Scottish Government

APPENDIX 1: RESEARCH APPROACH AND CHARACTERISTICS OF CASE STUDY EMPLOYERS

The Study Approach

The research complements the quantitative analysis produced through the Employer Skills Survey, and will help to obtain a better understanding about the issues that concern employers in relation to the recruitment of individuals straight out of Scotland's colleges and universities. The study comprises two complementary elements:

• 30 in-depth employer case studies; and
• a short desk-based review of the (academic papers and policy papers) concerning the recruitment of college leavers and university graduates to set the context for the study.

Desk-Based Review

The desk-based research focuses on the recruitment of individuals into their first job out of college or university. The review focuses on the characteristics of Scottish colleges and universities, their approaches to employability and employer perceptions of the value of employing individuals from these institutions.

Case Studies with Employers

The Employer Skills Survey is an extensive survey of employers' views on recruitment, training and skills issues. The survey is telephone-based and is quantitative in nature. The case study employers were drawn from the pool of respondents to the Employer Skills Survey who had indicated that they were willing to participate in further research. The study is based on 30 in-depth employer case studies, split two-thirds employers who cited college and university recruits as 'well prepared' and one third who cited them 'poorly prepared' for the workplace. In taking this approach we 'oversampled' employers who indicated that they had a negative view of college and/or university leavers. Given the generally positive experiences that employers reported in the Employer Skills Survey, it was considered important to provide employers with every opportunity to outline the areas in which they had experienced difficulties and the impacts for their organisations. The views of employers expressed in this report are therefore likely to be more negative than those of the employing community as a whole.

In addition to the split in terms of preparedness of for work, it was important to ensure a spread of employers by size, broad industrial sector and location. Consideration was also given to interviewing employers with experience of recruiting only from colleges, only from universities or both. However, restricted to employers that had indicated they were willing to participate in further research, it proved very difficult to engage with employers who had experience of recruiting college leavers and almost impossible to find employers who had experience of recruiting both university graduates and college leavers. Detailed characteristics of the employers interviewed are contained in Appendix 1.

Using a case study approach provides qualitative information of some depth to complement the quantitative information obtained through the Employers Skill Survey. The case studies also allow a range of people in an organisation to contribute to a case study, whereas the Employers Skill Survey generally obtains information from one respondent in each organisation.

If those are the strengths of the case study approach, a possible weakness is that the 30 organisations that participated are in no sense 'representative' of employers. This is not a large sample from which statistically robust conclusions can be drawn. Rather, it complements the quantitative work which prompted this more detailed, qualitative research.

It is important to take a balanced approach when assessing this kind of evidence. There is no basis for sweeping conclusions about 'all graduates' or 'all colleges'.

Interview Process

At each case study employer a series of detailed face-to-face interviews were carried out using semi-structured interview checklists to provide a comprehensive picture of the organisation from both the employer and recruits perspective. Although employers were categorised as viewing recruits as 'well prepared' or 'poorly prepared' on the basis of their generalised response to the Employer Skills Survey, the same interview checklists were used with all employers to reflect the fact that employers' views are complex and their range of recruitment experiences broad. At each site interviews were carried out with:

The HR Manager or the individual(s) with recruitment responsibility

Interviewing the HR Manager (in larger organisations) or the individual(s) responsible for recruitment in smaller organisations provides in-depth information about the policies, assessment practices, expectations and experiences of the organisation in relation to recruiting from colleges and universities.

Line Manager(s)

Interviewing the line managers of new recruits from colleges and universities provides an insight into the experiences of those working directly with these individuals on a day-to-day basis and their impact on the workplace.

Recent Recruits

In-depth interviews (or focus groups where numbers permitted) were carried out with recent recruits from colleges or universities. This provides a rich vein of information in relation to their views on:

• the recruitment and assessment practices of employers;
• entering the workplace and working with established colleagues and other new recruits;
• the ways in which individuals had been prepared by colleges and/or universities for the world of work e.g. vocational skills, employability course components, problem solving, team working etc; and
• their previous experience of work.

Figure A1: Employer Case Studies by Size

Figure A2: Employer Case Studies by Industrial Sector

Figure A3: Employer Case Studies by Type of Recruit

Figure A4: Employer Case Studies by Level of Preparedness