Employers are the audience universities forget

Ask a family what they want from a university and, sooner or later, the conversation turns to jobs. Will this degree lead somewhere? Do employers rate this institution? Will my son or daughter be competitive when they graduate? In many markets, those questions now outweigh almost everything else.

Governments are asking the same questions, linking funding and regulation more closely to graduate outcomes. Global rankings include employer reputation and employment outcomes in their methodologies. Employers have quietly become one of the most influential audiences in higher education.

They’re also one of the least actively managed.

How universities usually approach employers

In most institutions, employer relationships sit in several places at once. The careers service works with graduate recruiters. Academics hold relationships with industry partners for research and placements. Business development teams pursue commercial contracts. Alumni relations stays in touch with graduates who now run companies. Each does valuable work, but rarely as part of a coordinated reputation strategy.

Marketing and communications, meanwhile, are mostly pointed at prospective students. Employers see the university through its graduates and its research partnerships, but seldom through a deliberate, consistent story.

Employers have quietly become one of the most influential audiences in higher education.

A view from the other side

Before higher education, I spent years on the employer side of the table. As a senior marketer in hospitality and a board executive on IHG’s commercial marketing board for EMEA, I hired graduates, worked with universities on placements and formed my own impressions of which institutions produced people who were ready to contribute. Those impressions were shaped far more by individual graduates and responsive university contacts than by anything the universities published.

That experience has stayed with me. Employer reputation is earned one graduate and one interaction at a time, and it can be managed.

What good looks like

Treat employers as a priority audience. Give them a place in the reputation strategy, with clear objectives, messages and measures, alongside students and academics.

Coordinate the relationships. A shared view of who’s talking to which employers, and about what, prevents duplication and helps every conversation build on the last.

Tell the outcomes story with evidence. Graduate success stories, employment data and examples of employer partnerships should be visible, current and easy for employers and prospective students alike to find.

Make it easy to work with you. Employers often tell me universities are hard to work out, with too many doors and no obvious one to knock on. A clear front door for employer engagement is a reputation investment in itself.

Bring employers into the university. Guest lectures, curriculum advisory boards, live projects and mentoring all strengthen relationships and give employers a stake in your graduates’ success.

Measure employer perception. Track how employers in your priority sectors and regions view your graduates and your institution, and act on what they tell you.

Why this matters now

As the debate about the value of a degree intensifies, the institutions that can show, convincingly, that employers value their graduates will have a significant advantage. That case can’t be made in a prospectus alone. It’s made through a deliberate, sustained relationship with the people who hire.

For vice-chancellors and governing bodies, I’d suggest one simple test: does your institution know what its top fifty employers think of it? If not, that’s a gap worth closing this year.