A landmark study maps the psychological transition from student to professional, explains Rebecca Fielding at Gradconsult.
Work-readiness continues to be a hot topic amongst student recruiters and developers, with hiring managers raising concerns across the sector - you’re far from alone.
There is no doubt that the gap between student and professional behaviour is widening – borne out in the ISE Student Development Survey 2024 where only half (49%) of members reported graduates starting work with the expected levels of career readiness.
So, what is actually going on beyond the anecdotes? And how can we shape development to address this widening gap?
In 2024 Gradconsult conducted an extensive psychological study across 15 organisations with over 1,000 students and graduates.
We mapped the shifts from student life to professional life, informed by a rigorous literature review, interviews and focus groups with over 50 early careers and HE careers professionals. The student to professional study findings are summarised below.
Reasons for the widening gap
- The rise of perfectionism as a behavioural trait amongst younger generations.
- Reduced work and life experiences during formative years due to COVID.
- The focus on ‘authenticity’ and ‘bringing your whole self to work’ in employer brand, which is not setting students up for a behavioural shift.
- Social media painting a skewed or inaccurate picture of the professional world.
- Students entering the workforce with rising expectations of personalisation and support, shaped by changes in academic learning environments.
- Hybrid working delaying learning by osmosis.
- The success of widening participation and social mobility efforts - meaning more students from diverse backgrounds are entering university life and professions.
Nine psychological shifts
Through our research we sought to break down the nebulous and opaque term of ‘work-readiness’ into clearer and easily understood psychological shifts. These have been fully validated through rigorous statistical analysis:
- Pragmatism - The transition from striving for perfection and maximising effort in education to recognising that pragmatic decisions are often required in the workplace and efficiency is paramount.
- Fortitude - The move from education, where you're encouraged to avoid failure, to the workplace, where there is rarely a single right answer, and failure is seen as an inevitable part of learning and improving.
- Task navigation - The shift from education, where tasks have clear directions, deadlines and complete information, to the workplace, where tasks are often more ambiguous, with changing deadlines and incomplete information.
- Accountability - You are moving from being mainly focused on personal experience and priorities in education to the workplace, where you are expected to contribute to broader objectives and team goals.
- Professional interaction - The transition from interacting and socialising with friends and peers in education to building professional relationships and networks in the workplace.
- Diverse collaboration - From studying with people with similar values and perspectives to working with diverse groups of people with different social, political, academic and age profiles.
- Self-assessment - The shift from education, where feedback is consistent, structured and frequent, to the workplace, where feedback may be more subjective, less structured and irregular.
- Career navigation - The transition from education, where there is a clear pathway for progression that is the same for everyone, to the workplace, where progression can be unique to the individual. The steps and timelines can vary and are not always clear.
- Self-sufficiency - Moving from the structured education environment, where plenty of help and support is available, to the workplace, where individuals may need to be more independent and self-sufficient.
Most challenging shifts to make
Of the 1,087 students, graduates and early career hires who completed the STP psychometric they self-reported:
- Pragmatism as the most challenging shift to make, scoring 27.4% lower than the average mean score across all nine shifts.
- Task navigation as the second most challenging shift to make, scoring 26.1% lower than the average mean score across all nine shifts.
Managers who completed our training also ranked the nine shifts. They reported self-sufficiency and task navigation as the shifts their early career hires were finding the most challenging to make. This suggests early career hires are less effective at self-sufficiency, and more effective at pragmatism, than they perceive.
Easiest shifts to make
Students, graduates and early career hires self-reported:
- Professional interaction as the easiest shift to make, scoring 23% above the average mean score for all nine shifts.
- Diverse collaboration as the second easiest shift to make, scoring 22.6% above the average mean score for all nine shifts.
Managers reported accountability and diverse collaboration as the shifts their early career hires were finding the easiest to make. This suggest early career hires are more effective at accountability, and less good at professional interaction, than they perceive.
Differences by group
We were pleased to discover during the data analysis that there are no statistically significant differences in mean total score (and therefore no adverse impact) by gender, ethnicity or country of origin. However, there are some notable and interesting differences within the specific shifts:
- Men rated themselves significantly higher than women on fortitude and task navigation.
- Women rated themselves significantly higher than men on diverse collaboration, career navigation and accountability.
These reflect long-standing societal gender stereotypes where men are prepared to take more risks whereas women are more focussed on taking personal responsibility for making life easier for others.
Again, when we analysed ethnicity, we observed no statistically significant difference in mean total scores (no adverse impact) between different ethnic groups. However, similar to gender, there are some significant differences between ethnicity groups at a factor level:
- Professional interaction: ‘Black, African, Caribbean or Black British’ individuals scored significantly higher than ‘White’ individuals.
- Fortitude: ‘Asian or Asian British’ and ‘Black, African, Caribbean or Black British’ individuals scored significantly higher than ‘White’ individuals.
- Pragmatism: ‘Black, African, Caribbean or Black British’ scored significantly higher than individuals in the ‘Other’ ethnic group.
- Task navigation: ‘White’ individuals scored significantly higher than ‘Black, African, Caribbean or Black British’ individuals.
- Career navigation: ‘Black, African, Caribbean or Black British’ individuals scored significantly higher than ‘White’ individuals.
This data could prove particularly helpful for professionals supporting students, or running programmes, for underrepresented groups, such a black heritage programmes or white students from areas of high deprivation. This insight could enable development content to be tailored to the specific strengths and challenges for each group.
Additional group differences:
- Those with a university degree or higher had a significantly higher total score than those that did not.
- Those already working full-time, and apprentices in the workplace, had a significantly higher score than a number of other groups (e.g. full-time students or looking for work).
- There is a strong correlation between age and a positive score in the transitional shift towards professional life. This is exactly what we would reasonably expect to see.
- There are no significant differences between STEM and non-STEM students.
This landmark study has allowed us to map the psychological transition from student to professional. Rather than conceptualising this as a binary state of ‘work-ready’ or not, we want to reframe this as a liminal, or transitional state – one which we all navigated at the start of our careers.
We each find some of the shifts more challenging to make than others, depending on our life experiences, professional experiences and familial background.
By identifying these shifts, we are now able to normalise, validate and demystify them for everyone, enabling more objective and constructive dialogue and development intervention at this critical career transition stage.
Gradconsult will share more insight on the Student to Professional research at the forthcoming ISE Student Development Conference.