Are you a driven, resilient maths or science graduate? If so, UK companies want to employ you – whether or not you are already based in the country – because you have the skills they say they need.
At the top end of the labour market, employers complain of a shortage of people equipped with a pure science degree who also have the personal skills to flourish in a business environment. Unsurprisingly, these individuals can take their pick of well-paid, demanding jobs in sectors as diverse as aerospace, pharmaceuticals or investment banking.
The financial sectors have what they describe as a “constant appetite for young talent”, but the current boom in the City means there is greater competition than ever to recruit the same talented, capable individuals who might otherwise pursue careers in engineering, manufacturing or scientific innovation.
Research published last year for the Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC) estimated that London businesses will generate about 4,000 new jobs in the financial services every year for the next four years, and most of these are described as “high value-added roles”. Stuart Bernau, chairman of the FSSC, says that they will “require a constant supply of the world’s brightest and best talent”.
The latest report from the London Chamber of Commerce Business Leaders’ Panel, published last month, confirms a picture of demand outstripping supply across all sectors. The survey revealed that 67 per cent of managers had experienced difficulties recruiting, with the greatest difficulties occurring when employers try to fill jobs they categorise as “professional” or “managerial”.
But the biggest competition is between the investment banks, engineering and the higher-technology sectors, such as aerospace, marine industries, electronics, bioscience and pharmaceuticals. Philip Whiteman, chief executive of Semta, the sector skills council for science, engineering and manufacturing technologies, says this trend has been going on since he himself, as a chemistry graduate, watched contemporaries with chemistry, physics and maths degrees opt for jobs in financial services.
“It is quite sexy and highly paid, and they do a very professional marketing job on the undergraduates,” Mr Whiteman admits. But he says the attractions of the City have begun to cause a problem because there are simply not enough pure scientists to go round. A flowering of applied science courses has exacerbated the trend and diluted the pool of science graduates, he adds, citing the current popularity of forensic science and other “softer” courses. “I don’t think that has helped industry at all,” he says. “The degree that they end up with is not in demand much from any employer. We need proper, robust, pure honours degrees in science subjects.”
Semta, which covers about 76,000 companies, also sees a need for better high-level technical education. Improvement in supply could come, the body hopes, through more widespread provision of advanced apprenticeships, which allow employees to train while in work and through foundation degrees, the new vocational two-year programmes.
The results of Semta’s most recent labour market survey reveal that 70 per cent of jobs where there are skills shortages are among technical and engineering skills or craft, operator and technician occupations, with the biggest problem in machine operation. This is partly due to the rapid pace of technological change: 55 per cent of the companies surveyed by Semta said they had changed their skills needs in the past three years, mostly because of new technology or equipment, and 48 per cent of companies expected further changes in their needs in the next two to three years for the same reason. One of the industries hardest hit by skills shortages is the aerospace sector, where 58 per cent of the professionals, engineers, scientists and technologists are underqualified or undertrained in some way for their jobs.
According to Mr Whiteman, this constant innovation is the key to UK competitiveness, and better ways must be found of keeping the workforce equipped with up-to-the-minute skills. “If we are going to maintain market share in design, innovation and invention,” he says, “then we have to start providing courses that teach these high-level skills.”
The survey suggests that Semta companies are less worried by the lack of personal or so-called “soft” skills among their workforce. But, as in the other industries against which they compete for high-level graduates, Mr Whiteman says most companies now provide some sort of induction or conversion programme for new employees – especially recent graduates – to get used to what the company needs in terms of teamwork, communication and problem-solving.
But research across several sectors of the economy shows that employers as a whole run into problems defining exactly what it is they need and what is lacking. According to “Graduate Skills and Recruitment in the City”, a report for the FSSC published last year, when it comes to “soft” skills there is a “lack of consensus about how skill sets are defined and interpreted”, which leads to unclear messages to universities about how they could better equip graduates for the world of work. “What may be termed communication by one recruiter can be understood as teamwork by another,” the report says.
A significant minority of roles in finance – for example, risk management, financial engineering and quantitative research – require specialised technical skills and knowledge. And the appetite is growing for specialist postgraduate qualifications – such as financial maths – for investment banks. This has led City companies to increase their recruitment of overseas staff. Moreover, employers in financial services are concerned that the UK education system is failing to equip graduates with the maths skills they will need to compete for the top jobs. As a report for the FSSC observed in May: “There is a widening gap between the numeracy and quantitative skills of UK students and their overseas counterparts.”
The report goes on to call for a relaxation of rules that might make it difficult for overseas graduates at UK universities to stay on and work here because banks are anxious about finding sufficient recruits with those high-level quantitative skills. “The amount of home-grown talent is diminishing,” the authors complain.
But most City employers say they are not looking for specialists when they recruit graduates, and are unimpressed by the growing number of overly-focused business degrees. A generalist was often preferable, they told FSSC researchers, to someone on a new course such as a BSc in risk analysis or international securities, for example.
As a result, recruiters say conversations with would-be employees turn quickly to an assessment of how well their personal skills are developed, and how well they will adapt to life in the organisation. The most prized qualities are drive, defined as self-motivation and initiative, and resilience, meaning the ability to cope with stress, pressure and setbacks – even bullying.
As one HR manager at an investment bank told researchers: “Academic qualifications are the first tick in the box and then we move on. Today, we simply take them for granted.”
