Graduate Job Adverts Have Nearly Halved: Stop Selling the Degree as a Ticket
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Show notes
UK graduate job adverts fell by almost half in a year, and employers now get 141 applications per role. I explain why that turns a careers story into a reputation story for universities, and what marketing teams should change now.
- Audit every employability claim against current, course-level data.
- Show capability, not destination: placements, live briefs, portfolios and named employers.
- Be honest about the market, and put careers and marketing in the same room.
Full transcript
Hello, and welcome to Marketing Greats in Higher Education. I'm Jonathan Sabarre, your host, and this is where we explore the ideas shaping how universities are seen, chosen and trusted around the world. Everything I share on this show is my own personal view.
In July last year, UK job boards carried an average of just over fifteen thousand graduate vacancies a day. This July, Adzuna counted fewer than eight and a half thousand. That's a record low, and a fall of almost half in twelve months, landing exactly as this year's graduates started looking for work. For universities, that turns a careers story into a reputation story, and it's arriving fast!
To be fair, adverts aren't the whole market. The Institute of Student Employers found that its members actually hired four per cent more graduates this year, although much of that came from a few big firms restarting their schemes. But look at what sits alongside it. Those employers received a hundred and forty-one applications for every graduate role, and a hundred and seventy-two in London.
And HESA's latest data shows graduate unemployment at seven per cent, up from five per cent six years earlier. So fewer doors are visible, and far more people are knocking on each one. For two decades, a lot of university marketing has sold the degree as a ticket, with graduates in gowns against a city skyline, and the quiet promise that the investment pays off. In this market, that promise becomes a liability.
The public mood had already shifted. In polling for Public First this spring, sixty-five per cent of people described the total debt students take on as unfair. In the US, half of Gen Z graduates told Indeed and Harris Poll their degree was a waste of money. And when jobs get harder to find, every gap between what we promised and what happened becomes a story, told by our own graduates.
So what would I ask every marketing director to do? First, audit every employability claim. Go through the website, the prospectus and the campaign copy, and check each one against current data, course by course. A claim that was perfectly defensible in 2022 may not be now. Second, show capability rather than destination: placements, live briefs, portfolios and named employer partners.
Those are far more convincing than a single institution-wide percentage, because they show a family exactly what their son or daughter will be able to do. Third, be honest about the market. Students and parents read the news. Universities that acknowledge the tougher graduate market, and explain clearly what they're doing about it, will earn far more trust than those still running last decade's message.
Fourth, put careers and marketing in the same room. Your careers service usually knows what's really happening to graduates months before marketing does. Their insight should shape the story, and their work deserves to be part of it. Too often those two teams sit in different buildings and report to different people, and the institution's message suffers for it.
And fifth, look after your recent graduates. They're your most credible voices. Support them, listen to them, and give them every reason to speak well of you, especially those who found that first year hard. None of this means the degree has lost its value. HESA still finds three in four UK graduates in high-skilled work fifteen months on, and over a career the evidence favours graduates strongly.
But the universities that come through this period with their reputations intact will be the ones that stopped selling a ticket, and started proving a capability. So get your careers and marketing teams together this month, look hard at what you're promising, and make sure every claim is one your graduates would recognise. That's how trust is built in a tough market!
Thank you for spending this time with me. If this episode sparked something for you, hit subscribe, so you never miss the next one. And our full season, with guests from leading universities around the world, is coming very soon. Head to Jonathan Sabarre dot com and sign up, so you're the first to know when it launches. Until next time, keep building something great.