I took advantage of bigmouthmedia's recent recruitment reception to survey 107 graduates.
Lots of them thought their universities did enough to highlight the importance of the internet, but an equal number strongly disagreed.
Let me share some of the questions we asked in the graduate survey and some of the responses we collected....
- My university does enough to highlight the importance of the internet as a marketing and commercial medium.
I disagree strongly 39%
I disagree slightly 5%
No opinion 12%
I agree slightly 39%
I agree strongly 5%
I was intrigued by the symmetrical shape of the results! The spread of votes between "strongly" and "slightly" is interesting. Based on other results from the questionnaire, it isn't simply the case that people tend to have "strong" opinions when they disagree but tend to be more cautious when they are offering support.
Grab a Grad Night (as we call it) was held up in our Edinburgh headquarters and so we had graduates mainly from Edinburgh University, Heriot Watt and Napier University. The survey was anonymous and did not ask which university the graduate was from.
This is not a large survey. A few questionnaires were spoilt (next time we'll make sure everyone completes the paperwork before opening the second wave of wine) and not every graduate answered every question. Nevertheless, I would say a poll of 100 or so graduates has statistical gravitas.
What else did you put in the questionnaire? I'm glad you asked.
A vast percentage of the hopefuls (71%) thought a career in "internet marketing" was more exciting than one in "traditional marketing". That suggests few of the graduates would be putting their CVs under the door of the more traditional marketing agencies around the corner.
Interestingly, opinion was not so strongly focused on whether internet marketing offered better career prospects than traditional marketing.
- A career in Internet Marketing has better prospects than a career in traditional marketing.
I disagree strongly 2%
I disagree slightly 6%
No opinion 28%
I agree slightly 35%
I agree strongly 29%
Had these graduates thought about social media and how it could affect their job hunting? Not really.
- What are you going to do with your blog / MySpace / Facebook / etc. now that you're looking for a job?
I don't have a blog 11%
I hadn't thought about it 38%
I'm going to leave things the way they are 33%
I'm going to remove my real name from all my accounts 0%
I'm going to lock my blog to friends only 11%
I'm going to delete my blog 7%
Andrew Girdwood is head of search at bigmouthmedia.
Andrew Girdwood is Media Innovations Directory at bigmouthmedia and a guest blogger for Econsultancy. He can be found on Twitter here and Google+ here.
Recommended reports
Australia and New Zealand: Internet Statistics Compendium
Econsultancy's Australia and New Zealand Internet Statistics Compendium is a comprehensive collection of the most recent statistics and market data publicly available on online marketing, e-commerce, the internet and related digital media within the region.
Alternatively, see our Europe: Internet Statistics Compendium or Asia: Internet Statistics Compendium.
11:44AM on 7th June 2007
Really interesting poll. Thanks for that. I think I'd say that these results are quite fair - and also quite sad. It shows to me that Universities have to improve their knowledge of modern Internet marketing methods. I have had several students or recent graduates attend my "13 Pillars of Internet Marketing" seminar and I'm always surprised at the lack of basic understanding. And that's not a slight on the students.