{"id":1655,"date":"2020-01-31T17:00:35","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T17:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/?p=1655"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:16:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T14:16:36","slug":"busting-graduate-myths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/2020\/01\/31\/busting-graduate-myths\/","title":{"rendered":"Busting Graduate Myths!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2020\/01\/Myths.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1656\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2020\/01\/Myths-300x210.png\" alt=\"Facts not Myths\" width=\"513\" height=\"359\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2020\/01\/Myths-300x210.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2020\/01\/Myths-768x537.png 768w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2020\/01\/Myths-307x215.png 307w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2020\/01\/Myths.png 938w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 513px) 100vw, 513px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dr Charlie Ball Head of HE Intelligence Graduate Prospects* spoke recently at an Institute of Student Employers conference. He set about busting some myths around university and the graduate jobs market.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Myth: \u00a0\u201cThere aren\u2019t any jobs for graduates\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Truth:<\/strong> Actually, for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bath.ac.uk\/campaigns\/make-yourself-employable\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bath graduates<\/a> 89% of our employed UK full-time first-degree graduates are in the top three occupational groups compared to 74% of employed graduates nationally \u2013 data from HESA Destinations of Leavers from Higher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hesa.ac.uk\/data-and-analysis\/publications\/destinations-2016-17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Education 2016\/17<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Annual Population Survey data showed that at the end of 2018, there were 14.8m people working in professional level jobs in the UK which is 46.1% of the workforce.<\/li>\n<li>This data also shows that the UK added 353,500 new professional level jobs in 2018. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bath.ac.uk\/guides\/what-do-first-degree-bath-graduates-do\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Find out what full-time first degree UK and EU Bath students went on to do<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Myth: \u201cIf I study &lt;SUBJECT&gt; then I will have to do that as a career.\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Truth:<\/strong> The UK has a particularly flexible skilled jobs market. Dr Ball stresses that the majority of jobs for graduates do not specify a degree discipline and you can get them with any subject, from fine art to physics.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, not taking a vocational degree does NOT mean you won\u2019t get a job! Studying a vocational qualification (e.g. engineering), does not mean you have to follow that vocation.<\/p>\n<p>We have students every year who move in surprising directions, for example a sociology student who is now an accountant or a chemist who is cabin crew for Easyjet.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Myth<\/strong>: \u00a0<strong>\u201cGraduates only work for big business or on large training schemes\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Truth:<\/strong> Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent 99% of all businesses in the EU*.The definition of an SME is one with fewer than 250 staff and a turnover less than \u20ac50 million. *(<a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/growth\/smes\/business-friendly-environment\/sme-definition_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/growth\/smes\/business-friendly-environment\/sme-definition_en<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, 30% of graduates went to work for SME\u2019s and one in six were with companies with fewer than 50 employees.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>SMEs are especially important in certain fields such as telecoms, design, architecture, sport\/fitness, and web design.<\/li>\n<li>The proportion of graduates entering SMEs does seem to be falling, due to competition for scarce talent with larger businesses<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Read our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/unihub.bath.ac.uk\/s\/myfuture\/workflows\/detail\/15\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Finding a graduate job guide\u00a0<\/a>for advice on how to go about searching for a job outside of the main graduate schemes.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re not sure if working for an SME is right for you, take a look at <a href=\"https:\/\/unihub.bath.ac.uk\/s\/myfuture\/infoPages\/detail\/46\/working-for-small-companies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Working for small companies<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Myth: \u201cAll the graduate jobs are in London\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Truth:<\/strong>\u00a0 The facts are that 19.8% of UK graduates live in London. 22.4% of 2016\/17 graduates started their career in London. Many of those jobs were confined to a relatively small area of London such as Westminster.<\/p>\n<p>The starting salary for graduates in London was \u00a324,991 compared to \u00a322,399 for UK as a whole. London is the largest and most varied labour market in the UK, BUT most people, (including graduates) never work in London.<\/p>\n<p>Find out <a href=\"https:\/\/luminate.prospects.ac.uk\/what-do-graduates-do-regional-edition\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">what graduates do region by region.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*Data source Dr Charlie Ball <a href=\"https:\/\/hecsu.ac.uk\/research\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/hecsu.ac.uk\/research<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Charlie Ball Head of HE Intelligence Graduate Prospects* spoke recently at an Institute of Student Employers conference. He set about busting some myths around university and the graduate jobs market. &nbsp; Myth: \u00a0\u201cThere aren\u2019t any jobs for graduates\u201d Truth:...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1382,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[748],"tags":[10,68,100,131,15,51,537,538],"class_list":["post-1655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","tag-career-planning","tag-employers","tag-finalist","tag-graduate-career","tag-job-hunting","tag-job-market","tag-london","tag-sme"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1382"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}