Exploring Job Opportunities in Marketing, Advertising and PR

Companies Surveyed Throughout the project, about 1500 companies were contacted in five different categories, altogether 306 companies responded. Advertising(64) General(60) Market Research(73) Marketing(88) PR(21) Throughout the project, we have contacted about 1500 companies through emails and telephones. Most of the companies are located within 20 miles radius of London Area We have defined these companies into five categories, advertising, general, market research, marketing and PR according to their main business. The general category includes the in-house marketing department in large organisations like banks, IT companies and financial services. Out of all these companies, altogether 306 companies have responded to our survey. We have 64 responses from advertising companies, 60 responses from general companies, 73 market research companies, 88 marketing companies and 21 PR companies.

Recruit or not recruit Here we have statistics for the recruitment situation. On the right hand side, we have the bar chart for the recruitment percentages of these five categories, we can see from the charts that market research companies tend to provide job opportunities for international students more than the other types of companies. Some of the market research companies have claimed that they are impressed by the international students numerical and analytical skills, which are one of the most important skills required to work in this field. Some marketing, advertising and PR also mentioned that they would like to have international students for the development of their overseas markets. During the research, we have all found out that most of the companies would like to offer recruitment opportunities to international graduates under IGS scheme. The companies who wouldn’t recruit graduates under IGS mentioned that the reason is because they think one year is too short a time for them to train their employee to a permanent job level. This situation should improve soon since the government announced that the IGS will be replace with a new scheme called “post study work scheme”, which would allow graduates to stay and work in the UK for up to two years.

Work experience This is the statistics for work placement according to our research. From the bar charts on right side which show the percentages, we can tell that the companies who offer work experience share a fairly high percentage among these five categories. All these companies have mentioned that they hold not restriction for international students to apply for work experience in their work experience, and they have also pointed out that work experience would be an advantage for achieving permanent job opportunities after graduation. If given the opportunities, it is very important to try out a variety of work experience before graduation. A lot of advertising, Market research Marketing and PR companies mentioned that they welcome students to send their speculative CVs to them so that they could arrange some short term work experience and work shadowing programs.

Work Permit This slides shows the result of our research on work permit’s situation. We can tell from the bar chart for the work permit percentages that the general companies are more likely to provide work permits. This is due to the fact that most of the general companies that we surveyed are multi-national companies which have overseas markets around the world. They recruit international graduates for their global business strategies. It is also the same reason why some of the advertising, market research, marketing and PR companies endeavour to recruit international graduates and apply for the work permits for them. We can also tell from the percentage chart that PR companies are least likely to provide work permits. This is partly because most of the PR companies mentioned that in order to be qualified to work in the PR section, not only it is important to have flawless English communication skills, but it is also necessary to have a proper knowledge the local cultural background in order to draw the attention of the public effectively. They think that the lack of local cultural background knowledge is an disadvantage for work in the PR field.