Employers and Graduate Opportunities

In this chapter, we explore employer perceptions of recent graduates from South African universities. We first consider opportunities for graduates from different universities, based on employers’ stated preferences. We look at what employers want in the graduates they recruit and how satisfied they say they are, locating this in relation to socio-economic conditions of inequality and uneven graduate ‘capitals’ in order to analyse whether graduate employment opportunities re-inforce or fracture the inequalities of access and participation in university education. We base our analysis on 17 major employers (15 private and 2 public) with whom we conducted telephone interviews and a third public-sector employer who finally agreed to complete a questionnaire based on the interview schedule. We spoke to key persons responsible for graduate employment and training after appropriate clearance was obtained and the purpose of the research clearly communicated. Sectors included construction, mining, banking, financial and investment services, retail, manufacturing, transport and supply chain companies.