How do students find out about employment opportunities?

Employer engagement with students works best when the messaging is personal, transparent, and relevant to students, according to fresh research from Lancaster University

The study, funded by the Jisc careers research grant, uses focus groups and one-to-one interviews to discover how students discover and interact with graduate employment opportunities, and assesses the effectiveness of current employer engagement practices.

Key findings

• Event impact - 54% of surveyed students had no prior knowledge of employers before attending events, yet 78% of them considered applying after attending such an event.
• Student preferences - authenticity in employer messaging was critical. Presentations that were overly scripted or perceived as excessively positive were considered unhelpful.
• Effective channels - departmental and society-led communications were seen as the most relevant. Social media and email had mixed effectiveness; personal relevance of the message was key.
• Decision drivers - salary, location and work-life balance were the top factors influencing application decisions. Students also showed a strong preference for well-known organisations.
• Information gaps - many students remained unaware of the university's job board or struggled with untargeted job alerts from external platforms.
• Engagement perceptions - employer views highlighted careers fairs as most effective for raising brand awareness, with presentations and panels valued for converting interest into applications.

About the report

This research project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Lancaster University's employer engagement activities in raising student awareness of graduate opportunities, and to understand how students discover and respond to those opportunities.

The report also includes recommendations to address some of the challenges faced by students in searching for opportunities, as well as those encountered by the careers service in effectively promoting employers and vacancies.

This research was funded by the Jisc careers research grant. If you're a careers professional planning to undertake research, you may be eligible for funding of up to £5,000.