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by The Newshound

on Sep 23

Marketing industry falls short for graduates

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Despite marketing and sales being the fourth most popular career choice for Australian university graduates, the industry is well behind other major sectors in efforts to attract graduate talent, according to recruitment website GradConnection.com.au.

Dan Purchas, co-director of GradConnection, indicated that the company’s data shows that among the 15 most popular careers listed by uni graduates, the marketing and sales sector appears among the least prepared with a lack of programs to attract and retain graduate talent.

“It seems the marketing and sales sectors are not as advanced as other industries in engaging and attracting our top graduate talent. As the global economic hardships ease and companies rebuild and reenergise their graduate recruitment programs, it is quite possible that the marketing and sales sector will miss out on attracting our top university talent because of a lack of companies offering formal programs to attract graduates,” said Purchas.

According to data from the site almost 9.9% (1,600) graduates and students have listed marketing and sales as their most favoured career.

Within the marketing sector itself, these grads have listed CRM, business development and account management as the three top roles they would like to pursue.

Of the 16,000 grads who registered their career choices with the site, the top three career choices are accounting (13.6%), engineering and mining (11.1%), government (10%) and then marketing and sales.

Below the top four, careers of choice for grads in include IT, banking/finance, human resources, mathematics/science, law, health, funds management/investment banking, economics, construction and property.

“In this digital era, grads are looking to engage and interface with potential employers about career prospects. On the employers’ side, companies are looking to interact with potential employees to help refine their personnel choices and build a degree of familiarity with them prior to making a job offer. It is reasonable to assume that if graduates cannot see clear career opportunities in their most favoured industries, then they could be lost to the sector as the grads are attracted to their second or third choice industries by clear career information and opportunities,” explained Purchas.

4 Comments

Ellery
  • Wrote on 23 Sep, at 02:31PM
Dan Purchas is 100% right - If you've seen marketing graduate working conditions lately (or been a grad yourself), the incentive is simply not there. If you go agency side, you can look forward to terrible pay, long hours, and being the office bitch. If you go client side, you can look forward to slightly less terrible pay, the same long hours, and being the office punching bag. Compare this with going into a government department, working strictly 9-5, and getting paid good money with a guaranteed payrise every year and >9% super.

Thats the centre of this problem (take it from someone who has entered the 'graduate' market twice so far in their career).
Editor | Sean
  • Wrote on 23 Sep, at 05:03PM
Hi Ellery,
We're actually planning to take a look at being Gen Y/assistant level in the marketing industry from an experts perspective (read: written by a real life, still breathing, Gen Y marketing assistant) in our monthly. I guess the common arguments are job engagement/job enjoyment at a task level tends to be greater or the future prospects are better despite current conditions. Thoughts?
Annalisa
  • Wrote on 29 Sep, at 10:27AM
Hi There
Where are the jobs? I am looking to advance my Marketing Career. I am now completing Postgraduate Studies in Marketing because i want to move into a more responsible challenging positions. I would love to work in Advertsing or just general Events or Marketing Communication. There are hardly any jobs for us and I know there are a lot of Marketing people out there who are looking for marketing jobs....so am not so sure about there being a shortage. Who are the employers looking for us marketers, i would love to get in touch with them. But i wont be underpaid or do the (BAD WORD FILTERED)test jobs, i think they are for the entry level people not people like I who have some experience and would like to grow.
Renee
  • Wrote on 30 Sep, at 11:53AM
As a past Graduate Program participant, i learnt so much about marketing about the type of marketer and manager that i wanted to be. This was invaluable experience and i still look back on the modules we learnt and the amazing exposure i received to senior levels of a large Australian organisation. But, once completing the program there was no way of integrating the graduates back into the company and i ended up moving on. I don't think it's necessarily simply about the actual recruitment or initial treatment of grads, grads want to know that there is somewhere for them to go at the end of all of the "learning" as some call it.
I have recently found myself searching for marketing work and it seems that now i am beyond a graduate, but not a senior marketer- people can't mould and shape me or give me the office run around jobs, yet they aren't ready to trust me with the key account or campaigns. Does the world of sale and marketing ever get easier?

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