NEW ‘JOB-HOPPING’ GENERATION OF GRADUATES IS EMERGING – HOW MANY JOBS HAVE YOU HAD SINCE GRADUATION?
The average graduate stays in their first job after university for just a year and a half, new research has revealed. Of the 42% who left their job less than 18 months after starting, one in five quit after just six months.
The research – involving 2,000 graduates from the last ten years – supports growing anecdotal evidence suggesting the nature of graduate job hunting has shifted hugely in the last decade. No longer are graduates picking a career aged 21 and then just ploughing on with it (thank God – talk about dull). Today’s graduates are prepared to chop and change until they find a career that ‘fits’.
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And you’re an ambitious lot. The study – by The Marketers’ Forum – found that four in 10 graduates said they left their first job because they weren’t able to progress up the career ladder fast enough. Many used their first job to try out an industry – and found it triggered a complete re-think (15% said they realised they’d picked the wrong career entirely). You’re also being flexible about what job you take – only one in five said their current role was their ‘dream job’.
Don’t you fear being labelled a job-hopper? Apparently not. Although six in 10 graduates were concerned that quitting so soon would make them unattractive to future employers, the average graduate felt that nine and a half months was a respectable time to spend in their first job.
Until now, it has generally been believed that 18 months is the minimum you should stay in any job (unless something is seriously wrong). Could this change in graduates’ attitudes be a symptom of the new, so-called ‘flexible’ workforce, where young people are rarely offered permanent, full-time positions and instead start their career with short contracts, temp jobs and freelance work?
The research also found that many graduates admitted they’d made big – and expensive – mistakes with their choices about university. Only a third said if they had the choice again they’d pick the same university and degree course. Nearly a quarter said they’d choose a different subject – and nearly a fifth said they wouldn’t bother with university at all.
Quentin Crowe, managing director of The Marketers’ Forum said the findings about today’s graduates should warn prospective students to think carefully about their options when considering higher education:
“After spending several years studying for a degree, it can be daunting to suddenly be under pressure to do something with it and get a job.
“The research sends a stark message to young people about to finish their A levels. Be absolutely certain about your university and degree choices and, if not, explore wider options now to avoid disappointment three years down the line.”
He said he expected school-leavers to become increasingly shrewd about their choices as the price tag for university leaps this autumn. Options like their new flexible, part-time course, Professional Marketing and Management for Business are ideal “for individuals looking for a fast track, cost-effective head start into a rewarding career.”
*DO YOU WORRY ABOUT BEING VIEWED AS A ‘JOB-HOPPER’?
Or in today’s ‘flexible’ economy has it become more acceptable for graduates to do jobs for shorter periods at the start of their career? How many jobs have you had since you graduated? How long did you stick with each – and why did you leave?
I wouldn’t say this is true for me… I don’t intend on leaving my job, I love it too much.
Is this job hopping phenomena new? I thought this had been the case for a while. Maybe even more so back when there were more opportunities for the average graduate. I think graduates with stop-gap jobs might worry that its going to turn into their long term job if they spend to long in it.
In some ways I’ve had the opposite attitude. I’ve been in my job for just over two years and people are telling me that I need to move on or that I am too young to spend more than two years in a job. In these two years I have kind of realized that the career I assumed I would go into after uni is not going to happen and without going into detail I am looking at still using my degree but in a different direction.
I think you can get away with leaving a job if you can give a good and well thought out reason for why you made that decision.
I would be living in a fantasy world should I believe that my graduate career will begin anytime soon. I graduated in 2008 with a 2:1 in History – a very respectable degree, except now I was being told that you needed a Master’s degree to start on a good graduate career path. Graduate training programmes had closed their doors, postgraduate funding was not available to me. A recruitment agency refused to register me because employers would not even consider me because I hadn’t worked in the two years prior to my graduation. After fruitless jobsearch in my university town, I was forced to return to my hometown. After a few months on the dole, I took a temporary non-graduate job in a call centre followed by several months’ unemployment. This seems to be the pattern. I was told that a degree has a short shelf-life of two or three year. When I passed the three-year mark since graduating, it dawned on me that I was not going to begin a graduate career and felt paralysed for several months by this realisation. As a mature graduate from a poor background, I was accustomed to disappointments. However, this time I was determined to overcome my situation. I live close to the town centre where there is the local studies library containing microfilm of all the old town newspapers and the council archive department with original documents such as journals, diaries and minutes book. In a recent history book of my town, the author stated the need for greater local history research beyond the surface. This set me on my current course to write a local history book. I found my topic in the newspaper archive and began to research it further. My recent stint of non-graduate employment has, for the first time since graduating, provided me with savings to buy an initial bundle of specialist books to help me in my research. My career path is currently several months of employment followed by several months unemployment. So I do not worry about finding the time to do my research. My timescale is 5 to 10 years, realistically. But I have succeeded in overcoming the disillusionment of graduate life in this period of austerity. I’m determined not to let my degree go to waste. I know I have the ability to write a local history book and I’m going for it!
I think it all depends on the industry you’re in. For engineering and science graduates I think there is a greater amount of job stability. As a Graduate Engineering Geologist I am expected to work towards being chartered which takes 5 years and typically happens within one or at most two jobs. Also, a lot of job opportunities are with consultancies therefore you work within the same company but in a few different places on varying projects therefore it stays interesting.
I loved my undergraduate degree in Geology and Physical Geography from Edinburgh and realize now my MSc in Engineering Geology from Leeds has a lot of value ( I was the last year of NERC funded courses) and would do it all again the same way. I am getting interviews very easily now with the pre-summer job market boom and just need to nail the interviews.