Industry short of quality graduates

The media industry has long been concerned about the lack of quality graduates joining its ranks andresearch has now shed some light on why the problem is so serious.

Less than half of last summer’s graduates were interested in swapping their studies for jobs straight away, revealed the High FliersResearch UK Graduate Careers Survey 2000.

Of the 10,650 respondents at 25 universities, 9% expected to take work unrelated to their degrees and 20% expressed interest in postgraduate studies; 18% planned to go travelling and 10% had no plans.

“From the recruitment point of view, it’s a pretty gloomy profile,” said High Fliers’ survey director Martin Birchall.

However, the managing director of round8 media recruitment specialists, Jim Brown, sounded a note of optimism for the industry.

“This trend is off-set by the fact that more people are moving markets later in their careers, so more mature starters are coming intomedia,” he said. “There may be a candidate shortage at graduate level, but companies are becoming more receptive to life experience and transferable skills.”

Brown also called for the media industry to be more proactive about promoting itself at graduate careers fairs. “We need a central body promoting media, so we can be at the fairs as an industry rather than asindividual companies.”