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Life in the graduate graveyards: exploring graduates’ experiences
of underemployment and evaluations of career success
Tracy Scurry Newcastle University Business School, UK
John Blenkinsopp Hull University Business School, UK
Research Seminar,
Centre for Lifelong Learning, Warwick University,
22 May 2014
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Context
• Increasing expansion of
UK Higher Education
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(HE)
• Increased emphasis on
individual and societal
gains from HE and
economic growth
• Higher level of
individual investment
• Expectations of returns
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Context
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Increasing graduate underemployment
• Centre for Economics and
Business Research warned Click to edit Master title style
that 55% of graduates in
2012 will be either
working in non-graduate
jobs or will be
unemployed six months
after university.
• The number of
underemployed graduates
over the past four years
http://www.cartoonaday.com/college-graduates-face-bleak-future/
rose from 30% to 42%
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Not just the UK!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=o01x4j6ycEs
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Graduate Underemployment
•Debates surrounding nature of graduate employment.
•Acknowledged that increasing
number
graduates
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title are
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entering ‘non-graduate’ occupations and finding themselves
in positions of ‘underemployment’.
•Objective and subjective measures
•Consequences of underemployment for individuals,
organisations and society
•Response to Underemployment:
• Increased job search activity (Feldman,1996).
•Redefining expectations (Jones Johnson and Johnson, 1995).
•Disengagement and sense of hopelessness (Borgen et al. 1988).
•Failure to launch (Feldman and Whitcomb, 2005).
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http://www.graduatesyorkshire.co.uk/graduates/blog/228
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Theoretical perspective
•Relative deprivation theory - individuals desire and feel
entitled to ‘better jobs’, comparing
their
personal
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employment situation to a referent standard
•Graduates: prevailing expectations of type of employment
outcomes, distinct cohorts to measure ‘progress’ or
‘success’.
•Call for career theory lens (Scurry and Blenkinsopp, 2011)
•Career success perspective (e.g. Heslin, 2005) •Objective-subjective duality of career and career
success.
•Explore the ways in which individual graduates frame their
underemployment and implications for their reactions.
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Research Project
•Debates regarding definition of graduate employment
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(Scurry and Blenkinsopp, 2011).
•‘side-step’ - data from graduates in ‘McGrad Jobs’
(Purcell et al., 1999)
•Call centre operatives – low levels of discretion,
autonomy and control, limited opportunity for career
progression
•Majority of existing work cross sectional and quantitative
•In-depth qualitative approach :Interviews/observation
over 12-18 month period
•17 Individuals - 12 from one employer, ages 21-27, 5
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female
Phone monkey
I say the same crap to the same people. I know
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title style
you get a small sense ofClick
satisfaction
if you sell
it, but I still know that a trained monkey could
do my job.
•Acknowledged underemployment
•But the framing changed over time and in
different ways
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Referent others
I was surprised at how many of us [graduates] there are, one of the
managers always laughs about it and says [these places are] like
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graduate graveyards.
•Referent other was central
•Selective – choice and features
•Challenged by others – real and imagined
•Time
•The previous referents no longer a flattering comparison
•Not conforming to expectations for graduate
•Nor others expectations of bridge employment
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Responses
• Taking control
• Made and pursued
specific career plans.
• Refer to length of time
and how others would
view this.
• Physically distancing
• ‘moving on’ and
‘breaking the cycle’.
• Losing control
• Questioned
credibility
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title style
• Did not engage in job search
or other career related
activities.
• Negative response: withdrawn
from work, negative
behaviours
• Surrounded themselves with
individual’s in similar
situations,
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Concluding thoughts
•The underemployed graduate as a referent
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•Objective similarities
•Subjective difference
•Similar objective careers, but their subjective careers – the
way in which they framed their situation and engaged with
work – became progressively more varied over time.
•The subjective career perspective helps understand how and
why a period of underemployment may have lasting effects
on attitudes to work and career.
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Considerations
• Importance of referents – illustrated in trends for unpaid interns
• Objectively underemployed
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• Subjectively ‘suitable employment’ –temporary stepping
stone
• Lost generation effects
• Underemployment has negative consequences for career
• Exacerbated by annual fresh crops of graduates
• Reference points for graduate careers
• Appropriate in the context of mass higher education and
heterogeneity of HE and student populace?
• Denial – despite ‘everyone knowing’
• Notion of a ‘proper graduate job’ remains intact
• Perpetuated by various stakeholders – policy makers,
universities
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Next steps?
• How are student/societal expectations being managed in terms
of the realities of the graduate
labour
Click
tomarket?
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• What are the realities?
• Changing nature of labour market generally and graduate
labour market outcomes more specifically
• SMEs, Micros, start ups, new graduate occupations
• What are the expectations?
• How to manage expectations?
• Challenge - particularly as the personal cost/investment of
HE rises
• Who to manage expectations?
• Involvement/responsibility
• How to prepare?
• Career management behaviours
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