South-east England Graduate Skills Mis-match: Graduate Employability

The challenges of the Graduate Professional Attraction and RetentionHow often are reminded of this by various government and other institutional reports? The UK Commission for Employability Skills (UKCES) in their extensive report looking at young people suggested that school, college and university leavers have most of the core skills, but just lack experience (UKCES 2018). Other national and sector reports talk frequently about the importance of attracting and retaining young talent and its criticality to the future success of the UK’s economy (Swinney and Maire Williams 2016). Addressing the issues of graduates moving away from the various regions to go to cities, and then a significant majority of these fresh graduates heading straight for the bright lights of the capital.In the south-east of England the challenges for Micro- and Small-Enterprises (M&SEs) is even larger, with London accounting for almost 22 per cent of all new graduate opportunities (Swinney and Maire Williams 2016).In the M&SE sector, especially those requiring STEM-skilled graduate professional staff, the issues of attraction and retention are particularly challenging. This preliminary research study explores some of the patterns in graduate recruitment amongst micro- and small-enterprises utilizing graduates as a means to enhancing their professional staff’s stem skills gaps.