Graduate Business Start-ups Project Report - The Institute for ...

! The labour market status of all groups of graduates had
stabilised, and there was little variation according to gender,
age or subject of study.
At the time of the survey:
! the majority of graduates were in employment, about threequarters
as employees; and
! two out of every five graduates were self-employed.
The evidence from the analysis of career patterns showed rising
levels of self-employment over time. The level of self-employment
for the sample increased at each successive sampling point, and
was considerably higher in comparison with the graduate
population as a whole. This suggests that self-employment was
increasingly becoming an important career destination for those
graduates. Our findings also showed that the decision to enter
self-employment was taken at an earlier stage in the careers of
graduates. The aspiration for self-employment and business
start-up was also high, and was underlined by the fact that a
significantly high proportion of graduates had a business idea
they would have liked to pursue. But the evidence also pointed
to the fact that aspiration did not necessarily translate into deed.
The issue for policy is to harness, stimulate and nurture the ideas
and translate them into businesses.
Chapter 5 looked at the graduates’ experience in the labour
market, in terms of their jobs and utilisation of their higher
education qualifications in those jobs.
! Job changes were, on the whole, less frequent.
! The majority of graduates worked full time, but the incidence
was highest among graduates with no interest in selfemployment;
by contrast, graduates with experience of selfemployment
were more likely to work part time in their first
job.
! The self-employed graduates were the most transient
employees, and spent the least time working in that capacity.
! Utilisation of degrees varied, although on the whole, the
majority of graduates thought a degree was helpful in getting
their first job.
! The majority of graduates worked in the ‘other services’
sector.
What emerged from the analysis of their employment experiences
was that graduates with no interest in self-employment were
more likely to follow a traditional employment route, with a fulltime
job in a large organisation. By contrast, those with selfemployment
experience opted for smaller organisations.
Importantly, the findings here lend support to our earlier finding
about how graduates make decisions about their careers very
early on and stick to those decisions.
Graduate Business Start-ups: Project Report 13