The Employers’ View of “Work-Ready” Graduates: A Study of Advertisements for Marketing Jobs in Australia

Abstract

This study of job advertisements extends our understanding of how employers, rather than researchers, describe the specific skills and attributes sought in candidates for employment in graduate marketing roles in Australia. The paper presents the findings of a content analysis of 359 marketing job advertisements downloaded in 2016, in two periods six months apart, from the dominant job finding website in Australia, seek.com.au. This data offers detailed primary records authored by employers, and sets the research apart from most studies, which rely on generic variables imposed by academics, despite the mooted gap between academia and the business sector. The most demanded attributes included motivation, time management, communication skills, and digital marketing experience. This raises questions about the purpose of a degree, and whether marketing curricula are fit for purpose. The paper explores these findings and other preconditions for being "work-ready", and the study contributes to the underdeveloped employability research from Australia.

Graduate Work-Readiness in Mauritius: A multi-stakeholder approach

“…Chhinzer and Russo (2018) further highlight professional maturity (high quality of work, initiative and interest), continuous development, professional attitudes and willingness to work as important graduate recruitment considerations. Graduate qualifications are no longer enough, as employers look for work experience and prioritise generic and personality traits like communication skills, time management and assiduousness when recruiting (McArthur et al, 2017). Graduate capital acquisition becomes even more important with the digital disruption arising from the fourth industrial revolution.…”

“…In most cases, the problem appears to stem from the massive 'production' of graduates with little focus on employer skills requirements (Winterton & Turner, 2019). Firms rely strongly on the capabilities of graduates to remain globally competitive, and yet face difficulty hiring them due to serious shortcomings in their employability skills (McArthur, Kubacki, Pang, & Alcaraz, 2017). Changes in the labour market also raise concerns about the skills and mindset of graduates who are now increasingly expected to self-manage dynamic careers, and be sufficiently agile to transfer their employability skills across areas and industries (Jackson & Tomlinson, 2020).…”

Attracting Students to Sales Positions: The Case of Effective Salesperson Recruitment Ads

“…However, no parallel work on sales job advertisement taxonomies has been published in the literature. More recent work explores the knowledge, skills, and personal attributes for entry-level marketing positions in Australia (McArthur, Kubacki, Pang, & Alcaraz, 2017) and the United States (Schlee & Karns, 2017). Both studies examined job advertisements focused on marketing, not sales, positions.…”

Teaching video editing and motion graphics with Photoshop

“…Digital marketing skills sought by employers have been examined (McArthur et al, 2017), digital marketing in business education and student engagement has been studied (Crittenden & Crittenden, 2015), digital marketing in the classroom has been examined (Buzzard et al, 2011), and digital marketing and job placement has been studied (Stanton, 2016). …”