At Step, we have a regular spot on our website asking visitors for their insight into student and graduate behaviours. At the beginning of this summer, just as the new cohort of graduates were entering the jobs market, we asked visitors how long they expected to stay in their first graduate role. And the results, shown in the image above surprised us.
Growing up in the ’80s, I often heard the refrain “there’s no such thing as a job for life anymore”. Even now in the 2000s, the concept of a job for life is still discussed. But it seems that for recent graduates entering the jobs market for the first time, the concept is alien to them. Well over half (57%) of respondents to our poll expected to stay in their first job for a year or less. This was a simple question with no opportunity to comment so we can only speculate as to the motivations behind this result.
Whatever the reason however, anecdotally we know that employers’ expectations are that their investment in a new graduate recruit will be rewarded by at least 2 years’ service, if not more. Yet only 12% of new graduates expected to stay in their first role for this amount of time. But our own experience is that in practice graduates do stay for upwards of 2 years within their first roles. As HR professionals, we learn about employee engagement and the importance of presenting as an employer of choice. But this poll suggests we have a lot of work to do, in order to shift the commitment levels of our new graduate hires from at best indifferent, to fully committed to our organisations.
If this brief insight interested you, we’d love to get your opinion in our latest piece of research which you can complete using the links below. It should only take 5 minutes and there are prizes available.
Contribute to the 2019 Step Employer Survey and win a hamper of goodies for your team
Contribute to the 2019 Step Student / Graduate Survey and win a £50 amazon voucher
