Analysing The Current Graduate Labour Market Management Essay

This essay evaluates an internship also briefly analysing the current graduate labour market and identify the skills, knowledge, attitudes required from internship to enter the market, where there are 10 important skills, and shows that UK’s employers are expecting to increase their graduate labour market by 6.4% and the most common requirement is for finance and IT vacancies in 2012. Furthermore analysis of a normal career path for post internship has a variety of jobs for finance pathway also looking at short term and long term prospects in specific insurance areas; this can be broken down into four levels. Identify the value of internships and how it works in the real world, experience you find in internships should be able to further your career and future development.

Introduction

This report is going to define what an internship is and the skills required and gained from an internship; define graduate employability based on existent literature. What skills are required to proceed into the graduate market? Provide a percentage of the amount of people having an internship and going into the graduate labour market and say for example if this shows internships are required for progression into the labour market.

There are many reasons for going to university, including – naturally- a love of the subject to be studied, and the opportunity to experience a different way of life. Higher education is much more than a production line for work-ready graduates.

An “internship” is a work opportunity offered by an employer for a fixed, limited period of time, commonly, internships are as long as one week to even twelve months.

Internships have also other names such as insights, work or industrial placements. An internship has two models which are short term and long term and with internships one can have opportunities to gain some skills and knowledge which are essential later on when candidates want to apply for full-time positions. Furthermore, this report is going to look at the value of internships, and how it helps in a candidate’s career. Lastly, it is going to look at the different career paths a graduate can take.

Analysis of the Graduate Labour Market

This part shows the percentages of graduate positions accessible at the UK’s most important employers in 2012, compared with employment levels in 2011.

In 2011employers were self-confident that they would be increasing their graduate compere to graduate vacancies in 2008 and 2009.

Furthermore the UK’s employers are expecting to increase their graduate intake by a further 6.4% in 2012, following a growth of 2.8% during 2011 and an increase of 12.8% in 2010 also Opportunities dropped by 17.8% in 2009 and 6.7% in 2008. Practically half of employers expect to recruit more graduates in 2012 whilst more than a quarter plans to maintain their intake at 2011 levels. (Wolf, 2011)

Regardless of the widespread recruitment freeze at Government departments & agencies,

public sector employers are planning to expand their graduate opening by 21.9% during 2012, an increase of almost 500 extra roles year-on-year. There will also be a significant increase in the number of graduate jobs available at engineering & industrial companies (up 22.4% compared to 2011), IT & telecommunications firms (up 31.6%), high street banks (up 16.0%) and retailers (up 11.5%).this research shows that almost nine out of ten organisations are offering available job in London for 2012 and half plan to hire new employees for places in the south east of England. (High Fliers Research ltd, 2012)

The research also shows job functions that employers are hoping to recruit graduates into in 2012and; the most common requirement is for finance and IT vacancies.

Employability of Post-internship vs. Non-internship

Current data recurrently shows that employers select new hires that have gained relevant work experience through internships or co-op experiences and make full-time job offers based on these experiences. More than half of accountancy and finance graduates are employed six months after graduating.

Many companies have set up internship programs within their organization for the purpose of training and employing interns as full-time employees. It has also been established that retention rates of new employees are greatly higher for those who have completed an internship with the organization.

As a result of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) 2008 Experiential Education Survey, Employers say they extended job offers to nearly 70% of their interns; in 2001, they offered jobs to 57%. Nearly 90% of employers who use their programs to hire say they are very or extremely satisfied with their interns, and employers consistently name the internship program as one of the most effective tools they have for hiring new college graduates. (internships.about.com)

Skills, knowledge& aptitudes required from internships to enter market

There are different opinions on the meaning of employability and there is a wide understanding of what qualities, features, skills and knowledge lead to employment both in general, and specifically for graduates.

Employers expect graduates to have practical and discipline skills from their degrees but require graduates also to prove a range of larger skills and attributes.

Graduated are getting the experience and knowledge required to enter a job at the level of they paid colleagues at the end of them internship. Candidate payment is in the form of skills, knowledge and experience they are accumulating by being in that environment, and the references they will get at the end of it. (The Guardian, 2012)

The skills, knowledge and aptitudes candidate gain from internships required to enter the labour market including the:

interpersonal skills

good oral and written communication skills

numeracy and analytical ability

creativity and imagination

influencing and negotiation skills

teamwork

organisational ability

IT skills

business and commercial acumen

drive and ambition

Analysis of a normal career path for a post internship candidate in finance

For people studying finance there are jobs in every company and industry because offering a variety of positions catering to a number of different skills and interests.

Graduate should mention different financial jobs require different skills and present very different work environments for example someone might do well as a financial adviser, while someone enjoys munching numbers might do better in public accounting. (Yu, 2010)

Some common career paths graduates may pursue in the financial-services industry are public accounting, insurance, private equity and venture capital, hedge funds, investment, commercial and retail banking, corporate finance, financial planning.

From these above choices, the career pathway for insurance looks promising for both medium and long term prospects. Below is a discussion about these career prospects.

Medium term and long-term career prospects in insurance

Insurance and risk management helps safeguard against financial losses associated with confidence and risk also analyse and anticipate the financial loss potential and, in exchange for assuming this risk, calculate an appropriate premium charge.

Medium term and long term prospects in this specific career are divided in four levels, the first two levels for the short term and the rest for long term.

Level one is the insurance trainee, just starting out and continuing the first twelve months. This level is more about survival than it is about earning.

Next level is for the insurance learner, who will be finishing three more years of difficult challenges. . The life preserver is based on both the agent’s attitude and selling skills, which is start with finding the right people to focus your attention on. Selling skills start with finding the right people to focus your attention on, which that right into your comfort area and have a need for an insurance product you are familiar enough selling. Until here it’s the short term career and for the long term candidate should pass the last two levels.

Level three: these are insurance innovators with 4 to 8 years of experience, to survive the have broken just about all the career company rules of the plan to success. Also the insurance innovator has a valuable base of built up clients for additional sales.

Level four the true insurance professionals. Many professionals are fully independent. They have often signed contracts with six or more independent life insurance carriers. Others are semi-independent, who have not quite yet taken the final break away step. (Yerke, 2010)

The value of internships

Internships offer students a period of useful experience in the industry linking to their field of study and, to gain experience in a particular field or industry. This experience is valuable to students as a means of allowing them to experience how their studies are applied in the “real world”.

Internship also have many benefits which are including the development of strong teamwork skills balanced with the exercise of individual responsibility, the opportunity to experiment with jobs that match academic and personal interests, and help students become viable, experienced job applicants when seeking employment after graduation.

Getting experience builds our confidence and we have more chances of securing a job. Also an internship can be seen the pinnacle of our undergraduate education and give us the chance to use the skills we have learned in the classroom in a real word setting.

Also an internship is a best way to meet people in our field and knowing people never hurts. This is might helpful to land a job later on and give us the contacts in tread we are trying to break into, and the important thing is references from people in the company will really add weight to your application.

Internships are no longer thought of as an asset to have but have become a necessity for those interested in finding employment in a specific trade or organization. Although many students wait until last year to look for internships, doing few internships throughout the academic years provides the best way to try out a number of different occupation fields as well as organizations.

Internships allow graduates the flexibility of work, find their own personal work ethic and learn how to establish own work life balance. An internship a great opportunity for everyone to meet people from around the world and from a cultural perspective they can have the chance to broaden their horizons. Internships are not jobs they are an opportunity to gain some real world experience and skills, in which the company provides training in exchange for insignificant labour. (internships.about.com)

An internship helps to:

1) Adjust to the requirements of the wide labour market

2) Enable students to develop specific skills including language skills

3) Improve understanding of economic and social culture of the country concerned in the context of acquiring work experience

4) Promote cooperation between higher education instructions and enterprises

5) To contribute to the development of pool of well-qualified, open-minded and internationally experienced young people as future professionals

Conclusion & Recommendations

In conclusion to prove the skills and apply what had acquired from university people would need to take on an internship to ground them skills, and use what they had studied in books to the world of work.

People had internship they learnt a lot from that and have had the chance to apply for theoretical understandings in the world of business. In addition, an internship has given them the chance to develop a strong work ethic and the chance to be able to prove to themself and to those around them, also shows a significant increase in the number of graduate jobs available which is 21.9% during 2012 that means nine out of ten organisation are offering available job in London for 2012 and The most common requirement is for finance and IT vacancies.