Futuretrack News

Did you apply for a full-time undergraduate course in 2005/06? If so, you are a member of the FUTURETRACK cohort. If you have already participated in this important independent survey conducted by a research team at Warwick University on behalf of the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU), you’ll know that it is investigating students’ progress through higher education and their experiences in the graduate labour market.

The Stage 4 questionnaire is now available, and existing participants have been sent an email inviting them to fill it in, so if this means YOU, check all your email accounts! All eligible respondents who complete the survey have the chance of winning cash prizes: ten of £1,000 or one hundred of £100. If you haven’t received it, or you are a 2005/06 applicant who would like to join the survey now, you can register here.

Please pass on the message to all your classmates with whom you are in contact, so that we can develop as full a picture as possible about the experiences of this ‘recession generation’ to inform policy and practice in higher education. You can find out more about Futuretrack here: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/futuretrack.

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The working paper on Skills Development and Perceptions from the Futuretrack project is now up online! This paper looks at final year undergraduate students’ perceptions of the skills they have to offer and the skills they think are sought by employers.

In particular, the issues discussed are:

• Students’ beliefs about the extent to which they personally possessed key skills

• Students’ perceptions of skills developed on courses

• The main skills students considered employers seek in graduate recruits

• The extent to which students believed they had the skills and qualities that graduate employers seek

Key findings include:

• The majority of final year students rated their skills as at least adequate in all areas and most were confident of their skills and knowledge.

• Between 80 and 90 per cent of students reported that their research skills, specialist knowledge, critical analysis, and ability to apply knowledge had been developed ‘very much’ or ‘quite a lot’ as part of their course.

• Almost three quarters of final year students thought that the experience of being a student had made them more employable than they would otherwise have been, and more than 80 per cent agreed to a greater or lesser extent that the experience of being a student had enhanced their social and intellectual capabilities more broadly.

• As they approached the end of their undergraduate courses, over 80 per cent of respondents believed that they have the skills employers are likely to be looking for when recruiting for the kind of jobs they wanted to apply for.

Read the full paper here: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/futuretrack/findings/ft3.1_wp4_skills.pdf

The working paper on Job Search Strategies and Employment Preferences from the Futuretrack project is now up online!

We looked at the process of searching for post-graduation employment and examined the sources final year students used to look for this employment. We also looked at the motivations Futuretrackers gave for looking for particular types of employment. These included the characteristics of the employer they hoped to work for, as well as the content of the job itself, and the locations where they were willing to work.

Key findings include:

• Just over half of the final year Futuretrack students had started searching for employment at the time they completed the survey.
• Opportunities for promotion was the most important job attribute when students were considering what kind of job they would look for. Flexibility for work-life balance, long-term security and opportunities for further training were all more important to the Futuretrack students than a competitive salary.
• While the availability of employment was an important consideration for students when considering the locations where they might work, constraints such as needing to consider the needs of family members and the overall cost of living in an area placed particular constraints on certain groups within the Futuretrack cohort.

Read the full paper here.

http://go.warwick.ac.uk/futuretrack/findings/ft3.1_wp2_job_search_and_motivations.pdf