed if a little surprised by the findings, “Before the results came in, I would have expected the degree class to have topped the list, so it is fascinating and revealing that almost two thirds would look at the work experience that candidates had had in narrowing down numbers. We wanted to put graduates in the shoes of recruiters and I think it has made a lot of graduates think more about how they should be spending time at Uni to give them a fighting chance of finding a good graduate job.”

Hawes went on to say, “What the findings say to me is that graduates value work experience highly to the extent that a candidate with a first class honours degree but with no, or very little, experience of the world of work, is less attractive than a candidate with an upper second and bags of work experience. But the reality is quite different.”

Interestingly, in reality what many employers look for, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters are primarily the degree classification (77.5%) with relevant work experience was in third place (33.5%). Hawes concludes, “This clearly shows that employers need to get the message out to graduates that they need to study hard and worry less about work experience. What counts is brain power.”

* Taken from the AGR Graduate Recruitment Survey 2010 – Summer Review.