Employer expectations of creative graduates' skills

The Employer Expectations report examines the skills requirements of employers hiring creative graduates - Elli Whitefoot, assistant careers, employability and enterprise manager at Leeds Arts University, highlights some key findings…

Employers are increasingly asking for more and more requirements from creatives for entry level and graduate roles. Although universities aim to provide relevant skills and knowledge, and opportunities to gain relevant experience, it can be challenging for graduates to feel they meet these expectations, which can lead to a perceived skills gap in industry.

The Employer Expectations report examines the expressed requirements of employers - both creative and non-creative - utilising data extracted directly from graduate-level creative jobs, advertised on the targetconnect and targetjobs platforms.

Through an understanding of employer expectations, the aim of the report is to:

• provide creative students and graduates with an accurate and informed overview of modern job market demands
• provide employers seeking to engage with and recruit creative students and graduates with insight and guidance on how best to do this
• to inform university strategy.

Key findings

Skills across all creative roles:

• The most demanded skills across all creative roles were Adobe and Microsoft capabilities.
• Non-creative skills, such as data analysis and project management appeared in the top five skills across all creative roles.
• More creative skillsets such as social media management, graphic design and digital marketing were more common across creative roles within the creative industries.
• 49.09% of all creative roles requested specific knowledge of software or technology.
• The need for digital skills is present across all sectors within the creative industries to varying extents.
• Large organisations prioritise academic requirements over experience, and promote more 'graduate programmes' or specific graduate-level roles.
• SMEs prioritise experience over academic requirements and specify roles as 'graduate level' or 'entry level' less often.
• Non-creative organisations were more likely to use vaguely worded statements than creative organisations, focusing on personality traits and temperament.
• Creative organisations focusing more on the applicants relationship to their creative practice and job duties.

Skills demands by sector:

It is important to recognise that, when looking at the requirements across all creative roles, the top skills highlights are likely to be less discipline specific and more generic. Demands by sector showcase more discipline-specific skills - primarily creative and specialist skills - although non-creative and digital still featured heavily.

Taking creative arts & design as an example, as this covers many creative roles (although they may also fall into other categories when choosing advertising fields), four of the top five skills requested were creative, with Microsoft Office being the only non-creative skill:

• Adobe Suite
• Graphic design
• Photography / videography
• Art and illustration
• Microsoft Office.

While most sectors highlighted the need for a balance of creative and non-creative roles, there were outliers:

• The top five skills required within 'broadcasting, TV & radio' and 'broadcasting, film & photography' were wholly creative.
• The top five skills required within libraries, museums, galleries & heritage were almost exclusively non-creative, with the exception of content creation.

The report examines the data in more detail, within the context of the creative industries and graduate outcomes. It also provides a link to the original data gathered by Target GTI.

Next steps

The Employer Expectations report provides a snapshot of the skills employers are asking for across creative graduate roles. The report is intended to be a starting point for further research and exploration. This falls into four key categories:

• course/institution mapping and audit of skills
• student/graduate advice and support
• employer/industry advice on hiring creative graduates
• further research.

Course/institution mapping and audit of skills

Working with programme directors and course leaders to map the skills and knowledge students gain through their studies against the report findings to ensure we are meeting employer expectations and to ensure students recognise how these skills gained align with this expectation.

Student/graduate advice and support

Developing resources and advice for creative students and graduates to support them in recognising their skills and experience, and ensuring they have the confidence to evidence this when searching/applying for roles. This would primarily focus on the following key areas:

• understanding the labour market
• employer expectations by sector
• recognising and evidencing skillset.

Employer/industry advice on hiring creative graduates

Working with employers, higher education institutions, and other stakeholders to create a best practice guide for employers wanting to hire creative graduates to address issues with recruitment and skills gaps, while developing an understanding of creative skills. This would primarily focus on the following key areas:

• job profiles and skills required for these roles
• an understanding of transferable skills
• writing/creative a concise job specification
• the skills and knowledge offered by different degrees.

Further research

There is potential to explore this data further, looking at the findings in relation to role salary, location and contract type, to map expectations and analyse how they compare.

In addition, now the methodology has been established, and the parsing programmes developed by Group GTI, it would be beneficial to develop a wider piece of work across all graduate role, examining how expectations compare across all industries.

If you are interested in discussing the Employer Expectations report, or the potential for further exploration and research, please contact employability@leeds-art.ac.uk

Notes

• The Employer Expectations report was developed through a partnership between Leeds Arts University and Group GTI.
• The report was authored by Elli Whitefoot, assistant careers, employability & enterprise manager, examining data gathered and provided by Group GTI.
• The original data was commissioned by Leeds Arts University Careers, Employability and Enterprise Team with funding received from UKRI.

Written by

Elli Whitefoot

Assistant careers, employability and enterprise manager

Leeds Arts University