Broadly, degree courses can be classified into three main types:
Directly vocational courses, essential for a particular career, for instance medicine or architecture.
Vocational courses, ranging from general subjects such as business and management through to more specialist courses like building surveying, retailing, or computer games technology. Some vocational courses sound as if they provide a direct route into a particular industry - but beware, this is not always the case.
Non-vocational courses like history or English literature. Don’t write these off: there is an argument for choosing a subject you’re really interested in, getting good results and then applying for vacancies open to graduates in any subject.
This article is mainly concerned with employers’ opinions of degrees in the second category. With more established professions, particularly those with ‘chartered’ status, there are usually strong links between a specific degree and future employment. However, there are other graduate-level occupations where the relationship is less clear-cut.
In an established professional field like surveying, starting with a specialist degree is a great advantage.
Karen Dale, Graduate Recruitment and Placement Manager at international construction consultancy Davis Langdon, recruits surveying graduates, with a preference for those who have specialised in building surveying or quantity surveying.
Karen’s advice on choosing a surveying course is: ‘Look at the RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) website, find out about different types of surveying, and use the RICS accredited course list as your starting point. Once you’ve identified a course, look at its links with industry - for instance we have a partnership with certain universities, providing support in terms of academic content.’
Choosing a sandwich course, with a year out in industry, conveys clear benefits, Karen Dale believes. ‘Anyone who’s done a year out placement stands out from the crowd. They may have started working towards their professional qualification, and they will have ‘bedded in’ to office life. It is also common for students on year out placements to be offered permanent employment.’
Over 40 universities and colleges offer degrees in retailing, and there are excellent opportunities with retail companies, not only in store management but also in fields like e-commerce, marketing and logistics.
Waitrose, the food retailer, sponsors the degree in retail management at Loughborough University, providing student placements, guest lectures, assistance with student projects and visits to head office, stores and distribution centres. Graduates of the course have gone on to successful careers with Waitrose.
‘It’s a really good degree,’ says Anglie Johns, Manager of Recruitment Services at Waitrose. However, although retail management graduates form part of Waitrose’s graduate intake, the business also recruits graduates from a wide range of other disciplines, assessing their suitability on the basis of interpersonal and leadership skills.
