Graduates find it difficult to relate job to studies

Crossing from the student to the working world is not a smooth path for all graduates - some find it hard to land the job they would have set out to achieve through their studies.

A tracer study on university graduates 2000, carried out by the university's Students Advisory Services in February, 2001, showed that although the majority of respondent graduates who were seeking a job were employed, not all were working in an area related to their studies.

The study, entitled A Study of the Outcome of Graduates 2000 in the Job Market, showed that 80.4 per cent of the employed graduates worked in jobs related to their degree, however, 11.2 per cent, most of them arts graduates, worked in unrelated jobs.

The university's Principal Communications Officer, Patricia Camilleri, recognised this problem: "Arts students, of whom we have many, find it the most difficult to find employment in which their studies are relevant.

"My battle is that of trying to put across the idea that, for example, an anthropology graduate is useful to a company. These students acquire skills, such as good research and analytical skills, that are extremely useful within the work environment," she said.

Michael Vella, 25, graduated BA Honours English in 2001 and is currently teaching English to foreigners on a full-time basis.

He said he had been teaching English part-time since he graduated and while he was looking for a job. He was only given the full-time job after he completed the Celta (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) course and not on the strength of his university degree.

"The problem is not that it's difficult to find a job but that it's hard to find the job you like or expect. The greatest obstacle is that most job vacancies are very specific and one hardly sees vacancies that are open to graduates in general.

"I've been to many job interviews and many people have asked me why I did not study this subject or the other," he said.

"People don't realise that no matter what the course, after four years of study you are not just a graduate but have acquired the ability to study and research. I chose English because I like it but it does not mean I am not capable of learning other things," he said.

Ms Camilleri said there was an ignorance as to what an arts degree was. This made it difficult to help employers understand that these students would have studied for three to four years and had a lot to offer.

She said that the university tried to bridge the gap between the student world and the working world through various means, such as the tracer study and by conducting graduate potential seminars.

The results were published and used to try to encourage industries to look ahead and suggest how many new workers were needed in the future in order to avoid job saturation.

Carly Zammit, 23, who graduated in psychology in November 2002, felt that there were not enough job opportunities for psychology graduates. She, too, is teaching English to foreigners.

"I feel that psychology graduates are employed when social workers do not apply for posts This obviously means that the demand for psychology graduates depends on the number of social workers who graduate each year.

"Although I enjoy teaching English it is not what I want to do. It is merely a replacement job at this point," she said.

Ms Zammit said she thought the university should inform students about job opportunities available in their field before they go through with years of study.

Assistant lecturer Manwel Debono explained that the tracer study of graduates 2002Career Outcomes of Graduates 2002, that is expected to be published in the first week of October, showed similar results to the tracer study on graduates 2000.

Results showed that the largest percentage of job-seeking graduates were arts students (27 per cent) followed by communications students (13 per cent).

21-year-old Andrew Attard has just completed a communications degree at the university. He said he would like to pursue a career in the field or at least, a related field, in order not to feel like he wasted four years of his life.

Since he completed his course last June he had applied for a couple of jobs.

"There aren't so many jobs available. Many calls for applications were specific in that they wanted people with over six years experience, which of course I don't have," he said.

Experience seems to be one of the graduates' worst enemies.

KSU president Justin Fenech encouraged students to get involved in activities that could "double their university experience" and provide them with a cutting edge when handing in a job application.

"I know of a good number of students who were involved in student organisations and who managed to get their current job thanks to such involvement.

"Nowadays a larger number of people have a degree and companies look at what a student did in his free time.

"At university there are various organisations that cater for different student needs and also offer extra experience, both academic and non-academic, for the student to gain. But most students don't see this resource that's right under their nose. They must seize these opportunities and put what they learn in textbooks into practice," he said.

The tracer studies for 2000 and 2002 also looked into the way graduates went about looking for a job and showed that most graduates found their current job through advertisements in the newspapers. The next most common way of finding a job was by word of mouth, through relatives or friends.

Both studies showed that the Employment and Training Corporation's contribution was minimal and graduates did not use it much in their search for a job.

When contacted, the ETC said that although it was not up to the ETC to create jobs, it tried to facilitate job-matching by allowing employers to post their vacancies on the ETC website, where job seekers could post their cv's.

The ETC said it made use of the data collected by the Education Division and the university for planning purposes and was currently carrying out a research project on the school-to-work transition.

"One of the ETC's strategic priorities is to strengthen its competence in occupational guidance and counselling. In this respect, a substantial number of its employment advisers are reading for a university diploma on this issue," the ETC said.

"The ETC tries to ensure that graduates find employment in the field they study for by providing a profiling and registration service to unemployed graduates, who specify their occupational preferences to an employment adviser.

"This enables ETC to submit unemployed graduates for job interviews in the fields specified by them," the corporation added.