EMPLOYABILITY STRATEGIES USED BY CREATIVE INDUSTRIES … · Creative tertiary graduates often use a variety of personal and professional approaches, known as employability strategies,

EMPLOYABILITY STRATEGIES USED BY

CREATIVE INDUSTRIES GRADUATES

Ellen Jennifer Louise Nielsen

Bachelor of Business [Human Resource Management] Bachelor of Creative Industries (Honours) [Media and Communication]

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

School of Management

QUT Business School

Queensland University of Technology

2019

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Keywords

Careers

Creative Industries

Education-to-work transition

Employability

Employability strategies

Employment

Graduate employability

Graduates

Higher Education

Higher Education Institutions

University

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Abstract

Concerns about graduate employability have been central to the higher education agenda in

Australia and globally. Yet policy and theory in this field remain largely focused on job-

related skills, knowledge, and capabilities, and graduate employability is often measured

solely by graduates’ initial employment outcomes. Little empirical research has explored the

nuanced ways that graduates develop employability and secure employment in the context of

challenges in the contemporary youth labour market. The contours of work are changing

rapidly and graduates who are not equipped with the strategies required to adapt to and

navigate the competitive and fast-changing world of work may struggle to obtain and

maintain employment.

Creative tertiary graduates often use a variety of personal and professional approaches,

known as employability strategies, to prepare for and gain creative employment. While

completing a higher education degree is itself one employability strategy, other strategies

include undertaking work experience or internships, participating in personal development

programs, building professional and personal connections through networking, and creating

public portfolios of work. These strategies are undertaken in the context of significant

challenges in creative labour markets. Creative careers are considered inherently precarious,

in that they are characterised by above average participation in contract, freelance, and part-

time work and self-employment. Creative workers are also known to experience recurring

periods of unemployment and underemployment. Employment rates for creative graduates

are amongst the lowest of all industries in Australia. Analysis of how creative graduates

navigate these challenges and secure employment is required to assist creative graduates to

successfully navigate early career transitions, as well as to inform appropriate government,

tertiary education, and industry policy and practice.

This PhD research utilises a mixed methods approach, integrating analysis of secondary

quantitative survey data (N=322) and qualitative interview data (N=30) collected from recent

creative graduates in Australia to examine the early career experiences of graduates from a

selection of creative disciplines. The research provides new and significant insights into three

existing knowledge gaps: the personal and structural factors that shape creative graduates’

early careers; how creative graduates evaluate, select, and use employability strategies during

their early careers; and the relationship between employability strategies and graduate

employment outcomes.

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The findings revealed that the nature of the sampled creative graduates’ early career

trajectories was complex and the nature of their early career pathways was explained by

multiple factors. Graduates’ career decisions and employment outcomes were influenced and

shaped by a range of personal and structural factors, including a graduate’s creative

discipline, the prevalence and contours of employment opportunities in the specific labour

market to which they aspired, and the extent of social support and networks available to the

graduate. Graduates used employability strategies for four main purposes – professional and

personal development, work exposure, industry engagement, and job seeking – to fulfil the

primary concern of securing employment in the short-term. The findings of this thesis also

revealed that the education-to-work transitions of creative graduates are characterised by a

tightly woven combination of personal and structural factors that work symbiotically to

influence graduates’ employment outcomes within their specific creative discipline.

While the results of this thesis are most significant for graduates in the specific creative

disciplines studied, this research also has significant implications for several stakeholder

groups, including students and graduates, educators, policy makers, and industry

representatives and groups. For creative students and graduates, the findings of this research

may inform the adoption of particular, empirically-informed employability and career

development strategies. These findings should encourage educators and employers to provide

more effective support and guidance initiatives for graduates as they move through their early

careers. The research also highlights the need for future employability theory and policy to

more substantially acknowledge the effect of labour market factors on graduate employability

strategies and graduate employment within creative labour markets.

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Table of Contents

Keywords ................................................................................................................................... i

Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... ii

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................... iv

List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... ix

List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ x

Statement of Original Authorship ...................................................................................... xiii

Publications .......................................................................................................................... xiii

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ xv

Chapter 1 : Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH ..................................................................................... 1

1.2 CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH ............................................................................................... 3

1.2.1 Creative industries context ..................................................................................................... 3

1.2.2 Australian context .................................................................................................................. 5

1.3 SIGNIFICANCE AND SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH ............................................................... 5

1.3.1 Contribution to knowledge and significance of the research ................................................. 5

1.3.2 Research Aims ....................................................................................................................... 6

1.3.3 Research Questions ................................................................................................................ 7

1.3.4 Methodology and research design .......................................................................................... 7

1.3.5 Definitions .............................................................................................................................. 8

1.3.6 Key term – The Creative Industries ....................................................................................... 8

1.4 THESIS OUTLINE ....................................................................................................................... 8

Chapter 2 : Employability and the Creative Industries ..................................................... 11

2.1 EMPLOYABILITY .................................................................................................................... 11

2.1.1 Introduction to Employability .............................................................................................. 11

2.1.2 Employability in the 1980’s ................................................................................................. 12

2.1.3 Employability in the 1990s .................................................................................................. 14

2.1.4 Employability in the 21st century ......................................................................................... 16

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2.1.5 Critiquing the employability discourse ................................................................................ 17

2.1.6 Moving toward a more holistic understanding of employability ......................................... 20

2.1.7 Influences on 21st century definitions of employability ....................................................... 26

2.2. EMPLOYABILITY IN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES ........................................................ 31

2.2.1 The Creative Trident ............................................................................................................ 32

2.2.2 Labour market characteristics for creative workers ............................................................. 33

2.2.3 Influences on employability in the creative industries ......................................................... 35

2.3 CHAPTER SUMMARY ............................................................................................................. 39

Chapter 3 : Education-to-work transitions and graduates’ use of employability strategies ................................................................................................................................. 41

3.1 EDUCATION-TO-WORK TRANSITIONS .............................................................................. 41

3.1.1 Defining education-to-work transitions ............................................................................... 41

3.1.2 Existing research – Young peoples’ experiences of education-to-work transitions ............ 42

3.1.3 Education-to-work transitions in the creative industries ...................................................... 44

3.2 EMPLOYABILITY STRATEGIES ........................................................................................... 47

3.2.1 Defining employability strategies ........................................................................................ 47

3.2.2 How graduates use employability strategies ........................................................................ 49

3.2.3 How creative industries graduates use employability strategies .......................................... 52

3.3 GAPS IN THE RESEARCH ....................................................................................................... 52

3.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY ............................................................................................................. 54

Chapter 4 : Methods, Methodology and Research Design ................................................. 55

4.1 RESEARCH PARADIGM: CRITICAL REALISM .................................................................. 55

4.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: MIXED METHODS APPROACH ...................................... 56

4.3 RESEARCH DESIGN: QUANTITATIVE STUDY .................................................................. 58

4.3.1 Sample .................................................................................................................................. 58

4.3.2 Measures .............................................................................................................................. 60

4.3.3 Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 61

4.3.4 Strategies for ensuring rigour of the quantitative methods .................................................. 64

4.4 RESEARCH DESIGN: QUALITATIVE STUDY ..................................................................... 65

4.4.1 Sample .................................................................................................................................. 66

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4.4.2 Recruitment procedure ......................................................................................................... 68

4.4.3 Participants ........................................................................................................................... 71

4.4.4 Interview procedure ............................................................................................................. 72

4.4.5 Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 73

4.4.6 Strategies for ensuring rigour of the qualitative methods .................................................... 75

4.5 CHAPTER SUMMARY ............................................................................................................. 75

Chapter 5 : Survey findings: Creative industries graduates’ early career outcomes and use of employability strategies .............................................................................................. 77

5.1 RESEARCH METHODS AND QUESTIONS ........................................................................... 77

5.1.1 Stage one of the analysis ...................................................................................................... 77

5.1.2 Stage two of the analysis ...................................................................................................... 78

5.2 RESULTS ................................................................................................................................... 79

5.2.1 Stage one of the quantitative analysis: Analysing creative graduates’ career outcomes ..... 79

5.2.2 Stage two of the quantitative analysis: Analysing graduates’ use of employability strategies ...................................................................................................................................................... 92

5.3 CHAPTER DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................ 112

5.3.1 What shapes the education-to-work transitions of creative graduates? ............................. 112

5.3.2 What employability strategies do creative industries graduates use and how do they use them during education-to-work transitions? ............................................................................... 113

5.3.3 How effective are the employability strategies used by creative industries graduates for securing them employment during their education-to-work transitions? .................................... 114

5.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... 115

Chapter 6 : Interview findings: How Creative Industries graduates use employability strategies ............................................................................................................................... 117

6.1 RESEARCH METHODS AND QUESTIONS ......................................................................... 117

6.2 RESULTS ................................................................................................................................. 118

6.2.1 Theme 1: Professional and personal development ............................................................. 119

6.2.2 Theme 2: Work Exposure .................................................................................................. 126

6.2.3 Theme 3: Industry engagement .......................................................................................... 134

6.2.4 Theme 4: Job seeking ......................................................................................................... 141

6.3 CHAPTER DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................ 149

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6.3.1 What employability strategies do creative industries graduates use and how do they use them during education-to-work transitions? ............................................................................... 149

6.3.2 How effective are the employability strategies used by creative industries graduates for securing them employment during their education-to-work transitions? .................................... 151

6.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... 152

Chapter 7 : Interview findings: The structural issues which shaped Creative Industries graduates’ education-to-work transitions.......................................................................... 153

7.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODS ......................................................................... 153

7.2 RESULTS ................................................................................................................................. 153

7.2.1. Fluidity: The need to be flexible in envisioning creative career futures ........................... 154

7.2.2 Precarity: Navigating careers in the creative labour market .............................................. 156

7.2.3 Money: The inescapable need for financial income .......................................................... 160

7.2.4 Personal connections and professional networks: It takes a community to build a career 164

7.2.5 Career management training: A necessity for pursuing creative careers ........................... 167

7.3 CHAPTER SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... 169

Chapter 8 : Discussion – Challenging existing approaches to employability for the context of the Creative Industries ...................................................................................... 171

8.1 TENSIONS IN THE LOGIC OF EMPLOYABILITY MESSAGES RECEIVED BY CREATIVE GRADUATES ............................................................................................................ 171

8.1.1 Employability versus employment: Deciphering the mixed messages .............................. 171

8.1.2 Mixed messages around employability in the creative industries ...................................... 172

8.1.3 The need for theory to acknowledge structural influences on employability .................... 174

8.2 THE CHALLENGE OF EMPLOYABILITY DEVELOPMENT WITHIN THE PRECARIOUS CREATIVE LABOUR MARKET .................................................................................................. 175

8.3 CAREER SUPPORT DURING DEGREE PROGRAMS: THE NEED FOR GREATER INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSES TO THE FRAMING AND DEVELOPMENT OF EMPLOYABILITY FOR CREATIVE GRADUATES .................................................................. 178

8.3.1 Career management challenges faced by creative graduates ............................................. 178

8.3.2 A call to action for Higher Education Institutions ............................................................. 179

8.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... 182

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Chapter 9 : Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 185

9.1 RESEARCH AIMS ................................................................................................................... 185

9.2 SUMMARY OF RESEARCH FINDINGS .............................................................................. 186

9.3 ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE ................................................................ 189

9.4 IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH .................................................................................. 191

9.4.1 Implications for graduates, students, and workers ............................................................. 191

9.4.2 Implications for educators and institutions ........................................................................ 191

9.4.3 Implications for employers and industry ........................................................................... 193

9.4.4 Implications for employability and employment policy .................................................... 193

9.5 LIMITATIONS OF THE METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH DESIGN ........................... 194

9.5.1 Limitations of the quantitative methods ............................................................................. 194

9.5.2 Limitations of the qualitative methods ............................................................................... 195

9.6 FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF THE RESEARCH ...................................................................... 195

References ............................................................................................................................. 199

Appendices ............................................................................................................................ 219

Appendix A: Copy of 2013/14 Creative Pathways: Australian Creative Graduate Careers Survey ........................................................................................................................................................ 219

Appendix B: Recruitment flyer ....................................................................................................... 227

Appendix C: Interview guide and demographic questionnaire ....................................................... 229

Appendix D: Interview participants’ job information ..................................................................... 235

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List of Figures

Figure 2.1: Comparison of educator, employer, and graduate perceptions of graduate capabilities (Wickramasinghe & Perera, 2010) ....................................................................... 18

Figure 2.2: Knight & Yorke's (2003a) USEM Model of Employability ................................. 22

Figure 2.3: Fugate et al.’s (2004) Model of Employability ..................................................... 23

Figure 2.4: Dacre Pool and Sewell’s (2007) Model of Employability .................................... 24

Figure 6.1: Employability strategies grouped by underlying motivations ............................. 118

Figure 6.2: Graduates’ use of individual employability strategies during their education-to-work transitions ...................................................................................................................... 150

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List of Tables

Table 4.1: Survey sample by discipline ................................................................................... 59

Table 4.2: Description of variables used in the quantitative analyses ..................................... 60

Table 4.3: Overview of participant demographic information ................................................ 71

Table 4.4: Example of coding process used in analysing the interview data .......................... 75

Table 5.1: Descriptive data analysis results – Creative graduates’ early career outcomes ...... 81

Table 5.2: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for the full sample (N=322) ....................................................................................................................... 83

Table 5.3: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for male graduates (N=72) ..................................................................................................................... 84

Table 5.4: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for female graduates (N=235) ................................................................................................................... 85

Table 5.5: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for Visual graduates (N=37) ..................................................................................................................... 87

Table 5.6: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for Literary graduates (N=68) ..................................................................................................................... 87

Table 5.7: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for Performance graduates (N=131) .............................................................................................. 87

Table 5.8: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for Music graduates (N=33) ..................................................................................................................... 88

Table 5.9: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for Film, TV, New Media graduates (N=53) .................................................................................................. 88

Table 5.10: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for 2007 graduates (N=41) ..................................................................................................................... 90




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Table 5.16: Descriptive data analysis results – Employability strategies used by the graduates.................................................................................................................................................. 93

Table 5.17: Non-parametric statistical testing results – Employability strategies by objective career outcome measures (Full sample, N=322) ..................................................................... 94

Table 5.18: Type of double degree undertaken alongside their creative degree (N=59) ......... 95

Table 5.19: Type of subsequent tertiary education completed/currently undertaken by graduates subsequent to their creative undergraduate degree (N=122) ................................... 96

Table 5.20: Discipline of subsequent tertiary education completed/currently undertaken by creative arts graduates subsequent to their creative arts degree (N=122) ................................ 97

Table 5.21: Type of formal education/training outside university undertaken by the graduates in the 12 months prior to the survey (N=113) ......................................................................... 98

Table 5.22: Type of formal job seeking strategy used (N=203) .............................................. 99

Table 5.23: Type of informal job seeking strategy used (N=225) ......................................... 100

Table 5.24: Type of work creation strategy used (N=126) .................................................... 101

Table 5.25: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Males, N=72) ......................................................................................... 103

Table 5.26: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Females, N=235) .................................................................................... 103

Table 5.27: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Visual, N=37) ......................................................................................... 105

Table 5.28: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Literary, N=68) ...................................................................................... 105

Table 5.29: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Performance, N=131) ............................................................................. 106

Table 5.30: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Music, N=33) ......................................................................................... 106

Table 5.31: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by objective and subjective career outcome measures (Film, TV, New Media, N=53) ............................. 107

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Table 5.32: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by objective career outcome measures (2007, N=41) ................................................................................ 109






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Statement of Original Authorship

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for

an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and

belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person

except where due reference is made.

Signature: QUT Verified Signature

Date: 2 September 2019

Publications

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The following scholarly publications emerged from this PhD:

Conference papers (full paper refereed)

Nielsen, E. Bridgstock, R. & McDonald, P. (2018). The unique value of Creative Arts higher

education for preparing graduates for work. In D. Wache and D. Houston (Eds.),

Research and Development in Higher Education: (Re)Valuing Higher Education, 41

(pp 162 - 171) . Adelaide, Australia, 2-5 July 2018.

Conference presentations (abstract refereed)

Nielsen, E. (2018). The challenges of identifying and recruiting university graduates for

research interviews in lieu of institutional alumni data. Presented at the 41st Higher

Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) Annual

International Conference. Adelaide Convention Centre, Adelaide, July 2018.

Nielsen, E. & Bridgstock, R. (2018). How objective and subjective career success shapes the

early career trajectories of Creative Arts graduates. Presented at the Association of

Cultural Economics International (ACEI) Conference. RMIT, Melbourne, June 2018.

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Acknowledgements

Although it can often appear to be from the outside, this thesis represents three and a half

years which were by no means easy. While there have certainly been enjoyable and fulfilling

moments, there has been an equal number of moments where I could have easily have given

up if not for the support of those around me.

Without a doubt, I could not have produced this thesis without the unwavering support of my

supervisors Professor Paula McDonald and Professor Abby Cathcart. Thank you for being the

exact opposite of the supervisor horror stories that are enshrined in PhD folklore. From your

patience with my first drafts, which were always of questionable quality, to always making

yourselves available despite your busy schedules and championing me to others, I cannot

thank you enough.

My gratitude also goes to Professor Ruth Bridgstock, for supervising me in my first year, for

sharing your data, and for believing that I had the capability to learn and understand

regression, even though that didn’t make it into the final thesis.

Thank you to Dr Kathy Moore and Professor Greg Hearn for the invaluable feedback you

provided as members of both my Confirmation and Final Seminar panels.

To my QUT friends and colleagues for all your personal and professional support, and insight

into the PhD process, over the past four years, I am forever grateful: Nino Miletovic, Daniel

Padua, Tess Van Hemert, Morag Kobez, Jarrod Walczer, Mark Piccini, Katherine Kirkwood,

Aljosha Karim Schapals, Ella Chorazy, Tim Highfield, Abby Winter, Penny Williams, and

Melinda Laundon.

Thank you to all who provided me with teaching and Research Assistant work during my

candidature – Abby, Dan, Tess, Judith Smith, Jason Sternberg – it was often a welcome

reprieve from the labours of my thesis.

I would like to acknowledge that this research was supported by an Australian Government

Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

I would also like to thank professional editor, Kylie Morris, who provided copyediting and

proofreading services, according to university-endorsed guidelines and the Australian

Standards for editing research theses.

xvi

To my family and friends, thank you for always asking how I was going even when you

honestly had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. Sometimes that wasn’t clear to

me either, but I look forward to all of you being able to call me Doctor for real now.

To Tom, you truly have no idea how much you contributed to the last 18 months of this

journey being bearable. Thank you for cooking me dinner so often and for being a calming

presence amidst my stress. Now hurry up and finish your thesis so our weekends can be work

free.

Lastly, to Mum, who will finally get to see me walk across that stage in the floppy red hat.

You better get a good photo because I’m only doing this once.

Chapter 1 | Page 1

Chapter 1 : Introduction

This chapter introduces the thesis and describes the background and context. The purpose of

this study is to build new knowledge about employability strategies used by a group of people

for whom employability and careers are particularly challenging and precarious – creative

industries (CI) higher education graduates. This chapter outlines the study’s significance and

scope, and introduces the research questions and research design and methodology that

guided this research. Finally, this chapter provides an overview of the remaining chapters of

this thesis.

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH

This thesis is situated within the broad landscape of the dynamic contemporary labour

market. Globalisation trends have caused rapid change across labour markets, not only in

industries known to be precarious, such as the creative industries, but also across industries

that have traditionally offered more stable career pathways, such as law and nursing (Fenton

& Dermott, 2006; Bradley & Devadason, 2008). Labour markets are increasingly impacted

by credential inflation, increased expectations from employers, and a reliance on overseas

workers as a solution for addressing skills gaps within domestic labour markets (Haukka,

2011). Shifts consistent with the notion of the ‘future world of work’ have also dominated

media headlines, as well as research and policy agendas in recent years (Foundation for

Young Australians, 2015; J. Brown et al., 2017; UK CES, 2018). For example, the potential

impacts of automation on job design and career pathways is a recurrent topic of debate in the

public sphere (Autor, 2015; Florance & Partland, 2015; Organisation for Economic

Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2018).

A recent report from the World Economic Forum (2018) suggested that by 2022, “the skills

required to perform most jobs will have shifted significantly” and “no less than 54% of all

employees will require significant re- and up-skilling” (p. ix). Previous studies have also

shown that when workers have lost employment as a result of labour market disruption,

“between 20% and 70% change occupation or industry” altogether (Bakhshi, Downing,

Osborne, & Schneider, 2017, p. 19; OECD, 2012), making skills such as career development

and career adaptability highly valuable capabilities for workers to possess (Tomlinson, 2017).

Careers for new market entrants, particularly higher education graduates, are thought to be

profoundly affected by these labour market transformations. Though labour markets have

Chapter 1 | Page 2

been experiencing a continual period of change for decades, the graduate labour market has

been especially impacted. Graduates are often disproportionately affected by changing

opportunities in the labour market because lower-level positions are more likely to be subject

to variations in expectations and availability (Fenton & Dermott, 2006; Ross, 2008) and

graduates often lack the sophisticated professional and personal experience and opportunities

required to effectively navigate the changing labour market (Buckham, 1998; Bradley &

Devadason, 2008; Grant-Smith & McDonald, 2015). In Australia, young people are predicted

to have 17 different employers across five different careers during their working lives

(McCrindle Research, 2014). The contours of work are changing rapidly and graduates who

are not equipped with the strategies required to adapt to and navigate the competitive and

fast-changing world of work, particularly during their initial post-graduation years, may

struggle to obtain and maintain employment (Confederation of British Industry, 2015).

This study is guided by the theoretical perspective of employability, graduate employability

in particular. Broadly conceptualised, employability represents an individual’s capabilities,

skills, and knowledge – both discipline-specific and transferable – relative to the industry in

which they are seeking employment (Cremin, 2009; Kinash, Crane, Judd, & Knight, 2016).

Employability is affected by factors external to individuals, such as the state of a country’s

economy, workplace trends, government policy, and how formal education is linked to the

labour market (Ball, 2003; Haukka, 2011). Graduate employability continues to be a central

concern in higher education globally and in Australia (Baker, 2017; Busby, 2018; Singhal,

2018; Universities Australia, 2016) as evidenced by institutions increasingly marketing

themselves to prospective students on the employability of their graduates (McCowan, 2015;

University of Sydney, 2018; UNSW Sydney, 2017; University of Queensland, 2018).

However, the employability agenda remains largely focused on job-related skills, knowledge,

and capabilities (Bakhshi et al., 2017; Foundation for Young Australians, 2017; Molla &

Cuthbert, 2015) and graduate employability is often measured solely by graduates’

employment outcomes, particularly whether they have achieved full-time employment within

a year of graduation (Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching [QILT], 2018). In

Australia, this intense focus on graduate employability across the higher education sector is

strongly influenced by a performance-based government funding model that allocates funding

on the basis of graduate outcomes, particularly employment (Daniels & Brooker, 2014).

In reality, it is possible “to be employable but not in employment”, because job-related skills

and knowledge make up only one part of what it means to have employability (P. Brown,

Chapter 1 | Page 3

Hesketh, & Williams, 2003, p. 122). Though it is essential to have skills and knowledge that

are relevant to work, workers must also be able to engage in the process of finding and

obtaining suitable work (Fugate, Kinicki, & Ashforth, 2004; Hager, Holland, & Becket, 2002;

Hillage & Pollard, 1998). Given the competitiveness of the contemporary labour market, it is

therefore not surprising that finding and securing employment remains a key concern for

many young adults in Australia (BDO Australia, 2015). While there have been calls for

increased focus on career development guidance within higher education (OECD, 2017;

Richardson, Bennett, & Roberts, 2016), little empirical research has been conducted that

explores the nuances of how graduates actually find and secure employment amongst the

challenges of the contemporary labour market. To provide future higher education graduates

with useful career education and inform higher education and government policy, more must

be known about how recent graduates have developed careers in the face of the many labour

market challenges they experienced. In doing so, this study incorporates graduates’ individual

perspectives while also providing rich insight into the structural dimensions that impact on

employability and employment.

My interest in this particular area was born from my own experiences of struggling to secure

employment as a graduate in late 2014. From my perspective, I was doing everything that

was supposed to help me obtain employment – I had broadened my skills through a double

degree, I had undertaken work experience (both paid and unpaid), I tailored job applications

to the specific job advertisement. However, I was unsuccessful in securing work until a

personal connection offered me a tutoring job. After all the career development advice I had

received, how I secured that initial post-graduation job was as much related to me being at

the top of someone else’s mind when there was work available as it was to steps I had

personally taken to develop my employability. Though this study is born from my personal

struggles, a review of the literature made the need for more research in this space apparent.

My primary motivation for pursuing this field was therefore born from a desire to provide

insights that reflect the reality of graduate employability and the combination of personal and

structural factors that shape graduate employment opportunities.

1.2 CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH

1.2.1 Creative industries context

‘Creative industries’ is a term adopted by the majority of Australian and UK universities to

collectively describe a range of disciplines from traditional artistic disciplines through to

Chapter 1 | Page 4

business and technology (Bridgstock, 2011; Levickaitė, 2011). The UK Government

Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS) (2001) definition of the creative

industries is one of the most well-known and enduring definitions. It defines the creative

industries as “those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent

and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and

exploitation of intellectual property” (DCMS, 2001, p.5). This definition encompasses 13

disciplines: advertising, architecture, art & antiques market, crafts, design, designer fashion,

film & video, interactive leisure software, music, performing arts, publishing, software &

computer services, and television & radio (DCMS, 2001). Disciplines that have more recently

been included in definitions of the creative industries include marketing and public relations

and digital content production (Bridgstock et al., 2015).

The creative labour market has several characteristics that present challenges to graduates

who aspire to find and maintain employment in creative fields. Creative careers are

considered inherently precarious, which means they are known to involve above average

participation in contract, freelance, and part-time work and self-employment (Comunian,

Faggian, & Jewell, 2014), as well as “chronic unemployment and underemployment” for

certain creative workers (Bridgstock et al., 2015, p. 2). Portfolio careers, where workers hold

multiple jobs simultaneously, are common, and more often than not result in creative workers

holding a variety of creative and non-creative roles (Ashton, 2015a). Similarly, creative

careers are more likely to have a non-linear structure than careers in other industries, because

creative work often emerges from informal networks and the development of new projects

(Daniel & Daniel, 2015; Lingo & Tepper, 2013) rather than through a “long term

employment relationship with a single employer” (Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015, p. 263).

Creative industries also differ significantly from other industries in that creative careers and

pathways “are not institutionally or occupationally determined”; thus, aspiring creative

workers must also be highly entrepreneurial in navigating the labour market (Haukka, 2011,

p. 43). Creative graduates were therefore selected as the focal sample for this study because

analysing how creative graduates navigate the already precarious and unstable creative labour

market may produce findings of value, not only to creative graduates, but also graduates

pursuing work in other industries that are becoming increasingly precarious, such as law and

nursing (Buckham, 1998; Knight & Yorke, 2003b; Lingo & Tepper, 2013).

Chapter 1 | Page 5

1.2.2 Australian context

Australia was considered an ideal context in which to investigate the early career experiences

of creative graduates for several reasons. Policy initiatives by the Australian Government to

increase the number of people achieving a tertiary qualification over the next 15 years have

directly increased the number of people pursuing higher education in the creative industries

(Daniel & Daniel, 2015). This is despite the belief that practical experience seems to be

valued more highly than a qualification for preparing young people for creative work for

many creative disciplines in Australia (Bennett, 2009). Therefore, tensions exist around

employability strategies in the creative labour market, although these have remained largely

unexplored from an empirical perspective. The increase in people pursuing higher education

in creative disciplines in Australia has also led to an oversupply of creative graduates seeking

creative employment (Bridgstock et al., 2015), and full-time employment rates for creative

graduates are consistently amongst the lowest of all industries in Australia (Graduate Careers

Australia Ltd, 2014; QILT, 2018). In the most recent Australian graduate employment

figures, creative graduates had the lowest full-time employment rates, with only 53% of the

2017 cohort of creative graduates in full-time employment in 2018 compared to 72% of all

graduates (QILT 2018). This environment makes for a particularly interesting context in

which to explore how creative graduates use employability strategies. Additionally, a

growing body of creative careers literature in Australia, led by Bridgstock (2011, 2013, and

2015), Bennett (2009, 2015), and Daniel and Daniel (2015), laid significant groundwork for

this particular study.

1.3 SIGNIFICANCE AND SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH

1.3.1 Contribution to knowledge and significance of the research

The key contribution of this study is building new knowledge on a topic that is increasingly

important in relation to education to work transitions for young Australians, but has not yet

attracted significant attention from researchers: graduates’ use of employability strategies.

Previous research into employability strategies has rarely been conducted from a

comprehensive or holistic perspective. Where studies have sought to investigate how

graduates use employability strategies, the analysis is often descriptive rather than

explanatory or focused on only a single type of strategy, such as unpaid work or job seeking

strategies. Thus, there is a need for research that examines the full breadth of employability

Chapter 1 | Page 6

strategies that graduates use and how these align with the broader context of graduate career

trajectories.

This study is especially significant for the chosen subject group – CI higher education

graduates – because these graduates often pursue career pathways that are precarious and

challenging, thereby requiring that aspiring creative workers possess well developed career

management capabilities. However, this study is also significant for graduates more

generally. Although the existing literature suggests that most graduates, creative or otherwise,

will eventually secure some kind of employment post-graduation from their undergraduate

degree, analysing how previous graduates have used employability strategies will help

current and future graduates to better prepare for the challenges they face as new entrants to

the labour market. This contribution is particularly salient when considering that a greater

number of graduates enter the labour market each year. The findings of this study will also be

relevant to a range of other stakeholders, including educators, employers, and policy makers.

More broadly, this study contributes to the employability and employment literature. Not

only does the research build new knowledge about employability strategies, doing so

highlights the gaps in existing conceptualisations of employability. In particular, most

existing conceptualisations downplay the impact of labour market factors in what makes a

graduate employable and how graduates come to be employed. The literature is clear about

the capabilities that graduates should possess if they want to improve their chances of

achieving labour market success; however, more must be known about how graduates

actually secure employment and the factors that influence their success or otherwise in order

to understand graduate employability on a deeper level. This study is also innovative in its

research design and methods. Few academic studies in the field of graduate employability

and graduate career trajectories have triangulated data collected through quantitative and

qualitative methods in a deliberate attempt to not only describe patterns of employability

strategies and outcomes, but also explain how and why they come about.

1.3.2 Research Aims

The principle aim of this study is to address the knowledge gaps relevant to the process

through which graduates secure employment and build careers as they transition between

higher education and work. There is a need for more research that explores the nuanced

dynamics of education-to-work transitions, including how they are experienced by higher

education graduates (see Section 4.3). As discussed in the previous section, there is a need to

Chapter 1 | Page 7

understand how graduates use employability strategies to find work and build careers. The

research is therefore guided by three specific aims. First, this research examines the structural

and personal factors that shape creative graduates’ early careers. Second, this research

investigates the specific employability strategies that higher education graduates use during

their early careers, where they learn about them, and the decision-making processes that

guide how they evaluate and select strategies in pursuit of their employment and career goals.

Third, this research explores the relationship between employability strategies and

employment outcomes for graduates to evaluate the potential for employability strategies to

result in graduate employment. In fulfilling these aims, this study seeks to deliver

empirically-based, practical insights that will directly assist current and future creative

graduates to better prepare to engage in the development and management of their own

careers.

1.3.3 Research Questions

The research addresses three overarching questions:

1. What shapes the education-to-work transitions of creative industries graduates?

2. What employability strategies do creative industries graduates use and how do they

use them during education-to-work transitions?

3. How effective are the employability strategies used by creative industries graduates

for securing employment during education-to-work transitions?

1.3.4 Methodology and research design

This study is guided by a critical realist approach (see Chapter 4). Critical realism allows for

individuals to have different experiences within the same social world (Fletcher, 2017). This

is a perspective that aligns with both the concept of employability and the study of graduate

career trajectories. Critical realism also encourages researchers to look beyond purely

empirical events to also consider the underlying causalities and power structures that

influence social experiences (O’Mahoney & Vincent, 2014; Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill,

2012), and is therefore well suited to a research study that seeks to explore the various factors

that affect the early career trajectories of creative graduates. A mixed methods approach was

selected for this study because it enables a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the

Chapter 1 | Page 8

phenomenon to be revealed. All three research questions introduced in the previous section

are addressed through the quantitative survey and interview study.

1.3.5 Definitions

Three key concepts are referred to throughout this thesis, for which there are many and varied

definitions within the existing literature. For the purposes of this study, the following

definitions have been adopted:

Education-to-work transition: participants’ experiences from the beginning of their

creative undergraduate degree to five years post-graduating from that creative

undergraduate degree.

Employability: an individual’s continued relevancy and fitness for work (Cremin,

2009; Kinash, Crane, Judd, & Knight, 2016).

Graduates: people who have graduated from a higher education institution (e.g.,

university).

1.3.6 Key term – The Creative Industries

The data analysed in this thesis reflects graduate experiences from targeted creative

disciplines encompassed within the broader creative industries (as introduced in Section

1.2.1). In extant research, the creative industries are often characterised as a whole, even

where a single study focuses on a subset of all creative disciplines. Likewise, where the term

‘creative industries’ is used in this thesis, it refers to the broader context in which the

graduate sample worked and sought employment, regardless of their individual discipline.

Where applicable, or where data or previous research is available to support it, reference is

also made to specific creative disciplines.

1.4 THESIS OUTLINE

This chapter, Chapter 1, introduced the research topic and described the background and

context of the study. Chapter 1 also outlined the study’s significance and scope and

introduced the research questions, research design, and methodology that shape the study.

Chapter 2 contains the first part of this thesis’ review of existing literature. This chapter

focuses on the concept of employability, providing a thorough review of various perspectives

and models of employability and critically reflecting on how these perspectives have evolved

Chapter 1 | Page 9

over time. Chapter 2 also considers employability within the specific context of the creative

industries and presents a summary of career patterns and the characteristics of work

experienced by those who pursue employment in the creative industries.

Chapter 3 contains the second part of this thesis’ literature review, and focuses on the labour

market experiences of graduates, both in general and specific to the creative industries. The

first part of this chapter reviews existing literature relevant to education-to-work transitions

and how graduates have experienced these. The second part of Chapter 3 defines and

identifies employability strategies before reflecting upon how graduates have used these

strategies when building their careers in the past. The final part of Chapter 3 identifies key

knowledge gaps in the existing literature that this research study seeks to address.

Chapter 4 describes the research design and methodology used in this research, including the

ontological and methodological paradigms that shaped the study and the specific design of

the quantitative and qualitative stages of the study.

Chapter 5 presents the analysis and findings from the quantitative stage of the study. The

chapter explores the personal factors that shaped the early careers of a sample of creative

industries higher education graduates in Australia from a quantitative perspective. The

findings in Chapter 5 also cover how creative graduates’ use of employability strategies are

associated with their early career employment outcomes.

Chapters 6 and 7 present the analysis and findings from the qualitative stage of the study,

drawing upon data collected through individual interviews with recent creative industries

higher education graduates from a single Australian metropolitan city. As with the previous

chapter, this stage of the study addresses all three of the overarching research questions.

Chapter 6 addresses the second and third research question: how the graduates used

employability strategies, while also reflecting on the relative effectiveness of those strategies

for assisting the graduates to secure employment. Chapter 7 addresses the first research

question, considering the structural factors that shape creative graduates’ education-to-work

transitions.

Consistent with the study’s convergent study design, Chapter 8 brings together the

qualitative and quantitative analysis presented in Chapters 5, 6, and 7. It presents key insights

from the results, including how the research supports or challenges extant literature relevant

to graduate employability and employment.

Chapter 1 | Page 10

Chapter 9 concludes this thesis by reflecting upon the aims of the research; the theoretical

implications of the research; the implications for various stakeholders, including graduates

and educators; and the limitations of the methodology and research design. Finally, Chapter 9

provides suggestions for future research directions.

Chapter 2 | Page 11

Chapter 2 : Employability and the Creative Industries

This chapter presents the first part of this thesis’ literature review, reviewing the existing

literature that addresses theory and research about graduate employability, with an emphasis

on the creative labour market. Section 2.1 considers historical perspectives on the concept of

‘employability’ and how these historical perspectives have influenced contemporary

understandings of the concept. This section also considers how definitions and

conceptualisations of employability have been shaped and continue to be shaped by several

factors, including labour market trends, government policy, and economic realities, as well as

how formal education is linked to labour market opportunities. This review also considers

key criticisms of contemporary definitions of employability, particularly in relation to

graduates of higher education. Section 2.2 considers employability within the creative labour

market, the labour market issues unique to these fields, and how these issues affect aspiring

creative workers.

2.1 EMPLOYABILITY

This section of the literature review places employability in a historical context by exploring

the changing ways that employability has been conceptualised over the past three decades

and what has shaped these changes. This not only contextualises how and why contemporary

understandings of employability have been developed over time, but also considers how these

developments have shaped labour markets and the experiences of graduates.

2.1.1 Introduction to Employability

First appearing in employment and labour market literature around the mid-19th century, the

term ‘employability’ was popularised in the mid-20th century as a way of conceptualising

individuals’ labour market experiences. Since then, many conceptualisations of the term have

been developed in order to reflect the employment trends and labour markets of the time

(Moreau & Leathwood, 2006). While conceptualisations of employability can, and perhaps

should, be understood relative to a particular industry or job, key conceptualisations have

attempted to define employability in terms of the labour market as a whole in order to provide

a general framework to guide common trajectories between education and work. Academics

and researchers from the United Kingdom have played a key role in influencing and shaping

this employability literature, particularly as it relates to the Western world (Boden & Nedeva,

2010). As such, early definitions of employability reflected employment practices common

Chapter 2 | Page 12

across the UK up until the mid-20th century. To have employability meant being able to meet

the criteria for being employable, after which employers often provided further training

relevant to their industry or organisation. Depending on the industry, these basic criteria

could range from holding a qualification for a particular job (e.g., a doctor) to simply living

in a particular area and being physically capable of work (e.g., working in a factory)

(Chertkovskaya, Watt, Tramer, & Spoelstra, 2013).

As labour markets have become more complex and globalised over the past 50 years, the

ways in which employability is understood and communicated have changed to reflect this

(P. Brown et al., 2003). For example, globalisation, neoliberalism, and the growing use of

technology have been influential in changing organisational structures in many industries

(Boden & Nedeva, 2010; P. Brown et al., 2003; Fenton & Dermott, 2006), encouraging the

“proliferation of various forms of non-standard employment relationships” that have

permeated contemporary labour markets (Stewart & Owens, 2013, p. 19). These rapid

changes also rendered existing ‘simplistic’ definitions of employability inadequate for

guiding workers, not only into work in the first place, but also between different jobs and

industries over the course of their lifetime. The following sections explore these ideas and

influences in greater detail, as they have developed chronologically over time.

2.1.2 Employability in the 1980’s

While pre-1980s labour market trends characterised employability as a collaboration between

individuals and employers, and also educators depending on the type of work being sought

(Boden & Nedeva, 2010), the 1980s saw the rise of the idea of initiative employability, where

the onus of employability in a particular job or industry was placed much more significantly

on the individual (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013). While this approach meant more of the

responsibility for obtaining and maintaining work was borne by individual workers, it also

laid the groundwork for giving workers greater autonomy to explore different roles and

opportunities in the labour market (Fenton & Dermott, 2006; Holmes, 2013). No longer were

workers expected, or able, to stay with a single employer for their working life. Changes

within labour markets that saw an increase in atypical working opportunities, such as

increased part-time and casual roles, self-employment, and contract opportunities meant

individuals could explore working across different employers, as well as across different

industries, even concurrently if they so desired (Fenton & Dermott, 2006; Stewart & Owens,

2013). Growth in service, technology, and knowledge-based sectors also provided new

Chapter 2 | Page 13

opportunities for workers willing and able to re-skill or up-skill (Bradley & Devadason,

2008).

The 1980s were also a significantly transformative period for higher education institutions

(HEIs). In the UK, government policy mandated that a more skilled and educated workforce

would be a pre-cursor to greater economic growth; thus, steps were taken to make higher

education more accessible to a larger proportion of the population (Moreau & Leathwood,

2006; Tomlinson, 2012; Wilton, 2011). This was achieved by providing vocationally-based

technical colleges with university status or amalgamating these colleges with existing

universities (Wilton, 2011), a strategy also adopted in Australia (Bennett, 2009). Not only did

this massification of higher education in the UK increase the number of people from a greater

diversity of backgrounds achieving degrees, it expanded the scope of the graduate labour

market to include industries and occupations that could previously be entered with no

qualifications or a vocational/trade college qualification, thus raising the prestige of a number

of industries (Tomlinson, 2012; Wilton, 2011). Increased government investment in higher

education, while effective for boosting funding for institutions, came with the proviso that

graduate employability would mean more than simply having a broad education, as it had in

the past (Tomlinson, 2012). Employability for higher education graduates, especially

university graduates, became focused on developing both academic and vocational skills and

knowledge that would be useful to the labour markets they would engage with in the future

(Boden & Nedeva, 2010; Holmes, 2013). The initiative employability approach was most

beneficial of all to employers. While they bore the cost of having to adapt their human

resource systems to reflect more complex working conditions, employers were able to

“manipulate supply at no cost to themselves” by perpetuating the notion that desirable

candidates should already possess the skills and knowledge necessary for work rather than

expecting that the employer would train them (Boden & Nedeva, 2010, p. 46).

A key critique of the initiative employability approach is that although market freedom was

achievable for some (Fenton & Dermott, 2006), success in such an environment was

weighted towards those who were already predisposed to labour market success. The

initiative employability approach was therefore argued to be perpetuating the “distinctions of

class, gender and ethnicity”, that, in theory, it sought to challenge (Chertkovskaya et al.,

2013, p. 705). This was because the kinds of jobs that became increasingly precarious were

those that were typically lower paid and lower skilled, not often requiring a tertiary

education, while elite white collar professions maintained more stable working conditions

Chapter 2 | Page 14

with higher pay (Bauman, 1998; Fenton & Dermott, 2006; Sassen, 1991). Under worker-

focused approaches such as initiative employability, success is also mediated by the strength

of a person’s professional identity, whether they know what kind of work they want to

pursue, and whether they know where to look for such opportunities. According to this

perspective, being unemployed or underemployed is not considered a failure of the market to

provide opportunities, but the result of an individual “not trying hard enough” to find and

obtain work (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013, p. 705). Similarly, by creating policy that promoted

the benefits of a highly skilled labour force built through increased tertiary education, the UK

Government unwittingly provided employers with the opportunity to raise hiring standards

somewhat arbitrarily, at the expense of workers for whom a university education would soon

become an expectation for gaining employment in many industries (Wilton, 2011).

2.1.3 Employability in the 1990s

Where employability in the 1980s promoted worker power and flexibility, the increasing

number of university graduates moving into the graduate labour market in the early 1990s

prompted the need for employability to again be redefined in order to reflect changing labour

market conditions (Tomlinson, 2012). As graduate supply began to outstrip industry demand

for university-educated workers, a degree in itself no longer guaranteed entry into the labour

market (Moreau & Leathwood, 2006; Tomlinson, 2012; Wilton, 2011). Instead, definitions of

employability moved towards adopting a Skills PLUS approach, where job-specific skills and

knowledge were still expected of workers but now were only one part of a package of

competencies that workers needed to be able to offer potential employers (V. Smith, 2010).

One sub-section of these competencies that was seen as particularly valuable was social

capital, meaning a person’s social networks and connections, as well as their own reputation

within the field, which could be used to foster new opportunities and relationships between

organisations. Employability also came to include a person’s personality or disposition and

other generic skills that they were able to offer in addition to a qualification and networks (V.

Smith, 2010). Examples of these generic skills include communication skills, customer

service skills, problem solving skills, and decision making skills, as well as a person’s

general attitude in the workplace and their organisational fit (A. Clarke, 1997). As with

initiative employability, the Skills PLUS approach also included an expectation of proactivity

on the part of the individual and cemented the idea, particularly for graduates, that to have

employability was to have the ability to continually improve and re-contextualise their labour

Chapter 2 | Page 15

market currency throughout a career, not just in the initial stages (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013;

V. Smith, 2010).

Building upon the labour market changes seen in the 1980s, the 1990s also saw a new

understanding of career pathways that reflected the Skills PLUS approach to employability:

the boundaryless career (Briscoe & Finkelstein, 2009). Across liberal Western economies,

increased competition and deregulation meant that many organisations “underwent

widespread [and] ongoing downsizing and restructuring” (M. Clarke, 2008, p. 260). While

these changes meant increased competition for jobs, particularly amongst graduates

(Buckham, 1998), the concept of a boundaryless career, where a person worked across both

“organisational and employment boundaries”, became a legitimate career path for those

willing, and able, to look beyond traditional career trajectories (Briscoe & Finkelstein, 2009,

p. 243). However, the ability to follow a fulfilling boundaryless career path was still

weighted, in a similar way to the initiative employability approach of the 1980s, in favour of

those with the socio-economic and cultural background that could support such a career

pathway (P. Brown, 2003). From the massification of higher education came a growing

middle class, and many graduates still believed that a good education would ultimately lead

to a good (graduate) job that paid well (P. Brown, 2003; P. Brown et al., 2003). While policy

relevant to the Skills PLUS approach to employability continued to emphasise that a

university education remained essential for achieving employability (Tomlinson, 2008),

graduates from more privileged backgrounds and those who attended more prestigious

institutions fared better in the graduate labour market than their less privileged peers (Wilton,

2011).

As education and economic policy became increasingly intertwined, so too did education

systems and the labour market. For HEIs, the move toward the Skills PLUS approach to

employability prompted greater focus on the creation of skills frameworks that outlined the

core skill sets that higher education graduates should acquire to ensure that they added value

once in the labour market (Holmes, 2013; Tomlinson, 2012). For example, the Australian

Education Council’s 1992 report outlined seven key competencies that should form the basis

of an education program, these being “collecting, analysing and organising ideas and

information, planning and organising activities, working with others and with teams, solving

problems and using technology” (p. viii). This skills-based approach fostered greater

competition in the education sector between higher status universities and newer HEIs (the

latter of which were considered less prestigious because they were generally more vocational

Chapter 2 | Page 16

in their teaching), because newer, more vocationally-oriented institutions were considered

more likely to respond “to employer demands for more explicit employability skills

development” (Wilson, 2011, p. 92). Thus, where newer HEIs were able to prosper through

their practical nature, older universities were also starting to shift elements of their programs

to align with these new perspectives on employability (Wilton, 2011).

2.1.4 Employability in the 21st century

As labour markets and organisational structures continued to change and shift after the turn of

the century, the concept of employability received renewed interest, this time fuelled by

employers (M. Clarke, 2008). Despite the development of skills frameworks under the Skills

PLUS approach in the 1990s, employers felt that workers, particularly graduates, were failing

to fulfil even basic employability skills, such as literacy, numeracy, and communication skills

(Rosenberg, Heimler, & Morote, 2012), and that HEIs should be doing more to produce

employable graduates (Barrie, 2006). From these criticisms, and coupled with growing

emphasis on the “knowledge economy” (Araya, 2010, p. 218), came the 21st century

understanding of employability as being graduate-focused and centred around ensuring that

tertiary graduates possessed a number of generic graduate attributes (Boden & Nedeva, 2010;

Nabi, Holden, & Walmsley, 2010) that would assist them “to obtain and maintain work at [at

least] a graduate level” (Bridgstock, 2011, p. 11). It was no longer considered sufficient for

graduates to only possess the capability and technical expertise required to get them their first

jobs post-graduation (Scott & Yates, 2002), which was emphasised in the Skills PLUS

approach (V. Smith, 2010). Instead, generic graduate attributes represented a set of broad

range of competencies that underpin all forms of work in contemporary labour markets

(Barrie, 2006; Hager et al., 2002; Rosenberg et al., 2012), as well as the kinds of work that

would be most prevalent over the coming decades (Araya, 2010; Scott, 2019), regardless of

job or industry context (Barrie, 2006). The graduate attributes approach to graduate

employability was generally well received by all labour market stakeholders – students,

employers, HEIs, and governments – as it provided a clear link between graduates and

success in the labour market, which had been lacking from the Skills PLUS approach (Harpe

& David, 2012).

Several studies emerged in the early 2000s that attempted to describe exactly what

constituted generic graduate skills or capabilities. Examination of graduate responses from

the Australian Course Experience Questionnaire (completed by tertiary graduates six months

Chapter 2 | Page 17

after graduation) led the Business/Tertiary Education Round Table to release a report

detailing the scope of generic skills as encompassing a combination of personal values,

attitudes, and dispositions, including thinking skills, analytical reasoning, problem solving,

communication skills, the ability to work in teams, ethics, and creativity (Hager et al., 2002).

A 2012 study into employability skills suggested eight key groups of generic skills: “basic

literacy and numeracy, critical thinking, management, leadership, interpersonal, information

technology, systems thinking, and work ethic disposition” (Rosenberg et al., 2012, p. 8).

Another 2012 study of over 1,000 academic and teaching staff from Australian universities

found that 73% of respondents believed the development of generic attributes was an integral

part of completing a degree, particularly written and oral communication and critical thinking

skills (Harpe & David, 2012). While key labour market stakeholders agree on the need to

develop generic skills, the frameworks that guide how these skills are developed can differ

significantly between, and even within, different country’s education sectors:

In Australia, for instance, graduates complete a ‘generally accepted’ set of attributes.

In New Zealand, various measures have been developed, such as the National

Qualifications Framework (NQF), in consultation with education and industry

specialists. In Canada and the USA, several universities have introduced ‘critical

skills’ deemed necessary for the Canadian workforce into their careers programmes;

whilst both Canada and the USA assess students through work-based/ related

learning criteria. In Denmark, the Qualifications Framework requires the completion

of a ‘competence’ profile. In Finland, skills courses are available and integrated into

the curriculum and students’ personal study plans (Cranmer, 2007, p. 107).

2.1.5 Critiquing the employability discourse

As definitions of employability have been shaped by interactions between workers, labour

markets, and educational systems, key themes have emerged that now underpin the role of

each of these stakeholders in contemporary understandings of employability:

1. That workers (both current and future) are able to build skills and knowledge through

education, that they can display these skills and knowledge to employers in order to

obtain work, and that they can apply these skills and knowledge in doing work.

2. That tertiary educators can identify the skills and knowledge that are relevant to the

labour market and design programs that build these skills and knowledge in students.

Chapter 2 | Page 18

3. That employers know what skills and knowledge are relevant in their labour market

and are able to identify these skills and knowledge in potential workers (Holmes,

2013).

These themes reflect growing recognition that employability as a concept is separate to

having employment. Just because a person is currently employed does not necessarily mean

they have employability, which is now more focused on achieving relative and continued

relevancy in the labour market (Kinash et al., 2016). The skills approach to employability has

therefore been criticised for being overly concerned with meeting the needs of employers,

because employer-focused skills approaches often hold “a narrow view of educational aims”

(Moreau & Leathwood, 2006, p. 308), and are largely focused on what individual employers

require at a particular moment, not what might also be relevant in the future (Jones, 2009).

The competencies demanded by employers can also differ between, and even within,

organisations operating in the same industry (Wickramasinghe & Perera, 2010). While

generic skills approaches try to develop basic skills that should, in theory, be of use to

graduates entering all industries, the heterogeneity of employers impacts on the establishment

of a true universal set of generic skills of manageable size (Boden & Nedeva, 2010; Hager et

al., 2002). Even where educators and employers can reach a consensus on naming a particular

generic skill, the definition of that skill can differ wildly based on the context in which it will

be used (Jones, 2009; Moreau & Leathwood, 2006; Tomlinson, 2012). A 2010 study showed

that there can be, and are, differences of opinion between stakeholders – educators,

employers, and tertiary graduates – regarding employability around which skills and

knowledge are more important than others (Wickramasinghe & Perera, 2010). Figure 2.1

provides an example of how each stakeholder group in the study rated the same generic skills

at differing levels of importance.

Figure 2.1: Comparison of educator, employer, and graduate perceptions of graduate capabilities (Wickramasinghe & Perera, 2010)

Chapter 2 | Page 19

Some authors have also argued that miscommunication between stakeholders about how

generic skills are defined and understood limits the effectiveness of skills-based approaches

to employability (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013; Hager et al., 2002). Without universal

definitions of these skills, workers may not be able to present them in a way that employers

understand and employers may not also be able to identify them in workers (Hager et al.,

2002). This can lead to skills and education inflation, where an individual may not

necessarily need a particular skill or degree to work in a certain job, but because that is what

the people they are competing against possess, and what employers are being offered,

employers begin to expect them from all workers (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013).

Contemporary definitions of employability continue to be employee-focused, and this

perpetuates neoliberal and capitalist perspectives of the labour market where success is

possible if a person works hard enough. Therefore, some authors believe that employability

should not be “defined solely in terms of individual characteristics” (P. Brown et al., 2003, p.

110), because it is often the condition of the labour market rather than just skills and

knowledge that determines whether a person is fit for employment or not (Boden & Nedeva,

2010; Yorke & Knight, 2007). Similarly, “it is possible to be employable but not be in

employment” if there is not a ready supply of jobs for appropriately trained workers to fill (P.

Brown et. al., 2003, p. 122). This is particularly prevalent in graduate labour markets where

graduate supply is increasingly outstripping the needs of the labour market for workers at that

level (Bowers-Brown & Harvey, 2004; Tomlinson, 2012). Employee-focused perspectives

can therefore be “quite destructive” and disheartening for workers (Chertkovskaya et al.,

2013, p. 707), because under such perspectives, unemployment and underemployment then

become framed as individual problems that result from a person not trying hard enough or not

following the right path (Moreau & Leathwood, 2006). The notion that it is not the

responsibility of employers or the state to create jobs or take on more responsibility for

training workers, but that it is the responsibility of the individual, at whatever cost, to be a

desirable worker is also inherent in employee-focused perspectives (Peck & Theodore, 2000).

Additionally, though neoliberal influences on employability during the 1980s and 1990s

fostered positive social-cultural change in a number of ways, it has been argued that these

influences now reinforce the inequalities they were originally designed to challenge (Allen,

Quinn, Hollingworth, & Rose, 2013; Morrison, 2014). Skills-based approaches to

employability and the massification of higher education increased graduate labour market

participation and labour market mobility for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds

Chapter 2 | Page 20

and minority groups, allowing them opportunities that they could not necessarily have

afforded previously (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013). However, as the graduate labour market

becomes increasingly competitive, success is further weighted in favour of those with the

“temporal freedom and cultural capital” to take full advantage of labour market opportunities,

such as unpaid work (V. Smith, 2010, p. 280; also Benson, Morgan, & Filippaios, 2014; P.

Brown et al., 2003; Holmes, 2013; Neff, 2005). Gender also plays a role in mediating labour

market opportunity. Despite “women now achiev[ing] more top-class degree than men”, they

are not as equally rewarded as men in the labour market in terms of higher calibre positions

and income (P. Brown, Hesketh, & Williams, 2004, p. 19).

Constructing employability as an individual issue also overlooks that a person’s engagement

with the labour market is intimately tied to their own economic status and familial

relationships (M. Clarke, 2008; Crossley & Stanton, 2005; Verhaest & Omey, 2010). Though

an individual may have aspirations to work in a particular job or industry, “they are not free

from the need to make a living” (P. Brown, 2003, p. 151). In the graduate labour market, this

manifests as many graduates, particularly those from lower socio-economic backgrounds,

needing to seek any paid work rather than only targeting work directly related to their

university qualifications (Leana & Feldman, 1995; Try, 2005). Family responsibilities, such

as caring for children or elderly relatives, can also put significant strain on graduates to

secure paid employment (M. Clarke, 2008; Verhaest & Omey, 2010). Some authors have

argued that neoliberal perspectives have not increased diversity in the labour market, but

instead allowed for cultural erasure because the way best practice of employability is framed

reflects a certain image of a desirable employee as fitting a white, middle-class ideal, both in

appearance, as well as attitude and behaviour (Holmes, 2013; V. Smith, 2010).

2.1.6 Moving toward a more holistic understanding of employability

Many contemporary scholars have attempted to acknowledge these critiques by developing

more holistic understandings of employability for the 21st century that seek to better

understand and describe education to work transitions beyond just being a time for the

“acquisition of qualifications” (Guile, 2010, p. 480). Key themes shared by these

contemporary holistic definitions are that they are future-focused; that they promote a

portfolio of skills and competencies relevant for use in the labour market, as well as in

general life; and that there is particular emphasis on personal growth and adaptability (Barrie,

Chapter 2 | Page 21

2007; Buckham, 1998). This section compares the different academic perspectives of

employability that have emerged in the past 20 years.

Just before the turn of the century, Hillage and Pollard (1998) presented a conceptual

understanding of employability that attempted to reconcile what they believed would be the

basic elements of employability for the 21st century. Their model encompassed four main

elements:

- Employability assets: skills, knowledge, and attitudes

- Deployment: career management skills

- Presentation: skills specifically related to securing employment, and,

- Personal circumstances/external factors: such as family responsibility and the

economics of the labour market (Hillage & Pollard, 1998).

This is one of the few models of employability to explicitly mention the role of contextual

dimensions in determining employability and to reinforce that the circumstances in which an

individual operates are essential to understanding why one individual might be considered to

have greater employability than another.

The USEM Model of Employability created by Knight and Yorke (2003) remains one of the

“most well-known and respected models” in the literature, despite the key criticism that while

it breaks employability down into four defined categories, it does not clearly explain the

concept of employability to non-experts (Dacre Pool & Sewell, 2007, p. 278). Figure 2.2

shows the visual representation of the USEM Model.

Chapter 2 | Page 22

Figure 2.2: Knight & Yorke's (2003a) USEM Model of Employability

In this model, employability is influenced by four interrelated components:

- Understanding: understanding of a specific subject or industry, typically developed

through education.

- Skills: having a variety of job-specific and generic skills, and knowing how and when

to use them.

- Efficacy beliefs: having a variety of personal qualities and traits.

- Metacognition: the ability to be reflective and self-aware, and to use these skills to

better oneself. (Knight & Yorke, 2003a).

Though the original USEM model (developed in 2003) represented general labour market

experiences, by 2007, their conceptual work had progressed to define employability as more

specifically referring to “a graduate’s (or other awardee’s) suitability for appropriate

employment”, where appropriate employment was within the graduate labour market (Yorke

& Knight, 2007, p. 158). This model also reverted back to the employee-focused perspectives

of the 1980s and 1990s, omitting the influence of personal circumstances on employability,

which was a key element of Hillage and Pollard’s (1998) model. As the first major model to

emerge in the early 2000s, this model would become the basis for future employability

models, many of which also did not acknowledge the increasingly important influence that

personal circumstances or labour market context have on individual employability.

Chapter 2 | Page 23

For Fugate, Kinicki, and Ashworth (2004), “employability represents a form of work-specific

(pro) active adaptability that consists of three dimensions: career identity, personal

adaptability, and social and human capital” (p. 14). The authors argued that each of the three

dimensions have value independently of each other, but it is only when they are combined

and developed “synergistically” that they represent a definition of employability that aims to

“help workers adapt to the myriad of work-related changes occurring in today’s economy”

(Fugate et al, 2004, p. 15). In developing this model, the authors acknowledged that it was

particularly difficult to create a single, all-encompassing definition of employability because

it is such a multi-faceted and interconnected concept. However, they also argued that their

definition addresses the main skills and competencies that can help the majority of workers to

navigate and succeed in the face of both the known and unknown elements of the labour

market (Fugate et al., 2004). This model is presented in Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.3: Fugate et al.’s (2004) Model of Employability

In designing their model of employability, Dacre Pool and Sewell (2007) wanted to present a

visual model that could communicate what employability is and how it could be achieved by

individuals (as shown in Figure 2.4).

Chapter 2 | Page 24

Figure 2.4: Dacre Pool and Sewell’s (2007) Model of Employability

Dacre Pool and Sewell’s (2007) model differs from other existing models of employability

because it attempts to show how employability can be developed through having a variety of

skills, knowledge, and competencies that are mediated by metacognitive behaviour. This

model also goes further than previous models to more explicitly outline what each category

involves, particularly in showing the different types of metacognition (self-efficacy, self-

confidence, self-esteem) that were less well explained in Knight and Yorke’s (2003a) USEM

model. However, similar to other models, this model is employee-focused and only hints at

the role that personal circumstances and external factors play in determining a person’s

overall employability and their ability to engage with each of the sub-categories of

employability (Dacre Pool & Sewell, 2007).

While the employability models presented thus far are some of the most well recognised and

widely used, many researchers and academics have presented more general and less

structured components of employability. Most are underpinned by skills-based

understandings of employability, though some go beyond promoting only job-specific skills.

Career management skills and opportunity awareness (i.e., knowing how and where to find

work) are increasingly seen as integral to having employability, as having industry-specific

skills and knowledge in itself does not give an individual access to labour markets

(Bridgstock, 2009; V. Smith, 2010; Wittekind, Raeder, & Grote, 2010). Others have

emphasised the need to be future-focused; that is, not just about having skills and knowledge

that enable initial access to employment, but also capacities that will help an individual move

Chapter 2 | Page 25

through and across labour markets throughout their working life (Cremin, 2009; McLeish,

2002). As well as having the ability to obtain work, workers, including graduates, are

expected to be able to create work for themselves by being entrepreneurial (M. Clarke, 2008;

Kinash & Crane, 2015). More broadly, individuals must be able to engage in these activities

and behaviours proactively (Fugate et al., 2004; Sanders & de Grip, 2004), continuously (Van

Der Heijde & Van Der Heijden, 2005), and they should not rely on employers to help guide

them (Ans De Vos, De Hauw, & Van der Heijden, 2011).

As previously stated, only a few researchers have acknowledged the role external forces play

in determining an individual’s employability. For P. Brown et al. (2004), employability is an

individual’s “relative chances of getting and maintaining different kinds of employment” (p.

14), and is therefore determined, in-part, by opportunities in the labour market. Similarly, M.

Clarke (2008) believed that an individual’s personal skills and attributes stretch beyond

personality traits and metacognitive competencies to include demographic and physical

characteristics, such as age, gender, ethnicity, and general health and wellbeing, which can all

shape an individual’s labour market experiences, particularly during education-to-work

transitions. Supply side definitions of employability that focus heavily on skills can also gloss

over how expectations of employability can differ between industries. In some industries,

such as law, medicine, and teaching, accreditation and continued learning are expected and

often non-negotiable indicators of whether an individual could be considered to have

employability. In industries that are less qualifications-based, such as creative industries,

career management skills and access to labour markets play a larger role in determining

employability than the possession of a qualification (V. Smith, 2010).

Contemporary researchers increasingly seek to reconcile the substantial literature on

employability to ensure that future definitions and conceptualisations of the construct

acknowledge the full range of variables which can influence an individual’s employability.

Guilbert, Bernaud, Gouvernet and Rossier (2016) acknowledged that there is a need for a

model of employability that “takes into account individuals, organizational requirements, and

government and educational policies” (p. 79-80). Similarly, through a systematic review of

conceptualisations of employability from the academic literature, Williams, Dodd, Steele, &

Randall (2016) identified three core components of contemporary employability: capital

components (human, social, cultural, and psychological), career management components,

and contextual components. More recently, Tomlinson (2017) and Clarke (2018) have

applied understandings of different capitals to the specific context of graduate employability.

Chapter 2 | Page 26

In his paper, Tomlinson (2017) argues that conceptualising graduate employability from a

capitals perspective can effectively integrate the myriad of internal and external factors which

affect graduate employability. Clarke (2018, p. 1923) adopts a similar perspective, arguing

that there are six key dimensions – “human capital, social capital, individual attributes,

individual behaviours, perceived employability, and labour market factors” – which are

integral to graduate employability in the contemporary labour market.

2.1.7 Influences on 21st century definitions of employability

Despite employability being a concept that is predominantly focused on the individual,

several external factors influence how the concept is defined and understood. While these

external factors – labour markets, government policy, and higher education systems – were

mentioned in the previous sections, the way they relate to and influence contemporary

notions of employability is considered in further depth below.

Labour market characteristics

Though labour market characteristics may not be explicitly referred to in many contemporary

definitions and models of employability, labour markets have been recognised by many

authors as playing a significant role in shaping what it means to have employability. The

greatest shift seen in industrialised economies this century has been increased automation and

the moving of lower and unskilled jobs to countries where production costs are cheaper (P.

Brown, 2003). Precarious career pathways, such as “boundaryless, portfolio, project, lattice,

horizontal and/or protean” (V. Smith, 2010, p. 282), are now more prevalent than ever (Hager

et al., 2002). Once considered as having freed workers from having a single employer or job

for their entire working lives (P. Brown et al., 2003), that these career pathways have become

standard rather than a choice for workers suggests that power within labour markets is

increasingly weighted in employers’ favour (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013).

Contemporary understandings of employability are also heavily influenced by how education

systems and the labour market are interconnected. This is particularly pertinent for graduates

of higher education, as possessing a degree is still considered essential for gaining access to a

certain calibre of employment (i.e., the graduate labour market and other skilled work)

(Haukka, 2011). As organisational structures and career pathways have shifted, and skills-

based approaches to employability have focused on generic or transferable skills, “the

relationship between credentials and occupational position [have also become] less clear” (P.

Chapter 2 | Page 27

Brown et al., 2004, p. 20). Employability for graduate-level jobs has therefore become less

about whether an individual has a degree and more about how they compare to those they are

competing against (Branine, 2008; P. Brown & Hesketh, 2004). The loss of strict hierarchical

career pathways where workers competing for similar jobs would be at a similar career stage

(Buckham, 1998) means that graduates must compete against their graduate peers as well as

those already in the labour market; the latter of whom may possess superior qualifications

and have more years of work experience (V. Smith, 2010). This increased competition for

jobs is thought to have contributed to a rise in youth unemployment and underemployment,

particularly for graduates, over the past 5-10 years (Allen et al., 2013).

Poor graduate outcomes during education-to-work transitions may also may also be attributed

to static graduate aspirations and understandings of the workforce that do not align with new

working environments. Though a university education has traditionally brought with it a

certain level of prestige and expectation in the type of work a graduate will be participating in

(i.e., a full-time, white collar job), this expectation will no longer be possible for the majority

of graduates at all times of their working life (P. Brown et al., 2003). While V. Smith (2010)

argued that labour market participants have always been expected to have knowledge about

labour market opportunities and trajectories, the dramatic labour market changes that have

occurred in recent history have meant that staying abreast of labour market conditions and

expectations is more complicated than ever. Most at risk of falling prey to a lack of

knowledge about the intricacies of contemporary white collar labour markets are those

graduates with limited labour market experience and those moving into the widening middle

class, because they cannot rely on their parents’ prior experience of these labour markets

(Ross, 2008).

The subjectivity of employer expectations and interpretations around worker qualifications,

skills, and competencies is, as already discussed, a particularly contentious influence on

understandings of employability. Employers benefit immensely from employee-focused

definitions of employability because the onus of employability is predominantly placed on

the worker (Tomlinson, 2012). This means that employers can afford to be choosy when

selecting employees, particularly when worker supply outstrips demand, and do not

necessarily have to expend more resources than necessary on training new hires, as these

workers are expected to already have a portfolio of relevant skills and knowledge

(Tomlinson, 2012; Wickramasinghe & Perera, 2010). With little incentive for employers to

even out the status quo (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013), employers continue to benefit from a

Chapter 2 | Page 28

ready supply of educated workers for whom it seems the threshold of employment continues

to be raised (McKeown & Lindorff, 2011; Tomlinson, 2008).

Several common employer expectations have been criticised by educators and workers alike.

One example is employers overemphasising the possession of job or industry specific

technical skills, as these can often be learned relatively quickly on-the-job and may only be

useful within a narrowly defined career, which does not reflect the flexibility required in

contemporary labour markets and could come at significant cost to workers (Boden &

Nedeva, 2010). Employers have also been criticised for rejecting candidates for being ‘too

educated’ for a particular job (in that they hold a degree at a higher level than the employer

deems necessary) or that they require workers to have a particular level of qualification, such

as an undergraduate degree, but then do not know how to utilise the skills and knowledge

held by a person with that qualification once they have been hired (P. Brown & Hesketh,

2004).

As a result of these mixed messages, employers have been criticised for simultaneously

devaluing educational qualifications through credential inflation (P. Brown & Hesketh, 2004;

Tomlinson, 2008) and insisting that workers have prior work experience to be considered

employable (P. Brown & Hesketh, 2004; Stewart & Owens, 2013). For graduates especially,

this has resulted in increased interest in and competition for internships, usually undertaken

on an unpaid basis. Internships have long played an important role during education-to-work

transitions as a way for young workers and tertiary students to experience different

workplaces firsthand in order to build skills, make industry connections, and help them

decide on potential career paths (Curiale, 2010). While still beneficial in these ways, there is

a growing divide between true internships (which are generally time-limited and designed as

educational experiences) and employers taking advantage of students willing to work for free

to get their foot in the door, which can be exploitative and illegal (Curiale, 2010; Stewart &

Owens, 2013).

Government policy

Government policy has been instrumental in shaping contemporary understandings of

employability that adopt an employee-side focus, as policy has directly promoted the

massification of higher education and supported the neoliberalisation of economic

development and labour markets (P. Brown, 2003). In particular, over the past 20 years,

government policy has sought to promote ideas and strategies that would encourage

Chapter 2 | Page 29

economic growth and prosperity as global markets shifted towards economies focused on

knowledge and innovation (Morrison, 2014; Tomlinson, 2010). In the knowledge economy,

economic prosperity is built through innovation fostered by a highly educated workforce that

can adapt sideways and upwards in the face of rapid change (P. Brown et al., 2003). Across

western countries, these concerns have seen notions of employability become significantly

more focused around graduates, particularly tertiary graduates, to the detriment of other

labour market participants (Bridgstock & Cunningham, 2016; Cranmer, 2007). One of the

first policy papers to focus on graduate skills and attributes as being a major contributor to

the success of the future knowledge economy was the Dearing Report, released in 1997 by

the UK Department for Education and Science (Knight & Yorke, 2003b). This report

emphasised the importance of work experience for higher education students and graduates,

not only to assist them in building relevant skills and competencies, but also to provide them

with an opportunity to apply their skills and competencies in practical environments (Ashton,

2015a).

Along with ensuring that graduates are developing relevant skills, government policy

continues to focus on increasing the number of people, especially school leavers and other

young people, entering and completing higher education (Holden & Hamblett, 2007). Policy

released by the Department for Education and Science in the UK in 2003 outlined

government targets that “at least 50% of those aged 18-30” would enter higher education in

the UK in the future (p. 33). Similar strategies have been adopted by the Australian

Government, where targets have been set for least 40% of Australians to hold a higher

education qualification by 2025 (Daniel & Daniel, 2015). Since the mid-2000s, the Australian

Government has also promoted an earning or learning policy to better facilitate young

peoples’ transitions between secondary education and the labour market and ensure that those

who do not wish to complete high school are not alienated from the labour market (Stewart &

Owens, 2013).

However, these policies have been criticised for producing a surplus of graduates across all

industries, which increases competition for graduate and entry-level jobs without also

promoting and encouraging jobs growth (Daniel & Daniel, 2015; Ross, 2008) or more

desirable labour market conditions (Comunian, Faggian, & Jewell, 2011). Policy has also

been criticised for overstating the emergence of the knowledge economy because individuals

are investing significant amounts of time and money into pursuing higher education (P.

Brown & Hesketh, 2004; Tomlinson, 2012) and graduates often work in jobs that do not

Chapter 2 | Page 30

necessarily require their particular higher education qualification (P. Brown et al., 2003;

Tomlinson, 2007). Full-time employment opportunities for young people, graduates or

otherwise, have also been in decline for some time, with many young people instead holding

multiple part-time or casual jobs (Foundation for Young Australians, 2018). The deregulation

of higher education fees, which has already occurred in the UK and has been considered in

Australia, is one of the more controversial policy decisions of the past five years. It is

considered controversial because it may reduce the overall number of graduates competing

for jobs (Commonwealth Government of Australia, 2014), but at the expense of pricing many

people out of the higher education market altogether, despite other policy insisting that such

an education is necessary to get ahead in turbulent labour markets (Holmes, 2013). Where

governments must respond quickly, and in a way where the impacts and outcomes of policy

are able to be seen by the broader population, policy can become a short-term focused,

reactive solution (Peck & Theodore, 2000). This is why some researchers have suggested that

employability policies continue to have a supply-side focus (Guile, 2009).

Higher education systems

HEIs often bear the brunt of criticism for the way that employability is defined because

higher education continues to be intimately associated with labour market outcomes (Kinash

et al., 2016). While academics employed by HEIs are the ones most often defining

employability and conceptualising it in model form, the realities of the labour market often

do not align with the normative perspectives that underpin employability models. HEIs across

the board recognise that they play an essential role in preparing students for labour market

success (Branine, 2008; Nabi & Bagley, 1999), but are often criticised for being too academic

and not providing enough vocational or applied learning opportunities (Kinash et al., 2016;

Tomlinson, 2012). Hager et al. (2002) argued that HEIs are unfairly pressured to adapt

curricula and teaching practices to produce job-ready graduates when employers, as well as

the graduates themselves, should bear responsibility for building and developing relevant

skills and knowledge (Little & Arthur, 2010). The volatility of labour markets and wider

economic influences also makes responding to the labour market and employer needs

particularly difficult for educators, especially given that curriculum re-design can be a

lengthy and expensive process (Little & Arthur, 2010; Rae, 2007). The difficulty in changing

the perspective that higher education is a one-stop-shop for preparing people for work (Boden

& Nedeva, 2010) is that, for many people, “employability is simply about getting a job” and

Chapter 2 | Page 31

higher education has been promoted as the best path to follow to obtain employment in a

professional or white collar field (Dacre Pool & Sewell, 2007, p. 277).

The expectation that achieving a higher education qualification in a particular specialisation

will mean that a graduate is equipped with skills and knowledge relevant to working in that

area remains at the forefront of students and employers’ minds (Branine, 2008; Rosenberg et

al., 2012). Indeed, the majority of people who pursue higher education do so because they

have a desire to work in a particular industry and believe a degree will assist them to achieve

that career identity (Holden & Hamblett, 2007; Marginson, 2004; Marginson, 2006). Fostered

by capitalist perspectives and rising employer expectations (Boden & Nedeva, 2010), as well

as the reality that higher education is more expensive now than it has ever been, higher

education is seen by students and graduates as a significant investment that should result in

labour market returns upon graduation (Holmes, 2013; Tomlinson, 2012). As previously

discussed, employers have readily supported the position encouraged by neoliberal

governments that higher education should meet the demands of industry. The subsequent

neo-liberalising of many organisations over the past 50 years has allowed this view to be

developed and passed down through subsequent generations of workers (Boden & Nedeva,

2010). The missing link here is that HEIs have been unable, and possibly also unwilling, to

communicate a number of key ideas to students and graduates, specifically how little control

institutions have in influencing labour markets, and that HEIs themselves or an individual’s

possession of a degree cannot, if they were ever able to at all, guarantee employment

(Holmes, 2013).

2.2. EMPLOYABILITY IN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

Wider cultural shifts towards the knowledge economy, where creativity and innovation are

essential for future growth, has resulted in governments and educators becoming increasingly

interested in the creative industries (Bridgstock, 2011; Peters & Araya, 2010) because

creativity and innovation are implied as natural to creative workers (Florida, 2002; Harney,

2010). The difficulty in designing policy and education to help develop these workers in

relevant ways stems from the fact that understandings of employability for the creative

industries as a whole, and for separate disciplines within the creative industries, differ in key

ways regarding how employability is understood in other labour markets (Ball, 2003; V.

Smith, 2010). Part two of this literature review considers employability within the creative

Chapter 2 | Page 32

industries labour market, the labour market issues unique to these fields, and how they affect

the people, particularly graduates, who pursue employment and careers in these areas.

2.2.1 The Creative Trident

The creative trident model of creative employment has emerged as a way of broadly

categorising the main types of work available in the creative labour market. According to the

creative trident, the three main types of available creative work are:

1. specialist creative work (a creative role within the creative industries),

2. embedded creative work (fulfilling a creative role in an industry outside the creative

industries), and,

3. creative support work (supporting those in creative activities, generally in business-

type jobs) (Bridgstock et al., 2015; Comunian et al., 2014; Cunningham, 2014).

Subsequent revisions of the creative trident model have further divided what constitutes

specialist creative work into two categories. The first category, cultural production, includes

creative jobs that are “concerned with the production of cultural artefacts and experiences for

final consumption”, also called business-to-consumer, which commonly includes film and

TV production jobs and performance jobs in dance, acting, and music (Bridgstock et al.,

2015, p. 5). The second category, creative services, encompasses jobs that are based around

business-to-business transactions, which is commonly associated with the design, advertising,

and architecture disciplines (Bridgstock et al., 2015). As previously stated, the main areas of

jobs growth in the creative industries are creative services and creative support roles

(Bridgstock et al., 2015), though many aspiring creatives generally identify specialist creative

work and the production of cultural artefacts as their primary career goal (Ashton, 2015a).

However, the creative trident model suggests that a person pursuing a creative career will

most probably work across all three types of creative work at some point in their career, even

though they may favour one type of work over another (Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015), and

aspiring creatives that can look beyond traditional creative work opportunities are no less

likely to have fulfilling careers that use their creative skills and knowledge, as each creative

discipline can be aligned with work across the creative trident (Cunningham & Higgs, 2010;

Higgs, Cunningham, & Bakhshi, 2008). Creatives employed in embedded and support work

are also more likely to have stable, ongoing employment than those in specialist roles, which

are more likely to be short-term contract or project work (Mathieu, 2012).

Chapter 2 | Page 33

2.2.2 Labour market characteristics for creative workers

As discussed in Section 2.1, working conditions across many industries have become

increasingly precarious over the past 30 years. While creative industries labour markets are

similar in many ways to how other labour markets now operate, precarious working

conditions had been the norm for many creative workers before the rise of neoliberalism in

the 20th century (Bennett, 2009). Many creative roles that have traditionally been negatively

viewed as bohemian and at odds with financial success, such as writers and artists, have only

recently been more widely accepted as legitimate career paths (in that a person could make a

living from doing them) because other labour markets increasingly require workers to adopt

similar precarious career paths (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, 2009). Similarly, while types of

precarious work have been favourably viewed in non-creative labour markets for giving

workers more flexibility and autonomy (Bridgstock et al., 2015; Mathieu, 2012), creative

workers have not enjoyed the same benefits because they are rarely given a choice as to

whether or not they desire such conditions. Creative careers usually require constant change

and uncertainty about where the next work opportunity will arise (Ashton, 2015b; Bennett,

2009).

Studies investigating the career paths of creative workers have consistently shown that a

number of working patterns and conditions present particular challenges to people who aspire

to work in creative industries labour markets (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, 2009; Brook, 2013).

Creative careers are considered inherently precarious, which means they are known to

involve above average amounts of contract, freelance, and part-time work and self-

employment (Comunian et al., 2014), as well as “chronic unemployment and

underemployment” (Bridgstock et al., 2015, p. 2). In fact, creative workers in Australia are

twice as likely to be self-employed as the average worker, with 13% of creative workers

stating they were self-employed in 2011 compared to only 6% of the overall workforce

(Bridgstock et al., 2015). Portfolio careers, where workers hold multiple jobs simultaneously,

are common, and more often than not result in creative workers holding a variety of creative

and non-creative roles (Ashton, 2015a), because non-creative jobs are generally better and

more consistently remunerated than creative jobs (Comunian et al., 2014). Though reports

have shown that the creative industries are growing faster and creating more jobs than other

labour markets (Siebert & Wilson, 2013) – occupations in the digital sphere are growing

fastest (Bridgstock, 2013) – employment growth is inconsistent across the types of jobs

outlined in the creative trident model. In fact, the creative industries represents a ‘two speed’

Chapter 2 | Page 34

economy where employment growth in creative services far outstrips employment growth in

more visible and recognisable creative roles like acting and writing (Bridgstock et al., 2015;

Cunningham, 2014).

Creative careers are also more likely to have a non-linear structure than careers in other

industries because creative work often emerges from informal networks and the development

of new projects (Daniel & Daniel, 2015; Lingo & Tepper, 2013), rather than through a “long

term employment relationship with a single employer” (Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015, p. 263).

Even where a creative worker is employed within an organisation, contracts can often be “of

short duration” (Mathieu, 2012, p. 8), which may not provide workers with job security or

entitle them to holiday or sick leave benefits (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, 2009). As creative

careers “are not institutionally or occupationally determined” (Haukka, 2011, p. 43), career

paths are highly individualised and aspiring creative workers must be entrepreneurial and

self-reliant if they wish to achieve longevity in a creative career (Banks & Hesmondhalgh,

2009; Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015; Bridgstock, 2005). However, researchers such as Menger

(2001) place blame firmly on graduates for lacking entrepreneurial capabilities and self-

reliance during their early careers. As a result, many graduates seek additional or alternate

work because they are unable to build a secure and financially viable career in their creative

discipline (Siebert & Wilson, 2013).

The pursuit of creative careers is made all the more difficult by an increasing oversupply of

new workers (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, 2009; Mathieu, 2012) in an industry that favours

those who have had time to develop the contacts and reputation necessary for surviving in

dynamic creative labour markets (Haukka, 2011). Studies from the UK and Australia have

also shown that not only is an oversupply of graduates increasing competition within the

creative industries (Siebert & Wilson, 2013), many are not the “high quality industry-ready

graduates” that industry indicates it requires because they lack specialist skills and

knowledge, as well as the ability to effectively self-manage their early career pathways

(Haukka, 2011, p. 42.; also Bridgstock & Cunningham, 2016). In many creative disciplines,

practical experience is valued more highly than a qualification (Bennett, 2009; Oakley,

Laurison, O’Brien, & Friedman, 2017). Australian Government cuts to arts funding have also

hit the sector hard, with paid entry-level jobs particularly scarce (Figiel, 2013). Similarly,

unpaid internships and work experience have traditionally assisted aspiring creative workers

to ‘get a foot in the door’; however, researchers now worry that the perceived benefits of

Chapter 2 | Page 35

these opportunities have been overstated (Siebert & Wilson, 2013) and that increased periods

of self-exploitation have become normalised by aspiring creative workers as being just

another element of education-to-work transitions (Bridgstock & Cunningham, 2016; Morgan,

Wood, & Nelligan, 2013). Ultimately, the precarity of the creative industries favours those

who have the economic capital to sustain the challenges associated with creative work

(Eikhof & Warhurst, 2013; A. Harvey, Andrewartha, Edwards, Clarke, & Reyes, 2017).

While few creative workers are able to “achieve objective success compared with the mass

who attempt it” (Pralong, Gombault, Liot, Agard, & Morel, 2012, p. 237), it is important to

highlight that people pursue creative work for a variety of reasons beyond objective career

success measures, such as income, hours worked, and benefits. Subjective measures of career

success, such as how satisfied a person is with their job, are particularly relevant when

discussing creative careers because many people who pursue creative work, particularly

specialist creative work, do so to fulfil intrinsic motivations (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, 2009;

Bennett, 2009; Brook, 2013). The variety of working conditions available in the creative

industries also allows creative workers to hold creative and non-creative roles

simultaneously, which allows for the pursuit of creative endeavours, as well as other work for

economic need if their creative work cannot support them financially (Ashton, 2015a;

Bennett, 2009).

2.2.3 Influences on employability in the creative industries

Just as with general definitions of employability, how employability is understood for

creative labour markets is influenced by external factors. The labour market characteristics

that influence how employability in the creative industries should be understood have already

been discussed; thus, this section focuses on outlining the influence that government policy

and higher education systems have had on how employability is conceptualised for creative

workers.

Government policy

Increased focus on the creative industries by governments and policy makers reflects two key

trends from the early 2000s: 1) that creative industries are significant financial contributors to

individual country economies, and 2) that these industries continue to have stronger than

average employment growth (Bridgstock & Cunningham, 2016; Daniel & Daniel, 2015). As

a result, the creative industries have become a policy area in their own right (Ross, 2008).

Chapter 2 | Page 36

The UK has been most prolific in creating policy to promote the perceived economic benefits

of the creative industries, producing a number of policy documents since the late 1990s

(Comunian et al., 2011, 2014). These include multiple offerings by the Department of

Culture, Media and Sport – Creative Industries Mapping Documents (1998, 2001) and

Creative Britain (2008) – as well as reports by a number of arts-related organisations such as

the Arts Councils’ 2004 Market Matters and NESTA’s 2008 report Beyond the Creative

Industries (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, 2009). However, these documents have been criticised

for only engaging with the creative industries on a superficial level by overly focusing on the

positives (i.e., the overall economic gains that can be achieved from these industries) without

giving due consideration to the negatives (i.e., precarious working condition, a lack of entry-

level opportunities, etc.) and how these might be improved through policy, even within a

neoliberal market context (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, 2009).

Similarly, many of these reports have promoted economic growth through skills-based

approaches focused on young people (Comunian et al., 2014), but again, do not clearly link

policy outcomes or suggestions with the realities of the creative labour markets. UK policy

has also been criticised for using celebrity success stories to promote policy in the creative

industries, particularly during the “Cool Britannia” phase of the late 1990s, because these

foster a glamourous view of working in the creative industries that very few creative workers

actually achieve (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, 2009, p. 418). Government policy for the creative

industries has therefore made the creative industries into a desirable study area and career

path for young people without giving full consideration to what will happen to these newly-

educated aspiring creatives when they attempt to enter creative labour markets.

Higher education systems

HEIs have influenced how employability is understood in the creative industries because

these institutions are graduating an increasing number of people with degrees in creative

disciplines. Interest in pursuing creative careers has grown significantly in the past 10-20

years (for several reasons, as discussed above) and HEIs have expanded their degree

offerings to accommodate. In the UK, higher education enrolment growth in creative

disciplines was two to five times higher than average enrolment growth between 2003/2004

and 2007/2008 (Comunian et al., 2011) and has since continued to consistently grow at a

faster rate than average enrolment growth (Brook, 2013). In Australia, interest in studying

creative disciplines at a tertiary level is at an all-time high and is “significantly outstripping

Chapter 2 | Page 37

[employment] growth” (Daniel & Daniel 2015, p. 412), a major contributing factor to an

over-supply of graduates seeking creative employment (Bridgstock et al., 2015). Employment

rates for creative industries graduates are currently amongst the lowest of all industries in

Australia (QILT, 2018). By introducing new programs and graduating more aspiring

creatives than industry seeks, HEIs have not only contributed to increased competition for

jobs but have also encouraged over-education by allowing an increasing number of aspiring

creatives to pursue degrees they may not necessarily need to work in the creative industries

(Bennett, 2009).

HEIs have further been criticised because they promote skills-based understandings of

employability in marketing their programs to potential students, yet their creative programs

may not assist students to develop the full breadth of skills and knowledge that would make

them employable in creative labour markets (Brook, 2013). A 2009 study of Australia

performing arts graduates found that while performance-based degrees adequately trained

students in the technical skills of their performance discipline, these degrees did not address

non-performance skills, such as career development and business skills meaningfully enough

to ensure that graduates would have the skills to generate work opportunities once in industry

(Bennett, 2009). While internships and work experience are increasingly common in creative

degrees (Curiale, 2010), the structure of these opportunities (usually one day a week across a

single semester) may not adequately socialise aspiring creative workers into the creative

labour market, and this contributes to graduates being perceived as not job ready. HEIs can

also influence the career opportunities of students simply by virtue of the creative disciplines

they choose to offer as degrees. By offering a particular set of disciplines, a HEI can

inadvertently orientate students towards a particular creative labour market, thus contributing

to competition amongst graduates, even though there might be relevant jobs available in other

creative labour markets (Mathieu, 2012). HEIs therefore play a critical role in influencing the

employability of aspiring creatives, with some of their practices contributing negatively to the

potential future success of students and graduates.

Other key considerations for employability within the creative industries

While generic definitions of employability (as discussed in Section 2.1 of this thesis) are

relevant to creative labour markets, they do not fully represent what it means to have

employability in the creative industries. This is because generic definitions do not foreground

many of the key issues faced by creative workers. First, the high rates of self-employment

Chapter 2 | Page 38

and project-based work in contemporary creative labour markets necessitates that, to be

considered as having employability for creative work, a person should have entrepreneurial

and business skills (Bennett, 2009; Cunningham & Jaaniste, 2010). Indeed, any creative

worker that is involved in the creation of cultural artefacts should possess a certain level of

business acumen, because becoming a successful artist or practitioner requires more than

being able to make a creative artefact, they also need to be able to market and sell it to an

audience if they desire to build a sustainable career from their art (Bridgstock, 2013; Kolb,

2015). For contemporary creative workers, relevant business skills span from having generic

skills that help foster business relationships, such as project management, team work,

problem-solving, and communication skills through to understanding core business functions,

such as marketing and accounting, and more specific competencies for creative work, such as

applying for grants and engaging in self-promotion activities (Bennett, 2009; Haukka, 2011;

Pralong et al., 2012).

Similarly, working in the creative industries requires that workers accept a certain amount of

ambiguity in their career paths and that the peaks and troughs of their career trajectory may

be more extreme than for workers in non-creative industries (Siebert & Wilson, 2013).

Therefore, definitions of employability for the creative industries should emphasise the

development of personality traits, such as resilience and tenacity, as well as career

management skills, because it is these skills and competencies, in addition to job-specific

skills, that will help creative workers deal with and transcend the structural challenges

inherent to creative labour markets (Bridgstock, 2011, 2013). Previous research has shown

that traits such as adaptability, confidence, conscientiousness, and self-efficacy are linked

with aspiring creative workers having greater success in job search and attainment of

employment (Fiori, Bollmann, & Rossier, 2015; Koen, Klehe, Van Vianen, Zikic, & Nauta,

2010; McArdle, Waters, Briscoe, & Hall, 2007; Tomlinson, 2017).

Third, consumers of creative goods play a role in determining a person’s relative

employability in the creative industries. Though a person may have the skills and knowledge

necessarily to produce a particular creative product (such as a book or a film), if the public is

not interested in consuming the product, the producer may be considered to have poor

employability (V. Smith, 2010). This does not mean that producing products designed for a

mass audience automatically increases one’s employability for creative work, but that

employability in the creative industries is relative not only to labour market characteristics

Chapter 2 | Page 39

but also consumer trends, and that definitions of employability for the creative industries

should reflect this.

Finally, the ways in which employability are traditionally measured do not account for the

breadth of careers that can be undertaken in the creative industries. Graduate destination

surveys are the most common way that employability is measured; however, these surveys

generally focus only on higher education graduates up to one-year post-graduation. This

approach effectively ignores all other labour market participants (Kinash et al., 2016) and

associates employability with short-term labour market success rather than as something that

is maintained over the course of a person’s working life (L. Harvey, Locke, & Morey, 2002).

Employability is also measured in terms of whether a graduate holds a full-time position post-

graduation, which does not reflect how common portfolio careers are in the creative

industries (Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015; Bridgstock, 2011). As a result, many graduate

surveys are also overly focused on whether graduates are achieving employment rather than

whether they are also employed in relevant employment. For example, a creative graduate

may be employed full-time, but not necessarily in a job that relates to their study area (Knight

& Yorke, 2003a). Alternatively, a creative graduate may be working the equivalent of a full-

time workload across multiple positions; however, large scale graduate surveys are not

nuanced enough to account for this (Dacre Pool & Sewell, 2007). Equating the concept of

employability solely with employment outcomes also ignores the various personal and socio-

cultural factors, as well as the market forces that play an important role in influencing

whether or not a person is able to achieve objective career success in the creative industries

within only a year of graduating (Dacre Pool & Sewell, 2007; Knight & Yorke, 2003a;

Wilton, 2011).

2.3 CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter contains the first part of this thesis’ review of the existing literature. Section 2.1

introduced the concept of employability and explored how definitions of the concept have

evolved over the last 60 years. This was followed by a critique of contemporary

conceptualisations of employability. Although the way that employability is defined and

conceptualised in the contemporary labour market is increasingly understood as incorporating

a range of labour market factors, the most cited definitions do not acknowledge the role that

labour market factors play in influencing what makes a person employable at a particular

time. Chapter 2 also explored how government policy and higher education systems influence

Chapter 2 | Page 40

contemporary definitions of employability, before considering employability in the creative

industries and summarising the labour market characteristics and working conditions in

Section 2.2. Overall, this chapter has provided significant context to the challenges that

graduates face when they enter the labour market. The following chapter expands upon the

literature considered so far to focus more specifically on graduate employability and graduate

experiences of the labour market.

Chapter 3 | Page 41

Chapter 3 : Education-to-work transitions and graduates’ use of employability strategies

The previous chapter comprehensively reviewed the existing literature addressing

employability. This chapter focuses on the early labour market experiences of graduates. The

first part of the chapter introduces and defines education-to-work transitions before exploring

the literature that describes how these have been experienced by graduates in the past. The

second part of this chapter defines and identifies employability strategies before reflecting

upon how previous cohorts of graduates have used these strategies in navigating the labour

market and when building their careers. Chapter 3 explores the experiences of graduates in

general, as well as focusing, where possible, on graduates pursuing employment in the

creative industries. The final part of this chapter identifies the key knowledge gaps that this

thesis seeks to address, particularly a lack of existing research in two areas: (1) how

education-to-work transitions are experienced by creative graduates and (2) how graduates of

creative disciplines use employability strategies during education-to-work transitions.

3.1 EDUCATION-TO-WORK TRANSITIONS

3.1.1 Defining education-to-work transitions

An education-to-work transition encompasses the time during which an individual transitions

between an educational program and the workforce. The length of this transitional period and

how this transition evolves are more loosely defined; thus, definitions can vary greatly. For

some, education-to-work transitions begin during secondary education and continue for many

years, depending on whether or not an individual pursues higher education upon finishing

secondary school (Bradley & Devadason, 2008). In studies of university graduates,

education-to-work transitions generally encompass the final year or two of study and then up

to five years post-graduation, though these parameters can change depending on the

discipline of study and how associated labour markets are structured (Haukka, 2011). In

response to the ways that labour markets have changed over the past 30 years, education-to-

work transitions have also become increasingly non-linear, whereby education and work are

undertaken simultaneously, rather than sequentially, so that students can build all-important

professional experience and contacts while also achieving a qualification (Brooks, 2009;

Matthews, 2011; Stokes & Wyn, 2007). The length of an individual’s transitional period

between education and work can be further influenced by other characteristics, such as an

Chapter 3 | Page 42

individual’s professional identity and career goals, because these influence the kind of work a

person chooses to pursue (Creech et al., 2008) and career trajectories are largely determined

by labour market characteristics (Haukka, 2011). Young people also often experience longer

education-to-work transitions, because as competition for low-level work increases, so too

does unemployment and underemployment (Bradley & Devadason, 2008).

3.1.2 Existing research – Young peoples’ experiences of education-to-work transitions

Several studies have sought to understand how young people, particularly those who

undertake higher education, generally experience education-to-work transitions. As

introduced in Chapter 2, the largest studies of tertiary graduates – graduate destination studies

– provide broad data addressing whether graduates have achieved full-time employment

within six to 12 months after graduation. Smaller studies have been able to provide a more

nuanced understanding of the issues that graduates face as they move between higher

education and the labour market. Studies as far back as the 1980s have found that, for young

people, education-to-work transitions are periods of immense change and that most school

leavers changed jobs at least once in the year after they graduated (Wallace, 1987). Similarly,

Fenton and Dermott’s (2006) report of a 2002 study into the early career trajectories of 1,100

young people in Bristol, UK, found that not only did these young people change jobs often

during their early career, but that they were also staying in education longer, with most

pursuing some kind of higher education after secondary school.

A number of early studies specifically researching how university graduates in particular

have experienced education-to-work transitions discovered that these transitions could be

negative experiences for graduates and often did not meet graduates’ expectations of the kind

of work they would be doing after graduation (Buckham, 1998; Dean, Ferris, & Konstans,

1988; Graham & McKenzie, 1995; Nicholson & Arnold, 1989). Many young people struggle

to successfully transition between education and work because they find it difficult to apply

the skills and knowledge obtained through education in a professional setting (Bolton &

Hyland 2003), which can result in graduates exhibiting a lack self-confidence and self-esteem

and placing blame solely upon themselves (Morris 2004). This can occur even though it is

recognised that students’ ability to transfer learning between contexts is affected by three key

elements – the aptitude of the student, the environment they are attempting to transfer

learning to, and the design of the task and learning environment in which the learning

originally took place – two of which they have minimal control over (Leberman, McDonald

Chapter 3 | Page 43

& Doyle, 2006). Further compounding this issue, industry also increasingly expects that

graduates will emerge from their education to be “oven-ready and self-basting” highly

functional workers capable of taking responsibility for their continued employability

development (Atkins, 1999, p. 1), which places increasing pressure on graduates.

Though a 2002 report suggested that education-to-work transitions are made more difficult

because individual graduates “appear to have little understanding of the purpose of their

studies or the direction in which they are heading” (OECD, 2002, p. 18), subsequent studies

have shown that graduates are increasingly self-aware of their own employability and

sensitive to the various factors that impact upon their education-to-work transitions.

Tomlinson's (2007) study of final year undergraduate students in the UK showed that these

students recognised that they needed to be competent at ‘selling themselves’ to potential

employers in a way that differentiated them from other graduates in an increasingly cluttered

labour market. While the students recognised that employers looked for more than just job-

specific skills and knowledge in a new hire and that labour market characteristics would have

some influence over the type of employment they would obtain in their first few years after

graduation, they also tended to believe that hard work and perseverance would help them

overcome these challenges. Tomlinson’s (2007) analysis also found that students orientated

themselves in different ways to the labour markets they were pursuing and that this

influenced how they engaged with these labour markets. The majority of the study’s

participants were labelled as careerists, who had strong career goals and worked proactively

to achieve them, or ritualists, who had less stringent career goals and were happy to settle for

employment that was secure. A small minority of students were classified as retreatists, who

would abandon a labour market or career goal completely if they were unable to support

themselves (Tomlinson, 2007).

A more recent study of university graduates, also from the UK, showed that the graduates

acknowledged that a mismatch exists between higher education and labour markets, with

over one-third of respondents stating that their current job did not require a tertiary education

(Little & Arthur, 2010). However, the longer these graduates were in the labour market, the

better aligned their jobs were with their degrees. At five years post-graduation, two-thirds of

graduates were working “exclusively in their own or a related field” (Little & Arthur, 2010,

p. 289). These studies show that, although the first years in the labour market after graduation

are particularly challenging, employment outcomes tend to improve the longer graduates are

in the labour market.

Chapter 3 | Page 44

Students and graduates from lower socio-economic status backgrounds are known to

experience more difficult education-to-work transitions than their more privileged peers. Not

only do young people from low socio-economic status backgrounds participate less in higher

education (A. Harvey et al., 2017), they are also more likely to be employed while studying

and less likely to be in full-time employment post-graduation (A. Harvey et al., 2017; QILT,

2018; Richardson et al., 2016). In Australia, having a disability, speaking English as a second

language, and having been born outside Australia also diminish the likelihood of being

employed full-time after graduating (Richardson et al., 2016). The prevalence of social

networks as a facilitator for graduates securing employment also privileges those with

existing industry networks, often middle and upper socio-economic status graduates (Eikhof

& Warhurst, 2013). Similarly, parents can be a key source of career advice and financial

support, which again privileges graduates from more affluent backgrounds (Taylor, 2012;

Throsby & Zednik, 2010). However, it is possible for graduates to exhaust support networks

if they rely too heavily on them as they move through their early careers (McArdle et al.,

2007; Wethington & Kessler, 1986), which has implications for their continued career

success.

3.1.3 Education-to-work transitions in the creative industries

For students and graduates of creative industries tertiary education, the education-to-work

transition is fraught with instability and uncertainty, reflecting the precarious nature of

contemporary creative work. Analysis of graduate tracking data from the UK by Comunian et

al. (2011) demonstrated that not only were graduates of arts and humanities (A&H) degrees

(which includes the creative industries) more likely than non-A&H graduates to be employed

precariously in part-time work after graduation, they also undertook more voluntary and

unpaid work, and almost half of the A&H graduates studies were in jobs that either did not

require a tertiary education or were unrelated to their study area. Creative graduates are

known to struggle during education-to-work transitions, and often experience longer

transitions than their non-creative peers (Bridgstock et al., 2015) because they have portfolio

careers requiring self-employment and entrepreneurialism forced upon them much earlier

than they expect or are prepared for (Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015). Graduates of creative

degrees are also twice as likely as non-creative graduates to be unemployed in the early years

of their career (Comunian et al., 2011). For many aspiring creatives, particularly those

pursuing specialist creative and cultural production work, it can take multiple attempts to gain

initial employment, during which they rely on non-creative jobs for financial support, at the

Chapter 3 | Page 45

expense of not having time to devote to the development of their creative practice (Ball,

2003; Bridgstock, 2011; Galloway, Lindley, Davies, & Scheibl, 2002).

One of the largest longitudinal studies of creative graduates to date, the Creative Graduates

Creative Futures report, studied the early career trajectories of 3,500 graduates of creative

industries degrees from across the UK between 2008 and 2010 (Ball, Pollard, & Stanley,

2010). This study supports many of the findings of other studies, such as the prevalence of

portfolio careers and entrepreneurialism during the education-to-work transitions of creative

graduates. According to the report, 48% of creative graduates surveyed were engaged in

portfolio careers and 45% had been self-employed in some capacity since graduation. The

report also challenged the prevalence of unemployment and non-creative work during

creative graduates’ early careers, reporting that only 18% of respondents said their main job

was non-creative and only 5% were unemployed or looking for work at the time of the study

(Ball et al., 2010). However, given that respondents were six to eight years post-graduation at

the time of the study, it would be more accurate to suggest that these findings support the idea

that employment outcomes for creative graduates, like other graduates, improve over time.

Similarly, while three-quarters of creative graduates studied had worked in the creative

industries since graduation, instances of unpaid work and internships as a form of creative

work were high, with one-quarter of respondents participating in some form of unpaid

creative work at the time of survey (Ball et al., 2010). Additionally, salaries were low, with

one-third of respondents earning less than £15,000 a year (approximately AU$26,000).

Despite the many challenges that these creative graduates faced during their education-to-

work transitions, 77% were satisfied with their careers (Ball et al., 2010). This suggests that

creative graduates, just like more established creative workers, may be more intrinsically than

extrinsically motivated to pursue creative work. However, that a significant proportion of

graduates have yearly salaries less than the average new graduate salary six to eight years

after graduation shows that education-to-work transitions in the creative industries can be

longer and more challenging than in other industries (Daniel & Daniel, 2015).

Discipline-specific studies of creative graduates have revealed similar findings to these CI-

wide studies, while also highlighting how education-to-work transitions can differ between

creative disciplines. Studies of media and communication graduates in Australia have found

that the first years post-graduation can be just as volatile for embedded creatives as for

creative practitioners, with multiple job holding and precarious work common in the careers

Chapter 3 | Page 46

of graduates in media and communication (Cunningham & Bridgstock, 2012; Matthews,

2011). The ways that some creative organisations are structured have also been shown to

inhibit successful entry by graduates into certain industries, particularly those saturated by

freelance and project-based work such as the film and television industries (Grugulis &

Stoyanova, 2011). These working patterns make it difficult for aspiring workers to have

meaningful contact with experienced professionals, which limits their ability to build relevant

on-the-job skills and personal networks that could assist them to obtain work in the future

(Grugulis & Stoyanova, 2011). Work in the creative industries is often obtained through

personal networks, particularly industries that involve project work (Eikhof & Warhurst,

2013; Okay-Somerville & Scholarios, 2017; Randle & Culkin, 2009). Unsurprisingly,

graduates in growth industries, particularly digital production and technology, tend to

experience relatively positive education-to-work transitions characterised by “high levels of

full-time employment and…comparatively high salaries” (Bridgstock & Cunningham, 2016,

p. 16). While creative graduates experience education-to-work transitions in similar ways to

graduates of other industries, the particular creative labour market being pursued can

influence the challenges a graduate may face.

Amidst these challenges, education-to-work transitions are also a time of significant identity

development and career exploration for graduates (Jackson, 2016; Tomlinson, 2017). More

than ever, graduates are expected to be wholly self-directed in developing a career identity

and translating that to a work context (Laughland-Booÿ, Newcombe, & Skrbiš, 2017).

Creative identity is often initially developed during educational experiences, particularly

secondary schooling and higher education (Daniels & Brooker, 2014). As a result, graduates’

creative identity formation can be strongly influenced by the ethos of the educational

institutions they attend, which can have both positive and negative implications. In their

study of visual artists, Lindström (2015) found that artists who had attended institutions that

prioritised creative practice without also allowing the exploration of other potential career

pathways often only pursued careers as practicing visual artists. In particular, graduates who

aspire to cultural production work can struggle to establish themselves during education-to-

work transitions because their preconceived personal and professional identities do not reflect

the realities of contemporary creative industries work (Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015;

Bridgstock et al., 2015). In a study of Australian dance and music students, Bennett and

Bridgstock (2015) found that many performing arts students subscribe to “rigid, overly

Chapter 3 | Page 47

specific” career identities based around performance-based careers (p. 272), even though

these types of careers only represent a fraction of the work available in these industries.

The development of a creative identity can also be a challenge for creative graduates because

creative degrees, particularly general or interdisciplinary degrees, “are not [necessarily]

associated with accredited career paths” (Bennett, Rowley, Dunbar-Hall, Hitchcock, & Blom,

2016, p. 110). Creative graduates are also known to compartmentalise separate career-related

identities in order to keep their creative and non-creative pursuits separate (Reid, Petocz, &

Bennett, 2016), as it can be difficult for graduates to reconcile their creative passions with the

need to earn a financial income (Hausmann, 2010). Overall, creative graduates who maintain

an element of flexibility when developing their creative identity and establishing career plans

appear to be the most adept at successfully managing the challenges of the creative labour

market (Shulman et al., 2014).

3.2 EMPLOYABILITY STRATEGIES

As labour markets and employment patterns have changed, researchers have become

increasingly interested in the tactics that people use to navigate labour markets (Kanfer,

Wanberg, & Kantrowitz, 2001; Pralong et al., 2012). Existing research shows that graduates

of higher education often use a variety of personal and professional strategies in order to

enhance their employability during education-to-work transitions (Kinash et al., 2016). While

attending higher education is an employability strategy in itself (Dacre Pool & Sewell, 2007),

other strategies include undertaking work experience or internships, participating in personal

development programs, building professional and personal connections through networking,

and creating public portfolios of work (Kinash & Crane, 2015; Knight & Yorke, 2003b). This

section of the literature review explores the existing literature that has examined how

graduates use employability strategies to navigate their way into and around labour markets

during education-to-work transitions.

3.2.1 Defining employability strategies

As introduced in Chapter 1, employability refers to an individual’s continued relevancy and

fitness for work (Cremin, 2009; Kinash et al., 2016). Though the term ‘employability

strategies’ is often used interchangeably with job search behaviours, employability strategies

more broadly refer to the full spectrum of activities that individuals can draw upon to

enhance their employability when “planning for labour force participation and navigating

Chapter 3 | Page 48

contemporary job markets” (V. Smith, 2010, p. 279). As labour markets have become

increasingly competitive, particularly for graduates, using the ‘correct’ selection of

employability strategies can improve labour market outcomes, because different labour

markets have different expectations and processes (Tomlinson, 2012). As such, several

activities, both personal and professional, are considered employability strategies. These

include:

- job search strategies (both formal and informal);

- undertaking education and/or training;

- work experience/internships;

- networking (in-person and online via social networking sites);

- personal skills development;

- self-promotion through a portfolio of past work;

- membership of professional associations;

- engaging in entrepreneurial activities (Kinash & Crane, 2015; Knight & Yorke,

2003b; Stopfer & Gosling, 2013).

While this list is not exhaustive of all activities that could be considered employability

strategies, they reflect the most widely recognised and most commonly used strategies

amongst graduates (Kinash & Crane, 2015). Some strategies may also occur within the

context of another strategy. For example, HEIs are increasingly seeking to provide students

with opportunities to participate in industry-based work experience through providing work

integrated learning (WIL) subjects or professional placement within curriculum (Jackson,

2017). As higher education enrolments increase in line with government targets, this practice

aligns with the general assumption that the “primary aim and purpose for degree completion

is employability” (Kinash et al., 2016, p. 1.; also Bridgstock, 2009). However, graduates

recognise that the possession of a degree in itself may not be all that is required to secure

employment post-graduation (Grant-Smith & McDonald, 2015; Tomlinson, 2008). Similarly,

though the use of job search strategies is an essential part of labour market participation,

being able to use them proactively and strategically has become an essential skill for workers

wanting to stand out from competing workers (De Vos, De Clippeleer, & Dewilde, 2009;

Kanfer et al., 2001; Lau & Pang, 2000; Pirog, 2015). Additionally, while networking and

work experience (both paid and unpaid) are also widely used by graduates (V. Smith, 2010),

physically participating in the activity is only one part of the process. These experiences must

Chapter 3 | Page 49

then be packaged and presented in such a way that they can offer value to potential employers

(Clark, Marsden, & Whyatt, 2015; Tomlinson, 2012).

A key issue regarding employability strategies is how to determine which strategies are most

conducive to improving an individual’s employability and supporting education-to-work

transitions within a particular labour market context. Confusion about selecting employability

strategies can occur when a person tries to objectively attribute value and rank to

employability strategies, or assume that because a strategy is commonly used, it is therefore

more effective than other strategies. As labour market experiences are highly individualistic

and subjective, so too are the ways individuals might use and value employability strategies.

This is clear when different studies around employability strategies are compared. For

example, Kanfer et al. (2001) found that the more job search behaviours an individual used,

the more likely they were to obtain employment. In contrast, Fugate et al. (2004) found that

job seekers were more likely to feel positive about their own employability when they used a

quality not quantity approach to selecting employability strategies. Similarly, individual

graduates tend to value employability strategies in line with their post-graduation labour

market experiences; that is, graduates who experience positive labour market outcomes report

higher self-rated employability and view their degrees more positively than those who

experience negative labour market outcomes (Wilton, 2011). Identity can also play a key role

in how a person uses and values employability strategies, as workers often use their identity

as a benchmark for determining what is an appropriate job for them, and consequently, what

is an appropriate employability strategy to obtain that job (P. Brown & Hesketh, 2004; V.

Smith, 2010). A person may therefore reject an employability strategy because it does not fit

with how they view themselves or how they wish to be viewed by others in a labour market

(Tomlinson, 2012).

3.2.2 How graduates use employability strategies

While several researchers have sought to provide insight into the employability strategies that

graduates use during education-to-work transitions, most have focused specifically on how

graduates use job search strategies rather than the full range of employability strategies that

exist. A study into the job search strategies used by Swiss higher education graduates

between 1995 and 2001 found that these graduates commonly used multiple job search

strategies during education-to-work transitions and that graduates secured employment in

equal numbers regardless of the specific job seeking strategies they had used (Franzen &

Chapter 3 | Page 50

Hangartner, 2006). An analysis of Norwegian graduate surveys showed that the majority of

graduates used formal job search strategies more often than informal strategies in seeking

work after graduation, with the internet becoming an increasingly popular way of searching

and applying for jobs (Try, 2005). Similarly, McKeown and Lindorff’s (2011) study of a

group of Australian higher education graduates revealed that while graduates continued to use

traditional job search methods, such as responding to job ads and approaching employers

directly, online job search had become the most popular method of job search. On average,

these graduates used 2.6 job search strategies when looking for work (McKeown & Lindorff,

2011). Another more recent study of over 700 Australian higher education students and

graduates found that they used an average of five different employability strategies, not just

job search strategies, when searching for work, and that both students and graduates valued

work experience as the strategy most likely to improve their employability (Kinash & Crane,

2015).

Similarly, a number of studies have provided insight into factors that influence graduates’

decision-making processes concerning the use of employability strategies during education-

to-work transitions. A common theme across multiple studies is that most graduates initially

tend to use the same few employability strategies because they have limited knowledge of

labour markets. Buckham (1998) and Tomlinson (2008) both found that higher education

students and graduates believed having a degree would translate to greater labour market

opportunities than not having a degree, as would undertaking work experience, as these two

activities were anticipated to be highly valued by employers. While participants in both

studies acknowledged it was becoming more difficult to differentiate themselves from their

peers due to the increasing number of people attending university, they believed that labour

markets were genuinely meritocratic and that continuing to develop personal and professional

skills would eventually translate into positive labour market outcomes (Buckham, 1998;

Tomlinson, 2008).

Moreau and Leathwood’s 2006 report of a longitudinal study of UK higher education

graduates came to similar conclusions, that graduates were unconsciously internalising skills-

based approaches to employability and that this affected how they selected and valued

employability strategies. Completion of higher education degrees and work experience were

also the most popular strategies used by the graduates in this study because these strategies

aligned most closely with graduates’ belief that labour market success could be achieved

Chapter 3 | Page 51

through developing industry-related skills and knowledge. Inability to achieve preferred

labour market outcomes was therefore perceived as a personal failure by the graduates rather

than inadequate career planning or a lack of consideration for the socio-cultural factors at

play in labour markets (Moreau & Leathwood, 2006).

However, for many young people, the pursuit of higher education is a deliberate strategy for

developing employability because the labour market and society more broadly has

perpetuated the belief that completing a degree will lead to a better class of job and a more

financially stable lifestyle (P. Brown & Hesketh, 2004), even though this is not guaranteed in

contemporary labour markets. Other studies have suggested that although graduates may not

give too much consideration to the employability strategies they use initially, graduates

become more conscientious and strategic about their use of employability strategies as they

move into the labour market. Inability to obtain work has been shown to influence graduates

to adapt their use of strategies, particularly during job search. For example, a study of Polish

higher education graduates found that graduates who were unsuccessful in securing

employment immediately post-graduation increased their use of informal job search strategies

in subsequent attempts to find employment (Pirog, 2015). A lack of labour market success

also forced graduates to re-evaluate their professional identity and consider a greater variety

of employment options, for which their initial selection of employability strategies may also

require reconsideration (McKeown & Lindorff, 2011).

Employers also influence how graduates attribute value to certain employability strategies,

not only through stipulating certain job requirements, but also through the recruitment and

selection processes they adopt. In a study of over 300 employers across the UK, Branine

(2008) found that more than half of employers have specific procedures for the selection of

graduate workers. Graduates who wish to pursue employment with these employers must

therefore adjust their employability strategies to fit these procedures if they hope to be

successful (Branine, 2008). However, multiple studies have shown that higher education

students tend to lack awareness of the institutional career services available to them during

their studies (Andrews & Russell, 2012; Richardson et al., 2016). Employability initiatives

adopted by HEIs also tend to favour students from higher socio-economic status backgrounds

because they often feature optional WIL or other unpaid work placements, which can alienate

students who cannot afford to participate in those strategies (Marginson, 2016; McCowan,

2015).

Chapter 3 | Page 52

3.2.3 How creative industries graduates use employability strategies

While graduates of creative degrees have been shown to use employability strategies during

education-to-work transitions in many of the same ways as graduates in general, a few key

differences exist due to the nature of contemporary creative work. Given the precarity and

non-linear nature of creative work, it is particularly beneficial for creative graduates to

engage with employability strategies proactively, as proactive engagement with career

planning and management has been shown to positively impact career outcomes for creative

workers (Bridgstock, 2011, 2013). Certain employability strategies are also considered highly

relevant in the pursuit of creative work. On-the-job training, practical experience, and

developing social networks are particularly valuable in the creative industries, often more so

than qualifications (Allen et al., 2013; Towse, 2006). Geographical relocation and applying

for grants are also employability strategies used more by creative graduates than graduates in

general due to the high levels of self-employment in creative industries and the tendency for

these industries to be geographical concentrated in larger cities (Ball et al., 2010).

In order to gain relevant industry experience, creative graduates continue to place relatively

high value on unpaid work, such as internships and volunteering (Siebert & Wilson, 2013).

However, the true value of unpaid work in helping graduates to obtain work has not

necessarily aligned with the value attributed by graduates. In one study, fewer than half of the

creative graduates studied who undertook unpaid work experience were offered a paid

position to continue working with the organisation at the end of that work experience (Siebert

& Wilson, 2013). Additionally, Baumann (2002) found that using and valuing employability

strategies in the pursuit of creative employment is made even more difficult for graduates

because methods of recruitment differ, not only between creative disciplines, but even

between individual organisations within the same discipline. However, similar to other

graduates, creative graduates have been shown to use a variety of different employability

strategies during education-to-work transitions in order to find immediate employment, as

well as to develop themselves for future employment opportunities (Bertolini & Manuel,

2010; Haukka, 2011).

3.3 GAPS IN THE RESEARCH

This chapter highlighted that knowledge of how higher education graduates navigate

transitions between education and work is limited because graduate employability research,

especially large government-funded graduate surveys, often focuses on graduate work

Chapter 3 | Page 53

destinations and the details of that work, such as weekly income earned and weekly hours

worked, rather than also considering the process of how graduates arrive at those destinations

(Bridgstock et al., 2015; Oakley, Sperry, & Pratt, 2008). As a result, there is a significant

knowledge gap around graduates’ use of employability strategies and the relationships

between these strategies and graduates’ early career employment outcomes. Where studies

have sought to investigate the employability strategies used by graduates, the results are often

descriptive accounts of a limited range of strategies that have been used, with little

investigation of how graduates select from the broad range of strategies available to them and

the purpose for which they use strategies within the context of their early careers (Batistic &

Tymon, 2017; Bradley & Devadason, 2008; Daniel & Daniel, 2015).

Likewise, few studies within the graduate employability literature have considered how and

when graduates learn about employability strategies (Knight & Yorke, 2003b), and how

graduates’ use of employability strategies “map onto [their] actual employment trajectories”

(V. Smith, 2010, p. 295). While a limited number of studies have shown that creative students

and graduates are capable of making active and strategic decisions concerning their career

development, researchers acknowledge that more nuanced research could be conducted in

this area (Ball et al., 2010; Bennett, 2009; Tomlinson, 2012). Developing better

understanding of the ways in which graduates engage with the labour market, particularly

within the current labour market climate, is also essential for understanding why graduates

have particular early career trajectories.

Additionally, prominent researchers of graduate employability support further investigation

into creative graduates’ experiences of transitioning between higher education and work, not

only to gain deeper insight into the early career challenges faced by creative graduates

(Comunian et al., 2011), but also because analysing how creative graduates navigate an

already unstable and fragmented labour market may produce findings of value for people

pursuing work in other industries that are becoming increasingly fragmented (Buckham,

1998; Knight & Yorke, 2003b; Lingo & Tepper, 2013). Current and future creative students

and graduates could also benefit from greater research into how education-to-work transitions

have been experienced by other aspiring creative workers (Daniel & Daniel, 2015). There is

also a need for more qualitative research into graduate experiences regarding education-to-

work transitions, because existing quantitative studies cannot account for the intricacies of

Chapter 3 | Page 54

how labour markets in the creative industries are actually experienced (Bridgstock et al.,

2015; McArthur, Kubacki, Pang, & Alcaraz, 2017).

3.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter focused on reviewing the existing literature that addresses how graduates

experience education-to-work transitions and use employability strategies to build careers.

While this chapter included overall graduate perspectives, each section also included a review

of past literature specifically related to creative graduates. Through this review, three key

knowledge gaps were identified. First, there is a need for more research into the nuances of

creative graduates’ education-to-work transitions, particularly within the precarious and

challenging environment of the creative labour market. Second, there is an opportunity to

explore, in significant detail, how graduates use all types of employability strategies during

their early careers. Third, how graduates secure employment during their initial post-graduate

years and the relationship between employability strategies and employment outcomes is a

relatively unexplored area. The following chapter describes how this study addresses these

gaps by outlining the methodology and research design to analyse the experiences of

contemporary creative graduates in Australia.

Chapter 4 | Page 55

Chapter 4 : Methods, Methodology and Research Design

This chapter describes the methodology and design used in this research to achieve the

research aims and questions outlined in Section 1.3. First addressing the ontological and

methodological paradigms that shaped the study, this chapter then provides details of the

sampling, data collection, analytical methods, and ethical considerations of each stage of the

study. The chapter concludes with the strengths and limitations of the research design.

4.1 RESEARCH PARADIGM: CRITICAL REALISM

As discussed in the previous chapter, there is a need for more nuanced research into how

graduates experience education-to-work transitions in contemporary labour markets. As no

two graduates will have the same early career trajectory or labour market experience, it was

necessary for this study to adopt a theoretical perspective that acknowledges: (1) that

individual graduates will have different labour market experiences during their early careers,

(2) that these different graduate experiences can co-exist within the same social world, and

(3) that individual experiences can produce data that is meaningful and insightful. Critical

realism (CR) was therefore deemed an ideal ontological position to adopt for this study,

because CR does not seek to identify a single objective explanation for how a social

phenomenon or social world is experienced (Fletcher, 2017), but rather explores “why people

take different views and meanings” within the same environment (Edwards et al., 2014, p.

321).

Central to CR, and differentiating it from other theoretical paradigms, is the concept of

conducting multi-level analyses in order to look beyond empirical events to discover how

underlying causalities and power structures influence social experiences (O’Mahoney &

Vincent, 2014; Saunders et al., 2012). CR encourages the researcher to consider, in turn,

“what is empirically observed, what actually occurs, and what causes that which occurs and is

observed” (Fleetwood 2014, p. 126). It is this multi-level process, and the acknowledgement

of factors beyond the empirical, that has resulted in CR being particularly suited to business,

management, and work-related research (A. Brown, 2014). CR is also highly relevant for

work-related studies because it acknowledges that a person’s subjective perceptions of an

event do not always reflect the true reality of the event (O’Mahoney & Vincent, 2014).

Labour market experiences often differ because they are influenced by factors internal and

external to individual workers, such as individual goals, personal and family commitments,

Chapter 4 | Page 56

and broader labour market factors and economic conditions. Not only does CR allow for

these broader influencing factors to be considered when researching a particular

phenomenon, it also acknowledges that an observable phenomenon, such as how graduates

use employability strategies, should be analysed within the context in which the phenomenon

occurs (Lennox & Jurdi-Hage, 2017). Similarly, to consider how graduates can effectively

navigate the power relations withinof labour markets, their experiences need to be analysed

through a perspective such as CR that acknowledges that power dynamics exist and that these

influence graduate experiences (C. Smith & Elger, 2014). Without fair consideration of the

nuances that affect labour market experiences and outcomes, it would be incorrect to assert

that particular employability strategies are inherently or objectively of greater value in

contemporary labour markets. Additionally, by seeking to build causal explanations for

events, CR is an approach well suited to producing practical recommendations for research

problems (Fletcher, 2017; Lennox & Jurdi-Hage, 2017), which aligns with the overall aim of

this thesis.

4.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: MIXED METHODS APPROACH

Just as CR straddles the competing epistemologies of positivism and interpretivism (Hurrell,

2014), CR differs from other paradigms by not being associated with any particular set of

methods (Fletcher, 2017). The choice of methods for a CR study should therefore reflect the

study’s particular aims and research questions (Hurrell, 2014). In order to address this study’s

aims and research questions, a mixed methods approach combining quantitative (survey) and

qualitative (individual interviews) methods was deemed most appropriate for several reasons.

First, different methods allow for a phenomenon to be examined from differing viewpoints.

Quantitative methods are often valued for providing “a more general understanding of a

problem”, while qualitative methods are well suited to providing “a detailed understanding of

a problem” (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011, p. 8). A significant knowledge gap in the existing

literature around graduate employability and graduate career trajectories is an absence of

studies that consider these experiences from multiple perspectives. Using a mixed methods

approach for this study therefore addresses this gap by allowing the research problem to be

analysed with greater depth and breadth than previous single-method studies (Bryman, 2006;

Johnson, Onwuegbuzie, & Turner, 2007; Seale, 1999). Second, mixed methods approaches

are well suited to CR studies because the process of using complementary methods can

“reveal different features of the same layered reality” (Downward & Mearman, 2007, p. 92),

a key tenant of the CR philosophy. Mixed methods also aligned particularly well with the

Chapter 4 | Page 57

overarching CR framework of this study because the chosen methods helped to explore the

differences between what the graduates perceived was occurring during their early careers

and what was actually occurring, particularly in relation to how they used and valued

employability strategies (Maxwell & Mittapalli, 2010).

Third, a mixed methods approach can provide more validity than a single-method approach

because it allows for triangulation to occur (Anderson, 2012; Greene, Caracelli, & Graham,

1989). Not only is there value in analysing this study’s research questions from multiple

perspectives, a mixed methods approach allows for quantitative and qualitative methods to

complement and build upon one another during the study (Greene et al., 1989; Molina-

Azorin, Bergh, Corley, & Ketchen, 2017). While analysing survey data provided broad

insight into the challenges faced by graduates during their early careers and allowed for

statistical tests that tested for relationships between the variables to be undertaken, the

quantitative data did not provide adequate context for the results nor explain how or why the

graduates used particular employability strategies in their early careers. Similarly, while the

interview data allowed for deeper exploration of the graduates’ thought processes in

navigating their early careers and the various factors that influenced their trajectories,

qualitative data has less generalisability than quantitative data (Creswell, 2015; Weerakkody,

2009). Mixed methods allows the effects of these respective limitations to be minimised by

providing alternate perspectives that work together to address the study’s research questions

(Molina-Azorin et al., 2017; Shannon-Baker, 2016).

The mixed methods approach reflects a convergent study design, whereby the data collection

and analysis were conducted separately for each method before being integrated to compare

the findings of the respective studies. This is a common design in studies seeking to provide a

complete understanding of a topic (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). This design was also

suitable because both parts of the study worked concurrently rather than sequentially to

address all three of the study’s research questions. The first part of the study analysed the

early careers of creative graduates using quantitative methods to explore how different

elements of creative graduates’ early career trajectories relate on a statistical level. The

research design of this part of the study is discussed in more depth in Section 4.3. The second

part of the study sought to gain rich qualitative insights into creative graduates’ experiences

of employment and employability strategies through individual interviews with recent

creative graduates. The research design of this part of the study is discussed in greater depth

in Section 4.4.

Chapter 4 | Page 58

4.3 RESEARCH DESIGN: QUANTITATIVE STUDY

The survey data were collected during the period 2013-2014 through a research study titled

Creative Pathways: Australian Creative Graduate Careers Online Survey. The study was

undertaken by researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and

Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology. The survey was designed to uncover

new information about the education-to-work transitions of creative industries higher

education graduates in Australia and included a mixture of multiple choice, Likert scale, and

open-ended questions (see Appendix A for a copy of the survey). While the survey was not

constructed specifically for this PhD research, and I was not involved in the original research

project during which the survey was designed and data collected, the data were highly

relevant because it included several questions that related directly to the aims of the study.

This included questions about recent creative graduates’ early career outcomes, as well as the

employability strategies they had used in their early careers. The sample of people who had

graduated from a creative undergraduate degree in Australia during the period 2007-2012 was

also particularly suitable for the current study. Ethical approval (No: 1300000037) was

granted for the dataset from a single institution to be used in this thesis for secondary data

analysis.

4.3.1 Sample

During the survey period, 1,738 graduates of creative industries undergraduate degrees from

ten higher education institutions across Australia were contacted and invited to complete the

survey. Over a two-month period, potential participants were contacted via email, text

message, and post, with contact information sourced from the alumni database at each of the

ten participating institutions. In total, 916 individual survey completions were recorded. The

sample (N = 322) used in this analysis encompassed survey respondents from a single

Australian metropolitan university (554 invitations sent, for a response rate of 58.12%). This

single university was considered appropriate for two reasons. Firstly, this particular

institution had the highest response rate of all institutions encompassed in the survey, thereby

offering a robust sample that could be used for a deeper level of analysis, including satisfying

minimum sample requirements for non-parametric statistical testing. Secondly, this

institution’s dataset included respondents from the full range of creative disciplines

encompassed in the original survey, which again made the sample more robust than for the

other institutions in the data set. All participants in the sample had graduated from a creative

Chapter 4 | Page 59

degree specialising in one of five disciplines: (1) visual arts, (2) literary studies, (3)

performing arts, (4) music, or (5) film, television and new media, as shown in Table 4.1.

Table 4.1: Survey sample by discipline

Discipline Name % of institution sample

Sub-disciplines (Degrees offered in the discipline)

Visual 12% Visual arts Literary 21% Creative and professional writing Performance 41% Acting, dance studies, dance performance,

drama, technical production Music 10% Music

Film, television, and new media

16% Film, TV, and new media production, film, television and screen, animation

Of the creative graduates in the sample, 76% were female, the median age was 20-24 years

and the median year of graduation was 2010, with most respondents at three years post-

graduation at the time of survey. Seventy-three percent of the graduates were employed,

holding an average of 1.01 jobs, and 32% of the graduates who were employed worked

exclusively in specialist creative jobs. The use of this single institution sample was relevant

to this study because the demographics of the sample respondents (particularly their age and

gender) were representative of the broader population of creative tertiary graduates in

Australia, of whom the majority are aged under 25 and more likely to be female than male

(Daniel & Daniel, 2015). The sample respondents’ demographics were also broadly

representative of the age, gender, and employment status of the average Australian tertiary

graduate, at both the time of the original survey (Graduate Careers Australia Ltd, 2014a) and

the current time (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2017; Universities Australia, 2018).

The five disciplines in the sample collectively represent a selection of the core disciplines that

are deemed to belong to the creative industries (DCMS 2001; Howkins 2007), while also

reflecting how the creative industries are labelled under ‘Field of Education’ codes in the

Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED) (ABS, 2006) . The ASCED is a set

of standardised classifications created by the Australian Bureau of Statistics that guide “the

collection and analysis of data on educational activity and attainment” in Australia (ABS,

2006, paragraph 1). The creative disciplines reflected in the sample are all encompassed by

the Australian Field of Education code 10 (Creative Arts). While the ASCED specifically

reflects the Australian educational landscape, the ASCED Field of Education codes are

considered comparable to Field of Education codes in the UNESCO International Standard

Classification of Education (ABS, 2006), which allows for comparison between the data and

Chapter 4 | Page 60

samples from other nations that align with International Standard Classification of Education

classifications. While performance graduates represented the largest discipline group in the

sample, this reflects both the creative degrees offered by their university and that tertiary

institutions generally tend to have more degree offerings within performance than other

creative disciplines (see Table 4.1, Column 3). Similarly, while the disciplines represented in

the sample are often associated with cultural production work, the creative graduates in the

sample held jobs in fields that spanned the creative trident.

4.3.2 Measures

Table 4.2 outlines the specific variables from the survey used in the quantitative analyses.

Table 4.2: Description of variables used in the quantitative analyses

Category Individual variables within category Variable Type

Objective career outcome measures

Had a current job Median weekly hours worked in current jobs Median weekly income earned in current jobs Worked exclusively in specialist creative jobs1 Had spent time unemployed and looking for work since graduation

Categorical Continuous Continuous Categorical Categorical

Subjective career outcome measures

Self-rated employability in own creative field (5-item scale) Self-rated employability in general (5-item scale) Self-rated career success (5-item scale) Self-rated satisfaction with career success (5-item scale)

Continuous Continuous Continuous Continuous

Employability strategies used

Completed creative arts degree as a double degree Completed or currently undertaking tertiary education subsequent to completing creative arts degree Completed formal education outside university in previous 12 months Had used a single formal work generation strategy2 Had used a single informal work generation strategy3 Had used a single work creation strategy4

Categorical Categorical Categorical Categorical Categorical Categorical

Demographic variables

Gender (2 items) Study area (5 items) Year of graduation (6 items)

Categorical Categorical Categorical

1 Specialist creative jobs included any current jobs worked by the graduates that, as per the definition in Chapter 2, page 32, were a creative role within the creative industries. 2 Formal work generation strategies included: advertising or searching creative job boards, advertising or searching non-creative job boards, using representation (an agent/manager) or a job search agency, auditioning or submitting work samples, and other (open text response). 3 Informal work generation strategies included: word of mouth, mentoring, online networking, offline networking, online promotion (e.g., portfolio, website, show reel), paid work experience, unpaid work experience, cold calling, and other (open text response). 4 Work creation strategies included: establishing their own enterprise (e.g., business, collective, band, troupe), applying for grants, and other (open text response).

Chapter 4 | Page 61

4.3.3 Analysis

The quantitative analysis was undertaken in two stages, with each stage involving both

descriptive data analysis and non-parametric statistical testing.

Stage one of the analysis

The first stage of the quantitative data analysis was designed to address the first overarching

research question of this thesis, as follows:

RQ1: What shapes the education-to-work transitions of creative industries

graduates?

As noted in the previous chapter, knowledge about how higher education graduates navigate

their early careers is limited because most graduate studies only consider a limited number of

objective career outcome measures. The most prominent of these studies – large government-

funded graduate surveys – primarily focus on graduate destinations as the central measure of

graduate success. As noted in Chapter 3, the key graduate survey in Australia is the Graduate

Outcome Survey administered by Quality Indicators in Learning and Teaching (QILT)

(2018). The key indicators used in this survey are graduates’ rates of job holding,

employment status (e.g., full-time employment, self-employment), salaries, and participation

in further study six months post-graduation. In these same studies, subjective career outcome

measures, such as self-rated employability and self-rated satisfaction, are often overlooked, or

when included, are considered to be of secondary importance to objective measures. Not only

does this limited scope result in many studies overlooking key elements of graduates’ early

career experiences, focusing predominantly on a few objective career outcome measures is

not a perspective that neatly aligns with the range of employment outcomes possible in

creative labour markets (see Chapter 3). This stage of the quantitative analysis therefore

encompassed a greater variety of career outcome measures than found in existing studies.

Five objective career outcome measures and four subjective career outcome measures (as

shown in Table 2) were available from the existing dataset.

Descriptive analysis of the data was used to describe the graduates’ education-to-work

transitions using the nine career outcome measures. This analysis provided insight into the

early careers of creative graduates and how they perceived themselves and their careers

during this time. This analysis was guided by two sub-research questions:

Chapter 4 | Page 62

Sub-RQ1: What are the early career employment outcomes of creative graduates?

Sub-RQ2: How employable, successful, and satisfied do creative graduates feel

during their early careers?

Non-parametric statistical testing was then used to test for statistically significant

relationships between the objective and subjective career outcome measures. The purpose of

testing for relationships between these measures was to explore whether the graduates’

subjective career outcomes (i.e., their self-rated employability, career success and career

satisfaction) aligned with their employment outcomes (i.e., job holding, weekly income

earned, weekly hours worked etc.). This analysis provides some indication of what creative

graduates’ employment-related priorities might be during their early careers, as it is likely

that their employment priorities would shape how they approach their careers. This analysis

was guided by one sub-research question:

Sub-RQ3: What is the relationship between creative graduates’ early career

employment outcomes and how employable, successful, and satisfied they feel during

their early careers?

Three demographic variables (gender, study area, and year of graduation) were used during

both parts of the analysis to compare the graduates’ career outcomes. In conducting these

tests, the subjective career outcome measures were the dependent variables and the objective

career outcome measures were the independent variables. In addition to providing insight into

the key factors that shaped the education-to-work transitions of the graduates, this first stage

of the analysis also provided essential context for how and why creative graduates might use

and value employability strategies during their early careers.

Stage two of the analysis

The second stage of the quantitative analysis was designed to address the second and third

overarching research question of this thesis, as follows:

RQ2: What employability strategies do creative industries graduates use and how

do they use them during education-to-work transitions?

RQ3: How effective are the employability strategies used by creative industries

graduates for securing employment during their education-to-work transitions?

Chapter 4 | Page 63

As was noted in Chapter 3, employability strategies are conceptualised much more broadly

than the narrower concept of job seeking. Employability strategies assist individuals to

develop ongoing “fitness for work” (Cremin, 2009, p. 133), of which job seeking capabilities

is one element. As graduate labour markets continue to be highly competitive, there is

increasing need to better understand how employability strategies map onto graduates’ early

career trajectories. However, as many existing studies of the effectiveness of employability

strategies have focused largely on graduates’ use of job-seeking strategies, there is a

knowledge gap around the relationships between a broader range of employability strategies

and the early career outcomes of graduates. This stage of the quantitative analysis sought to

address this knowledge gap by encompassing a broader range of employability strategies than

previous studies. However, the six employability strategy variables included in the analysis

did not represent an exhaustive list of possible employability strategies that a graduate might

use. The analysis was ultimately restricted to the variables available in the existing data set

(as noted later in Chapter 9, Section 9.5).

This second stage of the analysis was undertaken in two parts. First, descriptive analysis of

the data was used to describe the percentage of graduates who had used each of the six

employability strategies. This analysis was guided by one sub-research question:

SubRQ4: What employability strategies do creative graduates use during their early

careers and for what purposes?

This analysis was also used to compare the graduates’ use of these particular employability

strategies based on their gender, study area, and year of graduation. Non-parametric statistical

testing was then used to test for statistically significant relationships between the

employability strategies used by the graduates and the graduates’ objective career outcomes.

The purpose of testing for relationships between the employability strategies and the

objective career outcome measures was to investigate whether the graduates’ use of particular

employability strategies aligned with them having more positive employment outcomes. This

analysis was guided by one sub-research question:

SubRQ5: What is the relationship between creative graduates’ early career

employment outcomes and the employability strategies they use?

In conducting these tests, the objective career outcome measures were the dependent

variables and the employability strategies were the independent variables. Similar to the first

Chapter 4 | Page 64

stage of the quantitative analysis, three demographic variables were used as moderating

variables to explore whether the graduates’ gender, study area, and year of graduation

affected the existence of relationships between the employability strategy variables and the

career outcome measures.

Statistical considerations

The four subjective career outcome measures were treated as continuous interval scales in the

analysis because those measures have been validated and published as such previously

(Greenhaus, Parasuraman, & Wormley, 1990). For both stages of the quantitative analysis, it

was necessary to use non-parametric tests rather than parametric tests to test for relationships

between the variables because the data were not normally distributed (Coakes, Steed, & Ong,

2010; Miah, 2016). Non-parametric tests were also necessary where categorical variables

were included in analyses (Miah, 2016). Accordingly, a range of non-parametric statistical

tests were used to reflect the particular combination of categorical and continuous variables

in each individual analysis. Spearman’s rank-order correlation tests were used for comparing

continuous variables with other continuous variables, such as in testing whether there was a

relationship between the graduates’ median weekly hours worked and the graduates’ self-

rated employability in their own creative field. Chi-square tests for relatedness or

independence were used for comparing categorical variables with other categorical variables,

such as in testing whether there was a relationship between whether the graduate had a

current job and whether they had used formal job seeking strategies. For analyses comparing

continuous variables with categorical variables, Mann-Whitney U tests were used where the

categorical variable had two categories, such as in testing whether there was a relationship

between having completed a double degree (categorical variable with two categories) and the

graduates’ weekly median income (continuous variable). In Chapter 5, the language used

when referring to the subjective career outcome measures reflects the language used in the

original survey (see Appendix A for the original survey questions and possible responses).

4.3.4 Strategies for ensuring rigour of the quantitative methods

Different parts of the quantitative data analysis were presented at two academic conferences

during candidature as a strategy to ensure the rigour of the quantitative analysis. Firstly, one

peer reviewed abstract was presented at the Association of Cultural Economics International

(ACEI) Conference in June 2018. Secondly, one peer reviewed full paper and one peer

reviewed abstract were presented at the Higher Education Research and Development Society

Chapter 4 | Page 65

of Australasia Conference in July 2018. Written feedback from reviewers and verbal

feedback from audience members at the conference presentations provided useful comments

for ensuring that the quantitative methods and resulting analysis were rigorous and adhered to

a high academic standard.

In addressing the research questions of this study, the quantitative analysis was able to

provide a broad overview of the early career trajectories of recent creative graduates in

Australia. The creative graduates faced several challenges during their early careers,

including precarious labour arrangements, below average incomes, and engagement with

creative and non-creative work. The graduates were also found to have used a range of

different employability strategies during their early career. While these findings show that

there is value in analysing employment phenomena from a quantitative perspective, this

analysis also highlighted several lines of enquiry that required a qualitative study. These are

discussed further in the following section.

4.4 RESEARCH DESIGN: QUALITATIVE STUDY

The data analysed for the qualitative component of the broader program of research for this

PhD was collected through semi-structured individual interviews with recent creative

industries higher education graduates who completed their undergraduate degree at a

university in metropolitan Brisbane, Australia between 2013 and 2015. Qualitative methods

are often used in CR studies because they facilitate the gathering of detailed, nuanced data

that situates peoples’ experiences within the contexts they occur (Creswell, 2015; Mason,

2002). Qualitative methods also allow for probing questions that can uncover the underlying

causal influences on events and a person’s perceptions of events (Hurrell, 2014; C. Smith &

Elger, 2014). Most importantly, qualitative methods are particularly well suited to exploring

‘how’ and ‘why’ people experience reality in different ways (Taylor, Bogdan, & DeVault,

2015). While analysing early career trajectories from a quantitative perspective provided

important insight into the early career trajectories of creative graduates, qualitative research

methods were also required to ensure that the research questions were considered in a holistic

way. The qualitative study was therefore designed to address all three overarching research

questions of this thesis.

Semi-structured individual interviews were considered the most appropriate qualitative

method for several reasons. Conducting the interviews in a semi-structured format allowed

for the individual experiences of graduates to be thoroughly investigated (Berg & Lune,

Chapter 4 | Page 66

2012; Liamputtong, 2009), as it was expected that graduates would use similar strategies but

attribute value to the strategies in different ways. The flexible format of semi-structured

interviews also allowed for new questions and new lines of enquiry that were not a part of the

initial interview guide to emerge during the interviews. These new lines of enquiry were then

integrated into the interview guide during the data collection period, which resulted in more

comprehensive data collection (Hesse-Biber, 2017). For example, initial participants

highlighted the role of industry expectations around the strategies that a person should use in

pursuing a creative career. A question explicitly asking participants whether they perceived

there to be expectations around pursuing a creative career was then added to the interview

guide, provoking insightful discussion in later interviews.

Another key benefit of using individual interviews was that they provided an atmosphere that

gave participants the confidence to speak about their education-to-work transitions honestly

without feeling the need to embellish their experiences to make them seem more desirable, as

can occur in a focus group situation (Weerakkody, 2009). In researching personal topics, such

as a person’s career successes and failures, participants may find it difficult to share personal

feelings, particularly to a researcher they have not met before. Semi-structured interviews are

less formal and can be more conversational than other qualitative methods; thus, participants

may be more comfortable expressing themselves in such a context, which can produce richer

data (Berg & Lune, 2012). Care was also taken during the interviews to make the participants

feel comfortable, such as allowing them to select the location and discussing the study’s

ethical stipulation around confidentiality and the use of the data prior to the interview, so that

they felt they could discuss their experiences openly and honestly.

4.4.1 Sample

Purposive sampling strategies, a type of non-probability sampling in which potential

participants are the people best placed to provide rich insight into the phenomenon being

investigated (Creswell, 2015), are often used in qualitative research studies (Weerakkody,

2009). Purposive sampling is also particularly relevant for studies that seek to investigate

specific occurrences in an in-depth manner (Neuman, 2003). A purposive sampling strategy

therefore aligned with the aims of the study, as this part of the research sought to explore the

nuances of how creative graduates use and value employability strategies during their early

careers and the myriad of factors that influence those choices. Design and visual arts were

selected as relevant creative disciplines from which to draw participants for the interviews

Chapter 4 | Page 67

because the characteristics of these disciplines, as discussed in the following paragraphs, are

representative of the early career labour market experiences of creative graduates more

broadly. Hence, these characteristics made them an ideal sample for investigating how

creative graduates use and value employability strategies in a variety of contexts during

education-to-work transitions.

The design discipline includes a number of creative fields for which the core activity is

creating, developing, and producing new ideas and ways of doing, including product design,

user experience/graphic design, digital and multi-media, fashion design, furniture design,

information design, and interior design (DCMS, 2001; Kiernan & Ledwith, 2014). In recent

years, the “widespread adoption of digital technology” alongside growth in online advertising

and mobile application development has driven demand for design services in Australia

(IBISWorld Pty Ltd, 2018, p. 5). As a result, there are increasing employment opportunities

for people with design skills and demand for design skills is predicted to grow steadily over

the next five years. Alongside more traditional employment opportunities within design

agencies or small businesses, freelancing and contract work is also common within the design

discipline (Allday, 2016). Globally, economic growth in emerging economies and the rise of

the gig economy offer additional employment opportunities for people with design skills

(IBISWorld Pty Ltd, 2018); thus, there are a variety of opportunities that design graduates

might pursue during their early careers. However, mid- and senior-level design workers are

more likely to hold full-time design jobs than graduates (Kiernan & Ledwith, 2014).

The visual arts discipline covers the plethora of activities associated with the production,

distribution, and exhibition of art works (DCMS, 2001). In comparison, visual arts labour

markets are highly competitive and increasingly casualised, with relatively low growth

expected over the coming years. These labour markets are also highly fragmented, with many

people in visual arts working as individual practitioners (i.e., visual artists) rather than as

employees within an organisation (Australia Council for the Arts, 2017; National Association

for the Visual Arts, 2017). People wanting to work in the visual arts are also expected to be

entrepreneurial in their careers, which requires them to have a broad skillset, be open to

moving geographically for work, and develop their own opportunities through applying for

grant funding (Lingo & Tepper, 2013). While there are non-practitioner employment

opportunities in the visual arts, largely in museums and galleries, these types of institutions

often rely on government funding to support their operations. Government funding for

museums and galleries in Australia has fallen significantly in recent years (IBISWorld Pty

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Ltd, 2016). There is also tension between museums and galleries, with museum revenue

outweighing gallery revenue and galleries turning to international exhibits in order to attract

visitors. Many galleries are geographically centred in major metropolitan cities, particularly

Sydney and Melbourne (Mullaly, 2016). These factors all influence the type and availability

of work in the visual arts in Australia, which impacts on the early careers of visual arts

graduates seeking work in these spaces.

In order to capture the early career experiences of recent graduates, selected participants had

to have graduated from their undergraduate degree between 2013 and 2015, which situated

them as being two to four years post-graduation at the time of participation in the study. This

timeframe was selected to ensure that the participants had some experience in seeking work

and working after graduation, yet were not so far post-graduation that they could not

accurately recall their experiences, such as why they originally pursued their creative degree

and what their initial career aspirations were before and during their studies. Participants

were also required to have originally entered their undergraduate degree as a school leaver

(defined here as being within two years of the participant graduating secondary schooling in

Australia) and to have completed their studies within the Brisbane metropolitan area.

Focusing on specific cohorts of graduates provided “common ground within which there

[was] some control over the many variables that affect…employability” (Clark et al., 2015, p.

136). These requirements ensured that the participants were of a similar ages and educational

backgrounds and were at a similar point in their post-graduation lives, which minimised the

amount of influence that a participant’s experience (both in work and in education) could

have over how they used and valued employability strategies during their early careers.

When conducting structured interview research with a relatively homogenous sample, data

saturation tends to occur after 12 interviews (Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006). As this

research sampled graduates who were relatively homogenous in terms of age, level of

education, and life stage, and used a semi-structured interview protocol, a final sample of 30

participants (15 graduates from visual arts and 15 graduates from design) resulted in a sample

that was both manageable and suitably robust, while also fitting the purpose of the study.

4.4.2 Recruitment procedure

Recruitment for participants commenced after ethics approval was obtained (Approval

Number: 1700000519), with the recruitment period occurring from August to December

2017. Restricted access to graduate data meant that using institutionally-held alumni data to

Chapter 4 | Page 69

identify potential participants was not possible. In the absence of institutional alumni data as

a starting point, it was difficult to identify people who fit this study’s specific participant

profile without a person volunteering that they matched what was being sought. Unless a

person volunteered that they fit the profile, or had a publicly available profile where the

researcher could see it and determine fit, the information was essentially hidden. As a result,

a targeted online and social media-based recruitment strategy emerged as the most feasible

way of identifying and contacting potential participants.

Online mediums, particularly social media, are increasingly relevant for researchers who are

looking to recruit participants with particular characteristics or interests, because these

mediums often feature communities of people (i.e., groups or pages) who share common

interests and experiences (Levine et al., 2011). Other key benefits of using online mediums to

identify and recruit study participants are that they can be used to contact large numbers of

people regardless of geographical location in a short period of time (Gu, Skierkowski, Florin,

Friend, & Ye, 2016) and are considered less invasive than other recruitment methods, such as

cold calling, as users can respond in their own time (Levine et al., 2011). Online recruitment

methods are also particularly relevant in studies focused on young people, as young people

are amongst the largest users of these technologies (Gu et. al, 2016). However, it is also

important to acknowledge that despite the widespread use of digital technology use amongst

young people, using an online and social media-based recruitment strategy may inadvertently

result in the sample over representing those who are proactively using these methods on a

regular basis and underrepresent those without the same level of proactivity (Boydell, Fergie,

McDaid, & Hilton, 2014)

The online and social media-based recruitment strategy incorporated three methods. First, the

study was advertised on a range of social media pages, including a Facebook group created

for the study, the researcher’s personal Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages, as well as 32

other publicly accessible Facebook pages, Facebook groups, and Twitter pages. These sites

were selected as they were amongst the most used social media sites in Australia in 2017

(Despinola, 2018) and each featured spaces where visual arts and design graduates and

practitioners were likely to congregate virtually to promote their work and to communicate

with other similar professionals. Relevant pages and groups were identified through a

systematic internet search undertaken on August 21 and 22, 2017, where Facebook.com,

Twitter.com, and Linkedin.com were searched for publicly available Brisbane-centric web

Chapter 4 | Page 70

pages, accounts, and groups associated with relevant key terms, including visual arts, design,

fine arts, and creative industries. As part of this method, the researcher distributed, on the

relevant social media pages and groups, a recruitment flyer featuring details of the project

that encouraged people who fit the participant profile to contact the researcher to participate

in an interview. Second, the researcher distributed the flyer via email to professional and

personal connections, as well as other university staff from the researcher’s institution who

worked in the target disciplines of visual art and design with a request to forward the flyer to

potential participants (see Appendix B for a copy of the recruitment flyer).

Third, the researcher individually messaged potential participants, via email and private

message on Facebook and LinkedIn, who were identified through online search methods.

While open searches on Google.com of key terms (e.g. “visual Art graduate 2013”) yielded

some results in finding potential participants, the online search process was greatly facilitated

by the finding of websites associated with graduate shows (final semester units often offered

in undergraduate degrees in the target disciplines). Websites were found for 2013, 2014, and

2015 graduate shows for both visual arts and design disciplines from multiple Australian

higher education institutions. These websites featured a list of the participating graduates

alongside some contact information for the graduates. Where contact information was not

available or was outdated, the researcher conducted Google.com searches using the

graduate’s name found on the website and key words (e.g. “name + design” or “name +

visual art”) to see if current contact information could be found. Though not all graduates

from each cohort necessarily participated in the graduate show unit, the websites did include

the names of between 20 and 50 graduates who did participate, which represented a large

proportion of the full cohort of graduates from the respective degrees.

Other steps were taken to ensure that the recruitment strategy was conducted as rigorously as

possible. Participation was open to any person who fit the desired sampling profile,

irrespective of physical location or institution attended. Sending follow-up messages and

approaching potential participants via multiple platforms not only accounted for the

possibility that participants may have used some mediums more regularly than others, but

also that the rapid speed at which social media feeds move can cause posts and messages to

quickly disappear or be overlooked by potential participants (Boydell et. al, 2014). Some

participants were also able to suggest additional potential participants, regardless of whether

those people had an online presence or not. Overall, using a multi-faceted online recruitment

strategy was time consuming; however, the advertising and recruitment strategy resulted in

Chapter 4 | Page 71

the sampling target being reached and the sample representing a range of perspectives from

the desired sampling frame.

4.4.3 Participants

Table 4.3 provides an overview of the participants’ demographic information. The final

sample (N=30) of participants represented 15 graduates from visual arts undergraduate

degrees and 15 graduates from design undergraduate degrees. There was a relatively even

split of participants by gender and year of graduation within each discipline. The average age

of participants was 24 years, eight months. Additionally, as discussed further in Chapter 6,

Section 6.2.2, the participants’ employment during their early careers collectively reflected

the range of work available across the entire creative trident. Therefore, although the

graduates represented only two creative disciplines, the participants’ early creative career

experiences were highly varied, as discussed in Section 4.4.1 above.

Table 4.3: Overview of participant demographic information

Participant Degree Year of

Graduation Age Gender

Visual Arts 1 Bachelor of Fine Art (Visual Arts) 2013 26 F

Visual Arts 2 Bachelor of Fine Art (Visual Arts) 2013 24 M

Visual Arts 3 Bachelor of Fine Art (Visual Arts) 2013 25 -

Visual Arts 4 Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours - Visual Arts) 2013 27 F

Visual Arts 5 Bachelor of Fine Art (Visual Arts) 2015 22 M


Visual Arts 7 Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours - Visual Arts) 2013 29 M


Visual Arts 9 Bachelor of Visual Arts 2013 27 F



Visual Arts 12 Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours – Visual Arts) 2015 22 M




Design 1 Bachelor of Fine Art (Interactive and Visual Design) 2015 24 F

Design 2 Bachelor of Fine Art (Interactive and Visual Design) 2013 27 M



Chapter 4 | Page 72





Design 9 Bachelor of Creative Industries (Interactive and

Visual Design) 2014 24 F




Design 13 Bachelor of Creative Industries (Interactive and

Visual Design) 2013 26 M



4.4.4 Interview procedure

The final interview guide consisted of 41 semi-structured questions that aligned with the

study’s research questions, including questions about the participants’ career aspiration and

identity, perceptions of employability, and use of employability strategies. The questions

were structured into three sections. Part one asked the participant general questions about

their career aspirations and why they completed their creative industries degree, part two

focused on exploring how they had used and valued employability strategies during their

early career, and part three asked the participants to reflect on their overall early career

experiences and the role that their undergraduate degree played in preparing them for their

post-graduation working lives. The interview guide was reviewed at regular intervals during

the data collection period to ensure that the questions and language used were eliciting deep

and relevant data from the participants. Practice reflexivity, whereby initial coding themes

were integrated into the interview guide for subsequent participants to respond to, was used

as a validity-checking mechanism during the data collection phase (Hesse-Biber, 2017) (see

Appendix C for a copy of the final interview guide).

Ethical approval (No: 1700000519) to conduct the interviews was obtained in August 2017,

with the interviews (N=30) occurring during the period September-December 2017. Twenty

of the interviews were conducted in-person in Brisbane and 10 were conducted via video-call

software by the researcher, running for an average time of 55 minutes. Participants who were

available for in-person interviews were invited to select the time and venue so that the

Chapter 4 | Page 73

interview occurred in a place that was comfortable and non-invasive for the participant (Berg

& Lune, 2012). Participants who were interviewed via video-call were similarly invited to

select a time and venue where they would be most comfortable participating in a video-call

interview. Potential participants were provided with a digital copy of the Ethics Information

Sheet and Consent Form at the time of the initial participation invitation. Prior to each in-

person interview, participants were provided with a physical copy of the Information Sheet

and Consent Form and the researcher verbally explained the interview process, the purpose of

the overall study, and that the interview would be audio recorded. Prior to each video-call

interview, the researcher provided the participant with another digital copy of the Information

Sheet and Consent Form via email or online message and repeated the introductory

statements as described above. Participants interviewed via video-call software could request

that the interview be conducted as audio-only (i.e., without the video element), which was

possible within the software. In all interviews, only audio of the interview was recorded. At

the time of interview, participants were also made aware that they could choose not to answer

any of the questions, that they could withdraw from the study up to two weeks after the

interview and that they could request a copy of their interview transcript for validation.

Signed consent forms were obtained from all participants prior to their interview.

At the end of each interview, participants were invited to ask the researcher any questions

about the interview process or the study. In-person participants were encouraged to retain the

printed copy of the Information Sheet for their records and video-call participants were

encouraged to retain the digital copy for their records. All participants were provided with the

researcher’s contact details and encouraged to contact the researcher at any time if they had

any further questions. The audio recordings of the interviews were transcribed on a rolling

basis between September 2017 and February 2018, with all identifying information removed

and participant names replaced with pseudonyms. Two participants requested and were sent a

copy of their interview transcript by email, with both participants continuing to consent to

participation after reviewing their transcript.

4.4.5 Analysis

Each interview transcript was uploaded to NVivo 11 and systematically analysed through an

inductive coding process, whereby “theoretical propositions or explanations” emerge from

collected data rather than through the application of a priori codes (Mason, 2002, p. 180). In

the first stage of coding, an open coding process was used to identify codes related to all three

Chapter 4 | Page 74

of the overarching research questions. Specifically, this stage of the coding sought to identify

(1) issues that influenced the participants’ education-to-work transitions, (2) the

employability strategies referred to by the participants, and (3) the graduates’ references to

whether a strategy helped them to find and/or obtain employment. At this stage, data from

each sub-group of the graduates (i.e., visual arts graduates and design graduates) were coded

separately to facilitate comparisons between the groups around the strategies used by the

graduates.

The second stage of coding focused on employability strategies involved an axial coding

process to identify insightful relationships between the emergent coding categories (Corbin &

Strauss, 2008). This was essential for progressing the analysis beyond pure empirical

description to explore the “underlying [causal] mechanisms” (Marks & O’Mahoney 2014, p.

77) that influenced the participants’ lived experiences, in line with the ontological approach

of critical realism. During this process, initial codes concerning graduates’ use of strategies

were refined into categories in two key ways. First, the broad range of employability

strategies used by the graduates were categorised to reflect the reasons the participants gave

for having used those strategies. Second, analysing how the graduates used strategies within

the context of their early career experiences rather than in isolation resulted in the

identification of structural factors that affected the graduates’ use of strategies. The third and

final stage of coding – selective coding – allowed for these categories to be further refined

and expressed as broad themes (Hesse-Biber, 2017; Liamputtong, 2009). For example, the

employability strategies were aggregated into four themes that reflected the graduates’ main

motivations for using a strategy. These results are presented in Chapter 6. An example from

this coding process is provided in Table 4.4.

Chapter 4 | Page 75

Table 4.4: Example of coding process used in analysing the interview data

CODE

(open coding stage) CATEGORY

(axial coding stage) THEME

(selective coding stage) E

XA

MP

LE

Education and training Self-directed learning

Developing work-related skills and knowledge

Strategy used for professional and personal development

Self-directed learning Purposefully creating creative works (Visual Arts only)

Personal interest

Purposefully creating creative works (Visual Arts only)

Developing/maintaining practical creative skills

4.4.6 Strategies for ensuring rigour of the qualitative methods

During the analysis of the interview data, detailed spreadsheets were used to facilitate the

process of cross-referencing and refining the initial codes into the final broad themes

(Saldaña, 2016). Additionally, the reliability of the emergent codes and themes and rigour of

the qualitative data analysis process were maintained through an iterative review process

conducted in fortnightly meetings with the supervision team and in recurring monthly

meetings with the supervision team and two other higher degree research students from the

same department during the six-month analysis process.

In addressing the research questions of this study, the qualitative analysis was able to provide

in-depth insight into how a sample of Australian creative graduates used employability

strategies during their early careers. In doing so, the analysis highlighted the influence that

both personal and structural factors played in shaping the education-to-work transitions of

creative graduates in contemporary labour markets.

4.5 CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter outlined the methodology and research design used in this research to achieve

the research aims and questions outlined in Chapter 1, Section 1.3. This study was shaped by

a critical realist ontological approach and utilised a mixed methods approach combining

quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative methods involved the analysis of

existing survey data, which encompassed a sample of Australian creative industries higher

education graduates, using descriptive and non-parametric statistical techniques. The

Chapter 4 | Page 76

qualitative methods involved the analysis of semi-structured interview data collected through

individual interviews with recent creative industries higher education graduates of two key

disciplines: visual arts and design. Both the quantitative and qualitative methods were

designed to address all three of the overarching research questions of the study. The ethical

considerations and limitations of the research design for each stage of the study were

addressed throughout this chapter.

The following chapters present the findings of the study based on the research design and

methods described in this chapter. Chapter 5 presents the findings from the quantitative

analysis, while Chapters 6 and 7 present the findings from the qualitative analysis. These

findings are then compared in Chapter 8, the discussion chapter.

Chapter 5 | Page 77

Chapter 5 : Survey findings: Creative industries graduates’ early career outcomes and use of employability strategies

This chapter presents the findings from an analysis of secondary quantitative survey data

derived from individuals who graduated from a creative undergraduate degree from a single

Australian metropolitan institution (N=322) during the period 2007-2012. The chapter first

explores the key factors that shaped the creative graduates’ early careers through an analysis

of career outcome measures. Second, the analysis considers whether the graduates’

engagement with a range of employability strategies positively influenced their early career

employment outcomes. Demographic variables were used to provide additional depth to the

analysis, allowing for the exploration of demographic differences regarding how the

graduates experienced their early careers.

5.1 RESEARCH METHODS AND QUESTIONS

As introduced in Chapter 4, the quantitative data were collected via an online survey of

creative graduates during the period 2013-2014, with the sample (N=322) encompassing

graduates of five creative disciplines: visual, literary, performance, music, and film,

television, and new media. This analysis sought to provide a quantitative perspective to all

three of the overarching research questions of this thesis and was undertaken in two stages,

with each stage involving both descriptive data analysis and non-parametric statistical testing.

The results in this chapter are presented in sequential order of each stage of the analysis, as

described below.

5.1.1 Stage one of the analysis

In the first stage of the quantitative analysis, five employment outcome measures and four

subjective career outcome measures were analysed to address the first overarching research

question of this thesis:


graduates?

This first stage of the analysis was undertaken in two parts. First, descriptive analysis of the

data was used to describe the graduates’ education-to-work transitions using the nine career

outcome measures. This analysis provided insight into the early careers of creative graduates

Chapter 5 | Page 78

and how they perceived themselves and their careers during this time. This analysis was

guided by two sub-research questions:

Sub-RQ1: What are the early career employment outcomes of creative graduates?

Sub-RQ2: How employable, successful, and satisfied do creative graduates feel

during their early careers?

Second, non-parametric statistical testing was used to test for statistically significant

relationships between the employment outcome measures and the subjective career outcome

measures. The purpose of testing for relationships between these measures was to establish

whether the graduates’ subjective career outcomes were aligned with their employment

outcomes. This analysis provides some indication of what creative graduates’ employment-

related priorities might be during their early careers, as it is likely that their employment

priorities would shape how they approach their careers. This analysis was guided by one sub-

research question:

Sub-RQ3: What is the relationship between creative graduates’ early career

employment outcomes and how employable, successful, and satisfied they feel during

their early careers?

Three demographic variables were used during both parts of the analysis to compare the

graduates’ career outcomes based on gender, study area, and year of graduation.

5.1.2 Stage two of the analysis

In the second stage of the quantitative analysis, six employability strategy variables and the

five employment outcome measures were analysed to address the second and third

overarching research questions of this thesis:




graduates for securing them employment during their education-to-work

transitions?

Chapter 5 | Page 79

This second stage of the analysis was undertaken in two parts. First, descriptive analysis of

the data was used to describe the percentage of graduates who had used each of the six

employability strategies. This analysis was guided by one sub-research question:

SubRQ4: What employability strategies do creative graduates use during their early

careers and for what purposes?

Second, non-parametric statistical testing was used to test for statistically significant

relationships between the employability strategies used by the graduates and the graduates’

objective career outcomes. The purpose of testing for relationships between the employability

strategies and the objective career outcome measures was to investigate whether the

graduates’ use of particular employability strategies aligned with them having more positive

employment outcomes. This analysis was guided by one sub-research question:

SubRQ5: What is the relationship between creative graduates’ early career

employment outcomes and the employability strategies they use?

Three demographic variables were used during this stage of the analysis to compare the

graduates’ use of employability strategies based on gender, study area, and year of

graduation.

5.1.3 Statistical considerations

The specific non-parametric tests used for the analysis reflected the particular combination of

categorical and continuous variables relevant to each analysis. Spearman’s rank-order

correlation tests were used for comparing continuous variables with other continuous

variables, Chi-square tests for relatedness or independence were used for comparing

categorical variables with other categorical variables, and Mann-Whitney U tests were used

for comparing continuous variables with categorical variables with two categories.

5.2 RESULTS

5.2.1 Stage one of the quantitative analysis: Analysing creative graduates’ career

outcomes

This section provides the results for the analyses guided by Sub-research Questions 1, 2 and

3, as introduced in Section 5.1. The results are organised under sub-headings in the following

order: full sample, gender, study area, and year of graduation. Table 5.1 shows the results of

Chapter 5 | Page 80

the descriptive data analysis for the nine career outcome measures. The results of the non-

parametric statistical testing are presented in individual tables under the corresponding sub-

heading. This stage of the analysis used Mann Whitney-U tests and Spearman’s rank-order

correlation tests.

Chapter 5 | Page 81

Table 5.1: Descriptive data analysis results – Creative graduates’ early career outcomes

Chapter 5 | Page 82

Full Sample

In analysing the early career employment outcomes for the full sample of creative graduates,

the majority (73%) were employed in at least one paid job at the time of the survey.

However, only approximately one-third of the employed graduates (32%) indicated their paid

employment was exclusively in specialist creative jobs. Additionally, 39% of the graduates

had spent time unemployed and looking for work since graduation This may indicate that

there were relatively few graduate employment opportunities in the graduates’ respective

creative disciplines at the time, especially as the creative labour market is known to be

relatively small, particularly in terms of specialist creative or creative practitioner roles

(Bridgstock et al., 2015; Cunningham, 2014). While the median number of hours worked by

the graduates reflected conventional full-time working hours (38 hours per week), the

graduates’ median weekly incomes ($865.38) were below the median weekly income for full-

time employed Australian graduates at the time of survey ($1,009.00) (Graduate Careers

Australia Ltd, 2014b).

In analysing how employable, successful, and satisfied the full sample of graduates felt

during their early careers, the graduates’ felt more employable in general than they did in

their creative field specifically; that is, the graduates felt moderately employable in general

compared to feeling only somewhat employable in their creative field. When asked to

consider how successful they felt during their early careers, the majority of the graduates’ felt

neither overly successful nor overly unsuccessful. Similarly, when asked to consider how

satisfied they were with the success they had achieved in their career, most of the graduates

felt neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. The mean score for both measures was three out of five.

Table 5.2 shows the results of the non-parametric testing for the full sample of creative

graduates. The employment outcomes found to be most significantly related to how

employable, successful, and satisfied the graduates felt during their early careers were having

a current job and working exclusively in specialist creative jobs.

Chapter 5 | Page 83

Table 5.2: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for the full sample (N=322)

The graduates who had a current job indicated higher levels of self-rated creative (Mdn=4.00,

U=2921.00, p<.01) and general (Mdn=4.00, U= 2634.50, p<.01) employability, career

success (Mdn=4.00, U= 2966.50, p<.01), and career satisfaction (Mdn=4.00, U= 3063.00,

p<.01) than graduates who were not employed. Similarly, the graduates who worked

exclusively in specialist creative jobs felt more creatively (Mdn=4.00, U= 5989.50, p<.01)

and generally (Mdn=5.00, U=7128.50, p<.01) employable, successful (Mdn=4.00,

U=5420.00, p<.01), and satisfied (Mdn=4.00, U=5992.00, p<01) than graduates who worked

outside specialist creative jobs in some capacity. Interestingly, graduates who were working

exclusively in specialist creative jobs indicated higher levels of creative employability, while

graduates working outside specialist creative jobs in some capacity had higher levels of

general employability. The creative graduates’ self-rated employability was therefore closely

linked with the type of work in which they were participating.

Income earned and hours worked are often used as key metrics in graduate destination studies

to measure graduate success, with higher incomes and greater number of hours worked

looked upon more favourably (Ball et al., 2010; QILT, 2018). Median weekly income was

found to be significantly related to the graduates indicating higher levels of career success (ρ

(190) = .35, p<.01) and career satisfaction (ρ (190) = .32, p<.01). Similarly, median hours

worked was also found to be significantly related to the graduates indicating higher levels of

career success (ρ (196) = .17, p<.05) and career satisfaction (ρ (196) = .17, p<.05). However,

these relationships were either weak or very weak correlations. Therefore, there was little

difference in self-rated success and satisfaction between the graduates who earned and

worked the most and the graduates who earned and worked the least. Overall, being

employed and working in specialist creative jobs emerged as employment outcomes that were

Chapter 5 | Page 84

consistently and positively aligned with graduates feeling more employable, successful, and

satisfied.

Gender

Overall, the male graduates had more positive employment outcomes than the female

graduates. While a higher percentage of female than male graduates had a current job, the

male graduates who were employed earned higher median weekly incomes while working

fewer median weekly hours than the female graduates who were employed. A greater

proportion of the male than female graduates who were employed were also working

exclusively in specialist creative jobs. Additionally, fewer male than female graduates had

spent time unemployed and looking for work since graduation. Despite these differences, the

male and female graduates’ subjective career outcomes were relatively similar. Regardless of

gender, the graduates felt somewhat employable in their creative field, moderately

employable in general, and neither positive or negative about their career success and

satisfaction. Tables 5.3 and 5.4 show the results of the non-parametric testing for the gender

groups.

Table 5.3: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for male graduates (N=72)

Chapter 5 | Page 85

Table 5.4: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for female graduates (N=235)

Having a current job and working exclusively in specialist creative jobs were the employment

outcomes that corresponded most consistently with both female and male graduates’

indicating higher self-rated employability, career success, and career satisfaction. Weekly

median income was also an employment outcome that corresponded to positive subjective

career outcomes amongst the female and male graduates. However, most of the relationships

between median weekly income and the subjective career outcomes were weak positive

correlations. There were three key differences amongst the many similarities between the

gender groups. First, male graduates attributed career success and career satisfaction more

strongly to median weekly income compared to female graduates. Second, female graduates

attributed career success and career satisfaction more strongly to weekly hours worked

compared to male graduates. Third, female graduates attributed self-rated general

employability and career satisfaction more strongly to not having spent time unemployed

than male graduates. Therefore, being employed, participating in specialist creative work, and

greater weekly income positively corresponded to both the male and female graduates’

evaluations of employability, career success, and career satisfaction. However, stability

(through greater weekly hours and not being unemployed) appeared to be an additional

concern that was more important for female than male graduates.

Study area

Some stark differences were found in the graduates’ early career employment outcomes

based on their study area. Of the five study areas, music had the highest proportion of

graduates who were employed (85%), while visual had the lowest proportion (51%).

However, of graduates who were employed, visual graduates had the highest median weekly

Chapter 5 | Page 86

incomes ($946.00) and music graduates had the lowest ($744.61), with a weekly income

difference of $200. Visual-related work for graduates therefore appeared to be quite lucrative,

though possibly also hard to obtain, as only one in two visual graduates had a current job. In

comparison, there may be greater employment opportunities for music graduates, as four in

five music graduates had a current job, although that work appeared to be less well

remunerated.

There were also some noticeable differences in terms of the proportion of graduates from

each study area who were working creatively and who had been unemployed since

graduation. In particular, while 43% of the film, TV, and new media graduates were

employed exclusively in specialist creative jobs, only 25% of the literary graduates were

employed exclusively in specialist creative jobs. Similarly, only 29% of performance

graduates had spent time unemployed, whereas more than half of the film, TV, and new

media (52%) and visual (57%) graduates had been unemployed at least once since

graduation. This may reflect the nature of work in these industries. Self-employment is

common in the visual arts (National Association for the Visual Arts, 2017) and project work

is common in the film and TV industry (Grugulis & Stoyanova, 2011), both being examples

of working patterns that can be highly precarious. Median weekly hours worked were

relatively even across the study areas.

The graduates rated themselves relatively similar on the four subjective career outcome

measures. Across all study areas, the graduates felt moderately employable in general, and

neither positively nor negatively about their career success and career satisfaction. The key

difference based on study area was related to self-rated creative employability. Music

graduates rated themselves most highly for self-rated creative employability, feeling

moderately employable in their creative field. In comparison, the graduates from the four

other study areas indicated that they felt somewhat creatively employable.

Tables 5.5 to 5.9 show the results of the non-parametric statistical testing for the analyses

where study area was used as the moderating variable. As the results show, there were key

differences between the five study areas as to whether the graduates’ employment outcomes

were related to how employable, successful, and satisfied the graduates felt during their early

careers.

Chapter 5 | Page 87

Table 5.5: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for Visual graduates (N=37)

Table 5.6: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for Literary graduates (N=68)

Table 5.7: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for Performance graduates (N=131)

Chapter 5 | Page 88

Table 5.8: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for Music graduates (N=33)

Table 5.9: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for Film, TV, New Media graduates (N=53)

The results of the non-parametric testing showed that there were study area differences in

how the graduates’ employment outcomes related to how employable, successful, and

satisfied the graduates felt during their early careers. For example, only one significant

relationship was found for visual graduates, which was a positive correlation between median

weekly income and self-rated career success (ρ (17) = .63, p<.01). For visual graduates,

employment outcomes such as having a job or working greater weekly hours did not play

much of a role in how employable, successful, and satisfied they felt during their early

careers. However, it could be that there are other employment outcomes (beyond the five

variables used in the analysis) that were more closely aligned to how employable, successful,

and satisfied the visual graduates felt during their early careers. This may also have been the

case for the music graduates, for whom only a few sporadic significant relationships were

found.

Chapter 5 | Page 89

In comparison, literary graduates’ feelings of creative (ρ (42) = .32, p<.05) and general (ρ

(42) = .47, P<.01) employability, career success (ρ (41) = .43, p<.01), and career satisfaction

(ρ (41) = .35, p<.05) were positively correlated to median weekly income. For performance

graduates, feelings of creative (Mdn=4.00, U=459.00, p<.01) and general employability

(Mdn=4.00, U=459.00, p<.01), career success (Mdn=4.00, U=384.50, p<.01), and career

satisfaction (Mdn=4.00, U=420.00, p<.01) were most consistently aligned with having a

current job. For film, TV, and new media graduates, working exclusively in specialist

creative jobs aligned with those graduates having greater feelings of creative employability

(Mdn=4.00, U=134.50, p<.05), career success (Mdn=4.00, U=92.50, p<.01), and career

satisfaction (Mdn=4.00, U=100.00, p<.01). How creative graduates subjectively evaluated

their careers and the role that particular employment outcomes play in how they perceived

their employability, career success, and career satisfaction was therefore influenced by their

particular creative discipline.

Year of graduation

There were key cohort differences in the career outcomes of the graduates. The most recent

graduates – the 2011 and 2012 cohorts – had particularly low weekly incomes, low weekly

hours, and higher rates of unemployment compared to the other cohorts. This suggests that

the years immediately after graduation are particularly challenging for creative graduates.

The graduates from the 2008 and 2009 cohorts had the most positive employment outcomes,

with the highest rates of job holding, highest weekly incomes, weekly hours consistent with

full-time employment, and lowest rates of unemployment since graduation. These findings

are predictable, in the sense that employment outcomes for creative graduates have been

shown to improve as graduates move through their early career (Ball et al., 2010). How

employable, successful, and satisfied the graduates felt during their early careers was

relatively consistent across the cohorts. Irrespective of their year of graduation, the graduates

felt somewhat employable in their creative field, moderately employable in general, and

neither positively or negatively about their career success and career satisfaction.


where year of graduation was used as the moderating variable. As the results show, there

were key differences between the six cohorts around how the graduates’ employment

outcomes aligned with the graduates’ subjective evaluations of their early careers.

Chapter 5 | Page 90

Table 5.10: Non-parametric statistical testing results (career outcome measures) for 2007 graduates (N=41)



Chapter 5 | Page 91




Chapter 5 | Page 92

The results of the non-parametric testing showed that there were major differences between

the cohorts regarding how the graduates’ employment outcomes related to how employable,

successful, and satisfied the graduates felt during their early careers. For example, very few

significant relationships were found for the 2007, 2008, and 2010 cohorts. This suggests that

the employment outcomes in the analysis did not play a significant role in how employable,

successful, and satisfied graduates from those cohorts felt during their early careers. In

comparison, the 2009 graduates’ feelings of general employability (ρ (42) = .45, p<.01),

career success (ρ (40) = .39, p<.05), and career satisfaction (ρ (40) = .62, p<.01) were all

positively correlated with median weekly income. For 2011 graduates, feelings of creative

(Mdn=4.00, U=92.00, p<.05) and general employability (Mdn=5.00, U=78.00, p<.05), career

success (Mdn=4.00, U=72.00, p<.01), and career satisfaction (Mdn=4.00, U=55.50, p<.01)

were most consistently aligned with having a current job. For 2012 graduates, several

employment outcomes were more strongly aligned with feelings of career success and career

satisfaction than with feelings of employability. The year a person graduates from university

and the subsequent labour market they graduate into therefore plays a role in shaping not only

how creative graduates subjectively evaluate their early careers, but also whether

employment outcomes align with those evaluations at a particular time.

5.2.2 Stage two of the quantitative analysis: Analysing graduates’ use of employability

strategies

This section provides the results for the analyses guided by Sub-research Questions 4 and 5,

as introduced in Section 5.1. As with the previous section, the results in this section are

organised under sub-headings in the following order: full sample, gender, study area, and

year of graduation. Table 5.16 shows the results of the descriptive data analysis for the six

employability strategy variables. The results of the non-parametric statistical testing are

presented in individual tables under the corresponding sub-heading. This stage of the analysis

used Mann Whitney-U tests and Chi-square tests for relatedness or independence.

Chapter 5 | Page 93

Table 5.16: Descriptive data analysis results – Employability strategies used by the graduates

Chapter 5 | Page 94

Table 5.17: Non-parametric statistical testing results – Employability strategies by objective career outcome measures (Full sample, N=322)

Chapter 5 | Page 95

Full sample

As Table 5.17 shows, several significant relationships were found between the employability

strategy variables and the objective career outcome measures for the full sample of graduates.

The results for this section are organised according to employability strategy.

Double degree

Of the full sample, approximately one-fifth (18%) had completed their creative undergraduate

degree as part of a double degree program (where two undergraduate degrees are completed

simultaneously). Table 5.18 below shows that the most popular type of degree to combine

with their creative degree was education, followed by business.

Table 5.18: Type of double degree undertaken alongside their creative degree (N=59)

Type of Double Degree % N

Education 63% 37

Business 29% 17

Information Technology 2% 2

Law 2% 1

Health 2% 1

Other 2% 1

While the popularity of those particular double degree programs may reflect the programs

offered by the particular institution, these findings also provide insight into why the graduates

pursued a double degree. Creative Industries/Education was the most popular double degree

program. This may indicate a conscious choice by those graduates to pursue a career path

considered to be simultaneously stable and creatively engaging. In Australia, and many other

countries, the completion of an education undergraduate degree provides graduates with a

qualification to work as a school teacher. Completing a double degree with education would

therefore allow graduates to pursue work as a teacher with a specialisation in their creative

discipline. Similarly, a business degree may complement a creative degree by supporting the

development of business acumen, which could help a graduate to develop their own creative

enterprise or enabling a graduate to embed creative work in industries that are considered to

offer more stable employment opportunities than the creative industries.

Chapter 5 | Page 96

Having completed a double degree aligned with three of the graduates’ objective career

outcomes. The graduates who had completed a double degree had higher median weekly

incomes (Mdn=$1,052.88) than those who had not completed a double degree

(Mdn=$800.00). Double degree graduates were also less likely to have spent time

unemployed since graduation than graduates who had completed only a creative

undergraduate degree (2 (1, N=322) = 6.66, p<.01). However, double degree graduates were

less likely to be working exclusively in specialist creative work (2 (1, N=322) = 11.27,

p<.01). Double degrees may therefore assist creative graduates to access employment

opportunities with higher salaries, but these opportunities will not necessarily be situated in

the creative labour market.

Subsequent tertiary education

Thirty-eight percent of the graduates had completed or were undertaking a tertiary education

program subsequent to completing their initial creative undergraduate degree. As Table 5.19

shows, the three most popular types of subsequent education were diplomas, bachelor degrees

and master’s degrees.

Table 5.19: Type of subsequent tertiary education completed/currently undertaken by graduates subsequent to their creative undergraduate degree (N=122)

Note: Columns do not total 100% because the categories were not mutually exclusive.

The popularity of diplomas, masters, and bachelor degrees suggests that creative graduates

frequently continued their education in the years after their initial creative undergraduate

Type of subsequent tertiary education % N

Advanced diploma 7% 9

Bachelor 20% 25

Certificate 18% 22

Diploma 34% 42

Doctorate 2% 3

Honours 6% 7

Masters (coursework) 23% 28

PhD 5% 6

Chapter 5 | Page 97

degree. In particular, the popularity of bachelor degrees suggests that some of the graduates

were gaining further education in non-creative disciplines. The discipline of the subsequent

education undertaken by the graduates provides further insight into why they may have

pursued that education. As Table 5.20 shows, education was the most popular discipline of

subsequent tertiary education. This suggests that the graduates were supplementing their

creative background with a qualification that offers an explicit employment pathway, as an

education degree qualifies graduates to work as a school teacher. The second most popular

discipline of study for subsequent education was creative industries, which reflects the

graduates’ existing interest in creative education.

Table 5.20: Discipline of subsequent tertiary education completed/currently undertaken by creative arts graduates subsequent to their creative arts degree (N=122)


Non-parametric statistical testing did not reveal any statistically significant relationships

between subsequent education and the graduates’ early career employment outcomes.

However, it may be that insufficient time had elapsed to accurately determine whether

subsequent tertiary education had any effect on employment outcomes.

Formal education/training outside a university (past 12 months)

A benefit of non-university education and training opportunities is that they offer students

short-term engagement with specific topics of interest. Such opportunities stand in contrast to

tertiary education programs, which are years-long and can require significant investments of

time and money. One-third (35%) of the graduates had engaged with non-university

education and training opportunities in the 12 months prior to the survey.

Discipline of subsequent tertiary education % N

Business/management 10% 12

Creative industries 28% 34

Education 40% 49

Health 7% 8

Humanities, society, and culture 4% 4

Other 11% 13

Chapter 5 | Page 98

Table 5.21: Type of formal education/training outside university undertaken by the graduates in the 12 months prior to the survey (N=113)


As Table 5.21 above shows, workshops were the most popular type of non-tertiary formal

education and training undertaken by the graduates, followed by masterclasses and short

courses. According to the non-parametric statistical testing, graduates who had participated in

non-university education and training in the past 12 months were more likely to have a

current job (2 (1, N=322) = 7.49, p<.01) and more likely to be working exclusively in

specialist creative work (2 (1, N=322) = 5.67, p<.05). However, the causality between these

relationships is uncertain. It is possible that participation in these opportunities assisted

graduates to become employed in creative work. However, it is also possible that graduates

participated in formal education and training opportunities in the course of existing

employment in the creative labour market.

Use of formal job seeking strategies

Sixty-three percent of the full sample of graduates indicated that they had used at least one of

the formal job seeking strategies shown in in Table 5.22.

Type of formal non-tertiary education/training undertaken in past 12 months

% N

Group lessons 11% 12

Masterclass 27% 30

Mentoring 25% 28

One-on-one lessons 9% 10

Online learning 9% 10

Short course 26% 29

Vocational qualification 4% 4

Workshop 48% 52

Chapter 5 | Page 99

Table 5.22: Type of formal job seeking strategy used (N=203)


Of the graduates who had used a formal job seeking strategy, the most popular method was

searching online job boards. Online non-creative job boards in Australia include websites

such as www.seek.com.au and www.careerone.com.au and online creative job boards include

www.theloop.com and www.artshub.com.au. More graduates had used the non-creative

online job boards than the creative online job boards. However, graduates searched for a

range of creative and non-creative employment. The popularity of online job boards may also

reflect that these spaces are often free to use and can be easily accessed by anyone with an

internet connection. Using a representative (such as an agent or manager) and

auditioning/submitting work are job seeking strategies often associated with a particular type

of creative work, specifically specialist creative work in disciplines such as performance and

visual art. Lower participation in these strategies could suggest that few creative graduates

were targeting that kind of work during their early careers. There may have been other factors

that inhibited the graduates from engaging representation, such as having to share a

percentage of any earned income or not having a sufficient profile as a creative worker to

interest an agent or manager. The ubiquitous nature of online social networks may also allow

graduates to circumvent working with a representative because they can search and apply for

opportunities themselves.

Graduates who had used a formal job seeking strategy were more likely to have a current job

(2 (1, N=322) = 48.97, p<.01) and were more likely to be working exclusively in specialist

creative work (2 (1, N=322) = 17.84, p<.01) than graduates who had not used formal job

seeking strategies. However, while not all graduates who apply for a job will be offered

employment, applying for a job advertisement is often a necessary step in being considered

for employment. Graduates therefore used formal job seeking strategies to target employment

Type of formal job seeking strategy % N

Advertising or searching (online creative job board) 60% 121

Advertising or searching (online non-creative job board) 83% 168

Using a representative (agent/manager) 23% 46

Auditioning/submitting work 24% 48

Chapter 5 | Page 100

opportunities; however, the analysis was inconclusive as to the direct effectiveness of formal

job seeking strategies for assisting graduates to secure employment.

Use of informal job seeking strategies

Seventy percent of the full sample of graduates indicated that they had used at least one of the

pre-determined informal job seeking strategies shown in Table 5.23.

Table 5.23: Type of informal job seeking strategy used (N=225)


Of the graduates who used informal job seeking strategies, 85% had used word of mouth. The

popularity of word of mouth amongst the graduates is consistent with the notion that

interpersonal networks often play a key role during job search, particularly in the creative

labour market (Allen et al., 2013; Towse, 2006). Unpaid work experience was the second

most popular informal strategy, completed by almost half of the graduates. The difference

between participation in unpaid work experience (46%) and paid work experience (13%) as

job seeking strategies might reflect the availability of these opportunities. It is more common

for work experience opportunities, such as internships, to be unpaid than paid, which is a

significant problem faced by tertiary students and graduates (Grant-Smith & McDonald,

2015; Oliver, McDonald, Stewart, & Hewitt, 2016). Around one-third of the graduates

engaged with the online-based strategies of online networking (38%) and online promotion

(30%). The relative popularity of these strategies may reflect that they can be low-cost and

are accessible to anyone with the relevant technology, though low digital capability (e.g., not

Type of informal job seeking strategy used % N

Word of mouth 85% 191

Mentoring 25% 56

Online networking 38% 85

Offline networking 32% 72

Online promotion 30% 67

Paid experience 13% 29

Unpaid experience 46% 103

Cold calling 24% 54


having the skills to engage online, develop a website, or adapt to different social networking

sites) may have prevented some graduates from participating in these strategies.

Similar to the non-parametric testing results for formal job seeking strategies, graduates who

had used at least one informal job seeking strategy were more likely to have a current job (2

(1, N=322) = 53.12. p<.01) and more likely to work exclusively in specialist creative work

(2 (1, N=322) = 22.69, p<.01). While the data could not explain how the graduates used this

selection of informal job seeking strategies to seek employment or the effectiveness of

individual-level strategies in greater detail, the data demonstrates a link between informal job

seeking strategies and graduates’ employment outcomes.

Use of work creation strategies

Thirty-nine percent of the full sample of graduates indicated that they had used at least one of

the pre-determined work creation strategies shown in Table 5.24. Of those graduates who had

used a work creation strategy, the majority had created work through establishing their own

creative enterprise. However, this item was broad in its scope and did not require graduates to

specify which of the suggestions they had created, whether it be a band, troupe, collective,

ensemble, business, or company. Around one-third of the graduates who had participated in

work creation had applied for a grant to fund an enterprise.

Table 5.24: Type of work creation strategy used (N=126)


In similar patterns to the non-parametric testing results for the other job seeking strategy

variables, graduates who had used at least one work creative strategy were more likely to

have a current job (2 (1, N=322) = 20.13, p<.01) and more likely to be working exclusively

in specialist creative work (2 (1, N=322) = 21.73, p<.01). For some graduates, participation

in work creation would offer opportunities for participation in specialist creative work. For

example, music graduates wanting to work as a practicing musician could decide to create

Type of work creation strategy used % N

Establishing own enterprise (band, troupe, collective, ensemble, business, company)

88% 110

Applying for grants 34% 42


their own band at any point. Likewise, depending on the graduate’s creative skills and style,

work creation may be their only option for pursuing specialist creative work.

However, graduates who had used a work creation strategy were also more likely to have

spent time unemployed since graduation (2 (1, N=322) = 11.36, p<.01). This finding

suggests that although work creation strategies, such as starting a band or a creative small

business, can be a pathway to employment for creative graduates, a graduate having the

capability to create a venture does not guarantee that their venture will succeed in generating

a secure or liveable income. Consequently, some of the graduates may have become

unemployed as a result of being unsuccessful with a work creation venture. The time

involved in developing an enterprise may also preclude graduates from participating in paid

employment elsewhere; thus, graduates may have had to tolerate a period of unemployment

in order to pursue work creation strategies. Therefore, participating in work creation

strategies may effectively generate employment opportunities for creative graduates;

however, there are significant opportunity costs involved and the resulting employment may

not necessarily be financially viable.

Gender

The graduates’ participation in employability strategies was relatively similar based on

gender, with two exceptions. First, a greater proportion of male than female graduates had

used informal job seeking strategies. Second, a greater proportion of male than female

graduates had used work creation strategies since graduation. Tables 5.25 and 5.26 show the

results of the non-parametric testing for the analyses where gender was used as the

moderating variable.


Table 5.25: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Males, N=72)

Table 5.26: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Females, N=235)


As Tables 5.25 and 5.26 show, there were many similarities between female and male

graduates in how the graduates’ employment outcomes aligned with their use of

employability strategies. For all graduates, those who had used employability strategies were

more likely to have a current job and work exclusively in specialist creative work. These

findings suggest that gender has minimal influence over which employability strategies

creative graduates use and how strategies align to graduate employment outcomes.

Study area

There were key study area differences in the graduates’ use of employability strategies.

Double degree completion was highest amongst graduates from performance and literary

study areas and lowest amongst the film, TV, and new media (film/TV/NM) graduates. A

greater proportion of the performance graduates also participated in subsequent tertiary

education and non-university education and training than graduates from all other study

areas. This may reflect that creative practitioners in performance disciplines, such as dance,

are required to practice and maintain their performance skills on a regular basis. Higher rates

of participation in those education and training strategies by performance graduates may also

suggest that there are more opportunities for performance graduates than graduates of other

disciplines to participate in those strategies. Similarly, non-tertiary education and training

was more popular with film/TV/NM graduates than subsequent tertiary education. This may

indicate that short-term education and training opportunities were more easily accessed or

perceived as having greater value by film/TV/NM graduates than subsequent tertiary

education. There were also clear differences across study areas regarding how graduates used

job seeking strategies. A greater proportion of performance, music, and film/TV/NM

graduates used formal and informal job seeking strategies than visual and literary graduates.

Music graduates participated in work creation strategies more than graduates of all other

study areas. This suggests that study area played a role in how relevant particular job seeking

strategies were to graduates.


where study area was used as the moderating variable. As the results show, there were key

differences between the five study areas around whether statistically significant relationships

existed between the graduates’ use of employability strategies and their objective career

outcomes.


Table 5.27: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Visual, N=37)

Table 5.28: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Literary, N=68)


Table 5.29: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Performance, N=131)

Table 5.30: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by career outcome measures (Music, N=33)


Table 5.31: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by objective and subjective career outcome measures (Film, TV, New Media, N=53)


The results of the non-parametric testing showed that there were study area differences in

how the graduates’ employment outcomes related to their use of employability strategies. For

visual and music graduates, employability strategies neither positively nor negatively

impacted on their employment outcomes. In comparison, use of employability strategies,

particularly job seeking strategies, positively aligned with both performance and film/TV/NM

graduates having a current job and working exclusively in their creative field. Likewise,

performance, literary, and film/TV/NM graduates who had used job seeking strategies were

less likely to have been unemployed than graduates who had not used job seeking strategies.

Few significant relationships were found between the educational strategies – double degree,

subsequent tertiary education, and non-university formal education and training – and

graduates’ employment outcomes, regardless of study area. However, it may be that

insufficient time had elapsed to accurately determine whether these educational strategies had

any effect on employment outcomes. Overall, these findings suggest that how graduates’ use

of employability strategies impacts on their employment outcomes is influenced by their

chosen study area, as this guides the type of work that a graduate might pursue post-

graduation.

Year of graduation

There were two key cohort differences in the graduates’ use of employability strategies. First,

participation in double degrees was much lower amongst the two most recent cohorts of

graduates (2011 and 2012), with only 8% of graduates from each of those cohorts having

completed their initial creative undergraduate degree as part of a double degree program.

Second, fewer graduates from the most recent cohorts had undertaken subsequent tertiary

education since graduation. The proportion of graduates’ who used non-university education

and training was relatively even across all cohorts, as was graduates’ use of the different job

seeking strategies.


where year of graduation was used as the moderating variable. As the results show, there

were key differences between the six cohorts around whether statistically significant

relationships existed between the graduates’ use of employability strategies and their

objective career outcomes.


Table 5.32: Non-parametric statistical testing results - Employability strategies by objective career outcome measures (2007, N=41)









Regardless of the graduates’ year of graduation, there were positive relationships between the

use of employability strategies, particularly job seeking strategies, and graduates having a

current job and working exclusively in specialist creative work. There were also very few

significant relationships across the cohorts between graduates’ use of employability strategies

and median weekly income and median weekly hours. Additionally, graduates from the 2007,

2009, 2010, and 2011 cohorts who used job seeking strategies were less likely to have spent

time unemployed since graduation than graduates who had not used job seeking strategies.

The year a graduate entered the labour market within the five-year sample period therefore

did not significantly alter whether the graduates’ use of employability strategies was

positively related to their employment outcomes and which employment outcomes were

affected.

5.3 CHAPTER DISCUSSION

5.3.1 What shapes the education-to-work transitions of creative graduates?

The graduates’ early career employment outcomes support findings from the extant literature

that suggest the early career of creative graduates can be challenging and involve below

average incomes, employment within as well as outside specialist creative work, and periods

of unemployment. In terms of their subjective career outcomes, the graduates responded quite

neutrally when asked to evaluate their feelings about their employability, career success, and

career satisfaction during their early careers. However, conducting non-parametric statistical

tests to explore whether the graduates’ subjective career outcomes aligned with their

employment outcomes provided insight into the employment outcomes that were important to

the graduates. Being employed and working exclusively in specialist creative work were the

career outcomes most often significantly related to whether the graduates felt satisfied,

successful, and employable during their early careers. While some relationships were found

between the graduates’ subjective career outcomes and weekly income earned and weekly

hours worked, these relationships were predominantly weak positive correlations. As

previously mentioned, graduate destination studies often focus predominantly on income

earned and hours worked as key metrics for measuring graduate success, overlooking other

variables which may also be relevant (Bridgstock et al., 2015; Oakley, Sperry & Pratt, 2008).

Importantly, the findings here suggest that earnings and hours worked did not play as great a

role as other employment outcomes in how employable, successful, and satisfied the creative

graduates were. Overall, these results suggest that the graduates’ education-to-work


transitions were shaped by a desire to be employed and employed in creative work, with the

graduates placing less emphasis on income earned and hours worked.

The use of demographic variables as moderators of the analyses provided further insight into

how gender, study area, and year of graduation shape creative graduates’ education-to-work

transitions. Minimal differences were found based on gender, with having a current job and

working exclusively in specialist creative work emerging as the most significant employment

outcomes for all graduates. In comparison, significant differences emerged based on study

area and year of graduation for how the graduates’ employment outcomes aligned with the

graduates’ subjective evaluations of their early careers. For some study area and year of

graduation cohorts, there were many statistically significant relationships between the

graduates’ career outcomes and how employable, successful, and satisfied they felt during

their early careers. For the other study area and year of graduation cohorts, the relationship

between the two sets of variables was less clear. The analysis determined that study area and

year of graduation did shape the graduates’ education-to-work transitions; however, the

analysis could not fully explore why graduates from different study areas and different

cohorts had different early career experiences. It is likely that, in addition to the variables in

this analysis, the graduates’ early careers were also shaped by additional elements, such as

the graduates’ career aspirations (Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015), the state of the labour market,

and the broader economic climate of the time (Boden & Nedeva, 2010; Yorke & Knight,

2007), which were not measured in the survey.

5.3.2 What employability strategies do creative industries graduates use and how do

they use them during education-to-work transitions?

The analysis showed that the graduates predominantly used employability strategies in

expected ways, such as to develop skills and work experience, and to obtain employment.

The findings of this chapter therefore broadly align with those of previous studies analysing

how creative graduates use employability strategies, as discussed in Chapter 3 (Allen et al.,

2013; Siebert & Wilson, 2013; Towse, 2006). In terms of educational employability

strategies (completing a double degree, subsequent tertiary education, and non-university

formal education and training), the findings suggest that the graduates predominantly used

these strategies to prepare for employment. For example, the graduates who completed their

initial creative undergraduate degree as a double degree (most commonly alongside an

education or business degree) likely did so to provide themselves with the option to explore


and target different labour markets post-graduation. The results also suggest that the

graduates used subsequent tertiary education in order to broaden their possible career

pathways by gaining qualifications in industries perceived to offer more stable employment

opportunities than the creative industries. The graduates therefore appeared to value tertiary

education for providing a range of career options, whether a degree qualification was

necessarily required for the work (such as in education) or not (such as in business). The

graduates also used a range of job seeking strategies to seek work during their early careers.

However, some of the job seeking strategies included in the analysis were closely associated

with specific kinds of creative work (e.g. auditioning as a strategy largely associated with

performance-based work), and as such, were not relevant to all graduates.

5.3.3 How effective are the employability strategies used by creative industries

graduates for securing them employment during their education-to-work transitions?

While this analysis could not conclusively determine whether and how the particular

employability strategies used by the graduates assisted them to actually secure employment,

the analysis was able to reveal the extent to which graduates’ use of some employability

strategies aligned with their employment outcomes. A lack of empirical research making

direct links between graduates’ use of strategies and their early career employment outcomes

was identified in Chapter 3 as being a key gap in the existing literature (see V. Smith, 2010).

The graduates’ use of employability strategies was most closely aligned with the employment

outcomes of having a current job, working exclusively in specialist creative work, and not

having been unemployed, rather than hours worked and income earned. However, though

individual employability strategies in the analysis were not found to be significantly related

to the graduates’ employment outcomes, it is possible that, when used together, employability

strategies work in complementary ways to contribute to graduates securing employment. In

conducting the analysis using demographic attributes as moderating variables, significant

differences were found based on study area, which suggests that a graduates’ chosen study

area can guide the type of work they pursue post-graduation.

In comparison, minimal differences were found based on gender. Use of employability

strategies was positively aligned with graduates having a current job and working exclusively

in specialist creative work regardless of gender. Similarly, minimal differences were found

based on the graduates’ year of graduation. For most cohorts, the results of whether the

graduates’ used employability strategies were positively related to their employment


outcomes, and those outcomes that were significantly related, were relatively similar. This

suggests that the process through which creative graduates became employed did not change

in the years between each cohort graduating. Similar to the findings summarised in Section

5.3.1 above, the effectiveness of strategies for assisting creative graduates to secure

employment is likely to be influenced by labour market elements, such as industry norms and

employer preferences during the hiring process, which were not measured in the survey.

5.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter presented the findings of an analysis of secondary quantitative survey data

derived from a sample of Australian creative arts graduates to explore the factors that shaped

the graduates’ early careers and whether graduates’ use of employability strategies aligned

with their early career employment outcomes. This analysis provides a quantitative

perspective to all three of the overarching research questions of this thesis and was

undertaken in two stages, with each stage involving both descriptive data analysis and non-

parametric statistical testing. The first stage of the analysis, which was designed to address

the first of the three overarching research questions, found that having a current job and

working exclusively in specialist creative work were the employment outcomes most

consistently aligned with how employable, successful, and satisfied the graduates were with

their early careers. The second stage of the analysis, which was designed to address the

second and third of the three overarching research questions, found that there was some

alignment between employability strategies and graduate employment outcomes but that

further investigation is required to explore how and why creative graduates use employability

strategies, as well as the relationship between employability strategies and employment

outcomes.

The following two chapters present the findings from the qualitative analysis, which further

explores these issues.



Chapter 6 : Interview findings: How Creative Industries graduates use employability strategies

The previous chapter presented the findings from the quantitative phase of this study. This

chapter is the first of two chapters that present the findings from an analysis of qualitative

data collected through interviews with recent creative industries higher education graduates.

The findings detail how the graduates used employability strategies during their early careers.

This chapter also reflects upon the relative effectiveness of the employability strategies used

by the graduates to help them to secure and retain employment. Chapter 7 presents further

findings from the qualitative analysis addressing the structural factors that shape creative

graduates’ early careers.

6.1 RESEARCH METHODS AND QUESTIONS

As introduced in Chapter 4, the data analysed in this chapter were collected via semi-

structured individual interviews conducted in late 2017 with recent creative industries higher

education graduates. The sample (N=30) comprised 15 graduates from design undergraduate

degrees and 15 graduates from visual arts undergraduate degrees. All participants graduated

from their creative undergraduate degree between 2013 and 2015 and had originally entered

their degree directly from high school. The purpose of this analysis is to provide a qualitative

perspective on the overarching research questions of this thesis. The findings presented in this

chapter specifically address the second and third overarching research questions, as below:




graduates for securing them employment during their education-to-work

transitions?

As described in Chapter 4, the interview data were analysed using an inductive coding

process to identify emergent codes, categories, and themes to explore the graduates’ early

career experiences and provide explanations for their differential experiences. The findings

presented in this chapter address the above research questions and are structured under sub-

headings that represent the employability strategies that the participants discussed in the


interviews. The experiences of the visual arts (VA) and design graduates (D) are compared

throughout the chapter.

6.2 RESULTS

An inductive coding process was used to analyse the interview data. The range of

employability strategies the graduates used were clustered according to four main categories,

each of which captured the graduates’ main motivation for using particular groups of

strategies. These themes and the corresponding employability strategies are shown in Figure

6.1. This section details the extent to which the graduates used each of these employability

strategies and reflects upon the relative effectiveness of each of these strategies in helping the

graduates to secure and retain employment.

Figure 6.1: Employability strategies grouped by underlying motivations


6.2.1 Theme 1: Professional and personal development

Professional and personal skills, knowledge, and capabilities are considered essential for

labour market success and the development of these attributes is a core component of

employability literature (Dacre Pool & Sewell, 2007; Fugate et al., 2004; Knight & Yorke,

2003a). It is also essential that graduates possess professional and personal attributes to be

competitive in the labour market. The three strategies that the graduates used to develop

professional and personal attributes were education and training, self-directed learning, and

purposefully producing creative works.

Education and training

The fact that the research participants were higher education graduates suggests a

commitment to using education as an employability strategy. However, the analysis here

indicates a deeper and broader focus on education and training before, during, and after

undergraduate study. Post-graduation from their visual art or design undergraduate degree,

thirteen of the graduates undertook postgraduate studies at a university, including honours

(N=8), masters (N=4), PhD (N=1), and graduate diploma (N=1) programs. A small number

of the graduates (N=7) participated in non-tertiary education and training opportunities, such

as certificate courses and one-off workshops, after graduating from their initial undergraduate

degree.

During high school, most graduates anticipated completing an undergraduate degree as their

post-secondary education pathway. A small number indicated that they had thought about

attending university from as early as primary school. In pursuing tertiary education, the

graduates’ personal interests strongly influenced the choice of degree and which university

they wanted to attend. For graduate D4, studying a design degree was a natural progression of

the interests they had developed throughout high school, “I was playing a lot with digital art,

and I was getting into photography. I’ve always been creative… I picked [design degree]

because it seemed interesting”. Some graduates described having a love of learning, which

meant that it was less about whether or not they would go to university but rather what they

would choose to study. For example, graduate VA10 did not “really think too much at all”

about the potential non-university pathways they might have taken after school because, for

them, they had “never not been studying”. For some other graduates, their decision to enter

into university studies also reflected a limited understanding of the pathways available to

them at that time. For example, VA7 pursued their visual arts degree “for lack of other things


that I could do… [visual arts] was the only thing I’d really done consistently”. Different

individual graduates therefore entered their undergraduate degrees with different motivations.

The graduates’ identified skills and knowledge development as their key priority in pursuing

a university education. In selecting an institution to attend, the graduates therefore made

value judgements in line with this priority at both an institutional and program level.

Graduate D6 felt “it would be more beneficial to go to a big name university than a smaller

design school” because larger institutions could offer more resources and have a more

recognisable brand, which would provide them greater credibility in the labour market. The

graduates also felt that larger institutions would be able to offer them a broader range of

experiences than smaller institutions, which would better prepare them for their future

working lives. In selecting a specific degree, the graduates had sought programs with diverse

subjective offerings that could help them to develop complementary skillsets. This ultimately

became a key point of value for the graduates when they reflected on their undergraduate

experiences.

I think the most useful thing was that it has opened my eyes to seeing how many

disciplines there were, how many different fields, and the way they overlap. Like

fashion, like textile design, and you've got industrial design and you've got architecture.

They're all different but similar in a lot of ways. I think it's good understanding a bit of

all of them. (D4)

Doing 2D visual art courses helped my illustration skills, which I can tie back into my

design, which gives me a more unique aesthetic, which makes me more appealing to

employers. So, even if courses didn’t directly affect you, it still affects the overall goal.

Even to some extent fashion did too, because it helped me learn to research better and

part of my job is to do research. (D1)

While the graduates universally valued a university education as a way to develop a diverse

skillset, less than a third of the graduates (7 out of 30) completed their visual arts or design

degree as part of a double degree program. Of those who completed a double degree

program, only one was from visual arts. For most double degree graduates, the opportunity to

develop different skillsets was a key reason why they chose to complete two degrees

simultaneously. For graduate D5, completing a double degree gave them an “extra piece of

paper to put on [their] resume”, thereby giving them a perceived competitive advantage over

their peers who had only completed a single degree. Additionally, these graduates were


motivated to achieve a non-creative qualification so that they would have a ready-made

‘back-up’ career if their creative career aspirations were unsuccessful.

On a professional level, the graduates valued their university education, not only for

developing discipline-specific skills and knowledge, but also for helping them to explore and

select from diverse career options. In particular, the undergraduate degree curriculum helped

to broaden the graduates’ horizons around work and expose them to career pathways that they

were not previously aware of. In some cases, there were specific units or pieces of assessment

within the degree that encouraged the graduates to think about their professional futures,

“[my degree] helped me a lot because I didn’t know what part of design I wanted to get into.

The variety of projects that we got to work on helped me to narrow it down a bit” (D8). In

most cases, the graduates used the subject matter they were learning to inform their

individual reflective career exploration process, as Graduate VA 4 explains:

“I originally went in going ‘I’m going to be an artist’ but eventually found it wasn’t

really right for me. So, for me, [university] was a discovery process” (VA4).

A secondary professional benefit of a university education was that it assisted graduates to

develop and expand their social networks, “you are going to make connections with people,

it’s like a giant networking event” (D1). By attending university, the graduates were able to

meet people they might not otherwise have had the chance to. This included peers within

their cohort, other students, and tutors who were often industry representatives and

practitioners. The graduates generally agreed that it was important for their careers to

continuously develop new networks and maintain existing networks, because you never know

“when you might see a person again” (D12) or “where [a connection] might lead” (D7).

There were also multiple instances of graduates directly finding and obtaining employment

through networks developed during university. For example, graduate VA10 was offered a

volunteer curating role at a large art gallery by talking with a classmate:

I met a girl who works with a woman I’m doing my masters with and it turns out they all

work in the same space. They had a chat and then sent me a message asking if I wanted

to do any volunteer work curating. So, that was one instance of me, through networking,

actually getting something of a role. (VA10)

Graduate D11 described a similar experience. During her undergraduate degree, graduate

D11 made a connection with another student through a co-curricular project. A few years


later, she ran into their connection at a party and was invited to interview at the connection’s

recent start-up, where she was offered a full-time role post-graduation. There were many

other examples from amongst the graduates’ experiences that showed that the trust that

comes from personal connections, often made during their time at university, appeared to be a

key contributing factor to graduates being offered employment opportunities.

There were three additional ways in which the graduates valued tertiary education from a

professional perspective beyond the acquisition of discipline-specific skills and knowledge.

First, graduates believed that completing an undergraduate degree made them more

employable because it showed that they were able to “commit to something for three to four

years” (D4). Consequently, the graduates believed that graduating from a degree

demonstrated that they were serious about pursuing a career in that area “because you don’t

just do a degree and spend money on it and spend three to four years without having some

kind of seriousness” (VA3). However, graduates also described feeling that possessing a

degree qualification was a benchmark requirement for work in their discipline. As graduate

D8 described, “it’s so hard getting a job without a degree because there’s so many people

with degrees”. Other graduates felt that it was not so much the “piece of paper” (VA2) that

employers were looking for in graduates, but rather that having completed a degree implied a

graduate had skills and experience that were relevant in industry.

There is somewhat of an expectation that you will… I think it is favourably looked upon

for you to have a degree, but at the same time, if you have that practical experience, at

the end of the day, that's what they’re looking at. (D13)

Some graduates also expressed frustration that because possession of a tertiary degree was

expected within the industry, having attained a degree qualification did not necessarily

increase their chances of securing or retaining employment post-graduation. Furthermore,

there was a sense that the employment context and employer expectations had shifted during

their time at university.

Everyone’s dream is to leave uni and get a job straight away but that wasn’t what

happened for me, which is a bit frustrating… You do all this work to find out you might

not get a job for six or twelve months even. (D6)

When I was going in, there was still the expectation that if you went to university and

you did well, you would get a job. Even for the artists I went through with, it was still if


they worked hard, they would still be able to make things work… I don’t think anyone

ever expected it to be quite this ridiculous in terms of the amount of work put in and the

lack of results from that. (VA1)

Graduates felt that tertiary education helped them to develop professional and personal

attributes but that the effectiveness of a degree in helping a graduate to secure employment

was largely relative to the expectations of a given employer, as well as the capacity of the

labour market to provide employment.

The second way in which the graduates valued tertiary education from a professional

perspective was as a means to delay their entry to the labour market. For example, graduate

VA9 pursued a master’s degree immediately following graduation from an undergraduate

degree because they “didn’t feel ready” to start looking for full-time employment. Similarly,

for others, participating in postgraduate studies was a more meaningful use of time during

extended employment gaps than spending all their time looking for work, particularly if

substantial scholarships were available. However, not all graduates saw value in pursuing

post-graduation education at the current stage of their careers. For example, one graduate was

motivated by employment rather than employability and stated that they did not “feel the

need to study a degree again to be relevant” because they were engaging in on-the-job

learning “every day” (D2). Another graduate described their lack of interest in further formal

education as reflecting that they were yet to have “a really good reason to do it… if the stars

aligned in that sense, then I’d be doing post-grad” (D14). Hence the graduates who were

employed, particularly when it was in work they found fulfilling, were less likely to value or

aspire to postgraduate education.

The third way that graduates from both disciplines valued tertiary education beyond skills

and knowledge was that it acted as a transformative growth experience through which the

graduates developed maturity and independence.

I was straight out of high school, so it's all sort of tied up to becoming an adult and just

first experiences of freedom. It was very important to me. You're finding an identity.

(VA13)

I think that uni is… It is part educational, part growth, part experience… Some parts are

going to be way more – especially if you’re like me and went straight from high school

to uni, which is a huge culture shock – your first year is mostly growing. You’re going to


do a little bit of learning but mostly you’re going to be independent. I think most of uni is

just the learning curve, helping everyone into adulthood. (D1)

A key difference between the disciplines in terms of personal development was that the visual

arts graduates highly valued education for helping them to explore and develop their artistic

practice. In contrast, this was not so much the case for the design graduates. Whether the

visual arts graduates desired to work as visual artists or not, having the opportunity to

experiment with different arts practices and research new ideas in a space especially designed

to facilitate these activities was something that they valued highly. For example, graduate

VA5 believed that they “would not have the clarity [I] do now” about their arts practice if

they had not studied visual arts in a formal setting. Similarly, graduate VA3 asserted that

their degree was fundamental for helping them to “deepen and enrich what I do as a whole”.

As a result, some graduates indicated that they would consider pursuing further education and

training opportunities in the future if they found themselves encountering artistic problems

that they could not work through on their own, because education had been such a beneficial

experience for them in the past.

Self-directed learning

At the time of the interviews, most graduates (N=21) were participating in self-directed

learning on a regular basis by reading books and articles, watching videos and tutorials on

sites like youtube.com, completing online short courses, or simply by “Googling it” (VA9).

For some graduates, their participation in self-directed learning was driven by an intrinsic

motivation to learn new things, “Most of it was ‘this looks like fun, I’ll try that out’ or ‘hey,

this might be cool’” (D1). Nevertheless, for most graduates, self-directed learning was

unavoidable in their work.

When you get a job, you're forced to grow and if you don't learn about all the new tech or

the new things or the new skills, the latest trends, you're going to fall behind… even

though you feel like you're doing that at uni, you’ve got to continue doing that

throughout your whole career. (D10)

Though the graduates recognised the benefit of lifelong learning for their careers, they

primarily used self-directed learning as a way of filling skill and knowledge gaps that were

required of them in their current jobs. Whereas tertiary education assisted the graduates to

develop a broad range of capabilities, self-directed learning helped them to extinguish ‘spot


fires’ on a day-to-day basis. For example, graduate D1 worked as an in-house designer but

had been asked to contribute to a social media marketing project. Participating in the project

was unavoidable, so they engaged in self-directed learning through online tutorials and

getting advice from others, because they had “no clue” where to start with social media

marketing. Similarly, in their job as a high school visual arts teacher, graduate VA9 actively

taught themselves practical skills because there were a number of activities they were

required to teach their students that they had never done before.

At the moment we're doing classes using plaster of paris. I have never used it. It seems

pretty straightforward. I’m using this as an example because it's what we’re doing today

and so that's sculptural and carving. I had never done any sculpture before, I have not got

any practical skills with 3D sculpture except for ceramics. I didn't know anything about

ceramics when I started my career. I had to Google it. (VA9)

The graduates valued self-directed learning over other alternatives, such as completing a

formal education or training program, because they could pick and choose what they wanted

to learn, they could do so at any time, particularly while they were at work, and it was often

completely free. In participating in self-directed learning, the graduates discovered which

methods and platforms worked best for them through a process of ‘trial and error’ over time,

selecting methods that suited their learning preferences and the tasks at hand. Although self-

directed learning did not directly contribute to the graduates securing employment – because

they were most often using self-directed learning in the course of existing employment – is it

likely that the professional (job-related skills and knowledge) and personal (problem solving,

resilience) capabilities they developed through self-directed learning helped them to remain

employed in their current position. It was also notable that none of the graduates appeared to

be using self-directed learning for employment-related purposes whilst they were

unemployed or looking for work.

Purposefully producing creative works

A small number of the graduates (N=8), all from visual arts, stated that they produced

creative works as a way of maintaining their practical creative skills. By deliberately working

on their arts practice as much as possible, these graduates felt engaged, not only with their

individual practice, but also with the creative industries more generally. This strategy was

considered particularly important for graduates who harboured creative career aspirations but

were currently working in non-creative jobs. For example, for graduate VA5, the act of


producing work was essential for keeping their creative dreams alive: “For me now, [working

towards a creative career] means making sure I’m actually making work and putting enough

hours into that every week to actually produce good work”. While the act of producing

creative works did not directly contribute to any of these graduates actually securing

employment, doing so may have indirectly contributed because it helped the graduates to

keep their skills current. As graduate VA1 pointed out, producing work could lead to work

opportunities if graduates take it a step further to also display that work: “In Queensland, the

more work you were doing and the more people that saw your work, the more work you got”.

Despite this, a small number of graduates who produced creative works were not actively

using the works they created to generate work opportunities.

“I do paint but I don't consider that part of my real art… It comes from a different

place… Usually I treat that time for me more like chill out time, less as doing something

with an outcome” (VA13).

Often, graduates did not use creative works produced to maintain their creative skills for

seeking future work opportunities because they felt the work they produced in practice was

not of sufficient quality or sufficiently aligned with their artistic brand to be shown publicly.

6.2.2 Theme 2: Work Exposure

Gaining exposure to different kinds of work environments assists graduates to learn about the

labour market and potential career pathways they might pursue. Work exposure also provides

graduates with the opportunity to develop skills and knowledge, professional experience, and

networks in an industry context. The five strategies that the graduates used for the purpose of

work exposure were paid and unpaid work, producing commercial creative work, exhibiting,

enterprise, and applying for grants.

Paid and unpaid work

All of the graduates were engaged in paid or unpaid work at the time of interview. A total of

29 out of 30 were engaged in paid work and six out of 30 were participating in unpaid work.

Twenty of the 30 participants who were in paid work indicated that they were participating in

self-employment/freelance work. Multiple job holding was common amongst the graduates,

with two-thirds (20 out of 30) holding more than one current job (either or both paid or

unpaid). The variety of paid and unpaid work the graduates were engaged in also reflected


roles across the creative trident. For example, many visual arts graduates were self-employed

as visual artists (specialist creative work) while some simultaneously held creative support

roles, such as being a receptionist for an art gallery. A small number of the visual arts

graduates held embedded creative roles, such as working as a photographer in a shopping

centre photography studio. Similarly, some design graduates worked as freelance designers or

were employed as designers within a design agency (specialist creative work). Similarly,

some design graduates were employed as designers within non-creative organisations,

including a State Government department and a large retail company (embedded creative

work) (see Appendix D for a more detailed presentation of the graduates’ current jobs).

In having access to work, the graduates were able to keep abreast of industry expectations

and were exposed to a range of professional development opportunities. The graduates’ first

exposure to work was often through unpaid work experience, such as internships or

volunteering. The graduates valued unpaid work experience in the early stages of their

education-to-work transitions as a way to “get experience when you [first] start out” (VA14).

Unpaid work was also valued by the graduates during the formative stages of their degrees

because it was often associated with something they were already doing, such as an existing

hobby, and they valued it for its potential to lead to paid employment.

During uni, I was at this point where I didn’t have knowledge of how to do some work,

so at the gym I was training at, I was like ‘Hey mate, I’ll work here for free for a year if

you’ll guarantee me a job afterwards’. (D2)

As they moved through their undergraduate degrees, the graduates, particularly from design,

valued paid freelance work as providing exposure to creative labour markets and for allowing

them to fulfil their creative interests while also generating an income. For these graduates,

freelancing involved providing design services directly to businesses or other clients on an ad

hoc basis, with the services offered by the graduates differing on an individual basis. Some

graduates’ freelance work was in website design and development. Other graduates’ freelance

work involved wedding invitation design for a private client or designing a logo for a local

business. However, in most cases, the experience of freelancing discouraged graduates from

wanting to pursue further freelance work in the future. This was because the graduates’

freelance work and any income earned was often infrequent and the graduates found the

insecurity of freelancing quite stressful. Graduates were also turned off freelancing by its

relatively solitary nature.


I like people too much. I get lonely. I think I'd enjoy [freelancing] for, like, the first few

days, just rolling out of bed and working. I quite enjoyed that, but I enjoy being around

people and being able to bounce ideas off others and learning from each other more.

(D14)

This is just one example of the graduates valuing work for providing exposure to different

work environments. In a similar way to the value attributed to tertiary education, many of the

graduates used participation in paid and unpaid work to reflect upon the type of work they

liked, the type of work they did not like, and where they might like to go next:

At the start, I probably said I wanted to be a creative director in an advertising company,

perhaps an agency. But as time went on, I did some marketing and graphic design roles

on the side. That kind of got me interested in just focusing on building up being a really

good graphic designer and becoming a senior designer. (D7)

I liked doing the installations, whereas manning the gallery, doing public programs, it

just wasn’t for me. I just wasn’t challenged by it. I found it a bit boring. I just preferred

being more hands-on. (VA15)

Unpaid work in particular was highly valued by the graduates for career exploration purposes

during their tertiary studies because the short-term, entry-level nature of unpaid work made

for a lower pressure environment for trying new things. For some graduates, their

participation in short-term unpaid work, such as internships, was facilitated by a curriculum

requirement to complete a work integrated learning (WIL) subject, though the graduates often

had to source and organise the internship themselves. Most of the graduates also sought

unpaid work opportunities separate to their curriculum requirements. However, the graduates’

interest in unpaid work for career exploration purposes waned significantly after they had

graduated.

As the graduates developed greater experience, some became increasingly frustrated about

having to participate in unpaid work because they perceived it to be exploitative. For

example, graduate VA12 acknowledged that “sometimes it was necessary” for them to work

for free during their early careers but that they were actively trying “to avoid [unpaid work]

as much as possible” because its potential benefits no longer outweighed its costs. Further,

graduate D1 felt it was necessary to distinguish between unpaid work where “the other person

is not physically able to pay you”, and unpaid work where “someone won’t make a budget


for you but will make a budget for someone else”. While graduates actively avoided the latter

scenario where they were able to, not all of the graduates felt they were in a position to

forego opportunities for unpaid work experience because employers demand workers with

recent industry experience.

Pretty much, you need experience. Employers want to see that you’ve got that experience

with dealing with different types of projects, dealing with a variety of people, to show

that you can do creative… It doesn’t matter what creative job you want, as long as you

show your potential employer that you can do what they’re wanting. It’s pretty

important. (D6)

The graduates therefore used paid and unpaid work as a way of developing experience that

aligned with industry and employer expectations. While some graduates felt it was “up to the

individual whether they find paid or unpaid work” (D6) to build experience, other graduates

observed that the widespread participation by students and recent graduates in unpaid work

experience contributed to the expectation that all students and graduates would work for free.

Graduate D7 believed that this generated a hierarchy of experience, where there are certain

steps a graduate is expected to have taken before they have earned the right to paid

employment, “There was pressure [to do unpaid work]. People were saying ‘You’re not

getting a job if you don’t do internships first’ particularly with the creative side of things”.

Nevertheless, participation in unpaid work directly contributed to some graduates

transitioning into paid employment within the same organisation:

“Yes, it was from an internship that I got employed. I was able to prove myself during

that time with the same company” (D7).

My volunteer work, at first, was like ‘Yeah, whatever, I’ll keep doing it’ but before long

they were like ‘Here’s a project for you to run’, and I’m like ‘Ok, great’, and then they

were like ‘Here’s a project for you to run and you get paid’, ‘Fantastic’. (VA7)

Not only did unpaid work experience directly contribute to some of the graduates obtaining

employment, it also indirectly contributed to the graduates’ employment prospects by

providing them with opportunities to develop skills and experiences that employers highly

valued. However, as noted above, the graduates displayed mixed feelings towards the value

of undertaking unpaid work to gain experience in the creative labour market. While several

graduates reported having engaging and fulfilling work opportunities during their early


careers, the quality of these experiences largely stemmed from the organisation or employer

being willing to provide the graduate with an engaging experience.

I have been lucky to have good experiences. I interned once a week at [an art museum]

for a year, which was great because it was nice, having connections with all the people

that worked there, because they were so supportive and amazing and I learned a lot from

them. Whereas here, I interned at a design studio and they were good because they gave

me really practical experience and great insight into what I was actually going to be

doing. (VA15)

In contrast, many of the graduates described instances of unpaid work that were not engaging,

did not help them to develop meaningful industry experience, and seemed to benefit the

organisation more than themselves.

I was hoping to get some curatorial experience… I found that they were so understaffed

that they didn’t really have the time or the resources to train me, and so I was just sort of

used as a security guard almost. (VA2)

There were some times that I volunteered and they didn't know what to do with me. I just

ended up standing there. And if that happened, I would just leave, because I think I can

be so much more productive with my time. If you’re not going to use me, then I'm going

to go home and do stuff that I need to do. So, a few of them I just left, and I felt bad, but

at the same time, like, I was there and nothing happened. (D12)

There were a lot of places where I felt like I got nothing out of it, that even though I was

asking, they weren’t giving me anything more to do. (VA1)

Similarly, some graduates struggled at times to find work opportunities, even unpaid work,

because the creative organisations they approached did not have sufficient capacity to provide

them with such opportunities:

I have been using some contacts that I have down here [to look for work] but

unfortunately the whole industry is a bit out, so the contacts I have are either in a similar

position [needing work themselves] or not in a position to help me. (VA1)

In pursuing unpaid work, the key challenge was therefore that it was not possible for them to

predict the outcomes or determine whether a particular instance of work experience would be

beneficial to them until they had already invested a significant amount of time and effort in


the strategy. Overall, the graduates participated in paid and unpaid work during their early

careers to assist them to gain exposure to employment. The effectiveness of work in assisting

graduates to secure future employment was relative to a range of factors, including the

particular context of the work and the capacity of an employer or organisation to offer the

graduate continued or future work.

Enterprise

A small number of the graduates (N=9), predominantly from visual arts, developed their own

enterprises in order to gain industry experience. The most common enterprise was an artist-

run initiative (ARI). An ARI is an informal, grassroots-style art exhibition designed to

provide new and up-and-coming artists with a space to showcase their creative work. The six

graduates who had established an ARI often did so by collaborating with peers, and the

initiatives could be one-off events or recurring events, depending on the graduates’ goals. For

example, graduate VA14 created an ARI with three of their fellow graduates specifically “to

get experience in throwing shows”. As an aspiring visual artist, graduate VA14 also valued

ARIs as a way of creating work opportunities for themselves and others where there were few

existing opportunities.

Four of us got together and were like ‘There’s not a lot going on in Brisbane right

now’… there was an ARI hole and we wanted to do something exciting (VA14)

The graduates also valued artist-run initiatives for allowing them to gain experience in the

type of work they aspired to – for example, being a practicing visual artist, curating shows,

gallery management – in an environment that was less regimented and that had less pressure

than if they were exhibiting in a more formal gallery, “I try to do ARIs [because] I can be a

bit more loose, more conceptual. There’s no pressure for sales and there’s no pressure for

those other things” (VA7). ARIs therefore allowed the graduates to develop industry acumen

while providing a space for them to explore their creative passions.

For some of the graduates, developing their own enterprise was a direct reaction to

unemployment, while also allowing them to be creatively engaged through work.

I graduated from the masters expecting to have a position in the arts, and that was

unsuccessful, so I purchased some sign equipment and I’m currently making a sign

business from home. So, I’m doing commission portraits, if someone wants a portrait of


their pet, $90 or whatever, and hopefully that will give me enough time to practice but

also offer a more consistent income. (VA1)

Establishing an enterprise also provided graduates with access to types of work that would

have otherwise been unavailable to them as an individual. For example, for graduate D2, the

desire to do design work for “bigger clients” motivated him to establish a design business

with a friend.

I sort of run my own company. So, the way I structure it, instead of just being my name, I

have a company name… having that name allows me to do bigger projects with

contractors. (D2)

While the graduates engaged with enterprise in different ways, having the ability and

resources to establish an enterprise did not guarantee that the enterprise would generate a

sustainable income nor that it would lead to future employment. For example, graduate VA1

developed an arts program that could travel to rural schools where arts classes were under-

resourced. However, this graduate had found only a few schools that were interested and had

been unable to obtain the necessary funding to actually deliver the program. Similarly, some

enterprise activities, such as ARIs, are not necessarily designed to be monetised or to

generate a regular income for their creators. Participation in the enterprise has the potential to

assist graduates to secure and retain employment; however, for most graduates, enterprise

strategies did not directly result in the generation of sufficient income or assist them to obtain

employment.

Exhibiting

Exhibiting, whereby graduates applied for or participated in solo or group shows displaying

their creative art works, was one of two work exposure strategies used only by the visual arts

graduates, and only half of these graduates (N=8). The primary reason for the visual arts

graduates being motivated to participate in exhibits was because there is a strong expectation

that people seeking to be known as visual artists in a professional sense will exhibit their

work. The graduates often first learned of this expectation during their undergraduate degree,

and it was continuously reinforced by their own observations and through their experience

within industry. Participation in exhibits helped the graduates to develop a professional

profile as an artist, while also helping them to develop social networks with their peers and

more experienced arts workers. Graduates saw this as potentially facilitating future


opportunities to exhibit work or collaborate on arts projects. A particular challenge faced by

the graduates was that although they perceived exhibiting to be essential to their success as

visual artists, the potential intangible benefits were often overshadowed by the tangible costs

associated with participation.

It's really important to always have your work shown and I've done a few group

exhibitions down in Sydney and Melbourne, [but] you finish them and it’s like ‘Oh, was

that worth it?’ It's so much money to get down there and get your work down there, it's

so stressful. (VA6)

Exhibiting required the graduates to invest a significant amount of time and effort to produce

the art works and then to organise and install the exhibit. This resource investment was rarely

recouped in monetary terms or in securing future employment. Similarly, exhibiting was a

strategy where pitching or applying for an exhibition was no guarantee that an exhibition

would occur. However, the importance of exhibiting in the visual arts industry meant the

graduates who aspired to be visual artists often pursued this employability strategy. The

graduates were acutely aware of this fact, often referring to their intrinsic motivation to be

creative as a means to justify their continued attempts at a highly cost strategy.

Producing commercial creative works

Producing commercial creative works, where a person creates artwork for the sole purpose of

selling it for profit, was the second of the two work exposure strategies that were only

relevant to the visual arts graduates. However, although the graduates discussed the strategy,

none were using it or had used it thus far in their early careers. The graduates acknowledged

that being able to earn an income from producing art was of interest to them and that taking

the commercial route would expose them to that side of the arts industry. Yet there was

consensus that at this early stage in their careers, producing art work for the sole purpose of

selling it commercially was not a viable employability strategy for progressing their careers

as visual artists. The graduates felt that producing work for commercial purposes would take

time away from their passion-based arts practice. For example, for graduate VA13, making

art was something they treated as time for them, “chill out time”, which they did not want to

lose in favour of having to make art at a commercial quality and quantity. Graduate VA8

shared a similar perspective, “Taking my energy away from things that I’m passionate about

to produce something that is just able to be sold feels really cheap”. Moreover, the visual arts

graduates, especially those wanting to actually work as visual artists, viewed their arts


practice as something very personal and meaningful and the pursuit of commercial art over

art that is purely expressive or artistic did not align with their identity as an artist and as a

creative.

It's easy to fall into the whole ‘make work to sell’ thing, but I think once you start doing

that, you miss the point altogether. I think the point of it all is to make work that is good

work and stuff that you want to see and stuff that you would want to have. Stuff that

would move you and then maybe move someone else when they see it. (VA5)

While the act of producing commercial creative works implies that the person is employed, or

has at least been commissioned to create the works, wanting to or pitching to produce art

commercially does not guarantee that a buyer will be interested, nor that they will pay a

significant amount for the work produced by a recent graduate. Participating in producing

commercial creative works as an employability strategy therefore has similar costs to

exhibiting. The key difference was that the graduates had internalised the industry norm that

exhibiting had positive benefits for an aspiring artist’s career, whereas the production of

commercial work went against industry expectations of early career artists. Hence, this

internalisation of industry rhetoric played a key role in how the graduates valued these two

strategies.

6.2.3 Theme 3: Industry engagement

The graduates used four strategies to engage with an industry of interest, as distinct from a

specific job they held or a specific organisation they worked for. These strategies were

membership of online communities, attending industry events, mentoring, and joining

professional associations.

Membership of online communities

Almost all graduates (N=25) described being members of online communities that were

related to the industry they aspired to work in, particularly via social networking sites like

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These were the predominant sites of these activities

because they were convenient; the graduates were already users of these sites on a weekly, if

not daily, basis; and they could like a page, join a group, or follow an account with a few

simple clicks. None of the graduates had created their own page or group, preferring to join

existing pages and groups that already had established followings. Many of the graduates

valued these existing online communities for providing a space to build connections with


others in their industry, particularly their peers and other early career workers, and where

they could seek general industry-related advice:

My graduating year has a Facebook group specifically for IVD students, so we can help

each other and give each other advice. At the moment, I’m connecting with one of my

other friends who works for a different company so I can pick their brain and learn things

that can help my design. (D1)

Embedding yourself in the networking things early on [is important]. So, hopping into

Facebook groups and start[ing] to build, even digital mentorships are really good, getting

advice from communities, posting something up to see what people think. Getting tips on

how to improve things and not just relying on the little bubble of uni. (D8)

The convenience of online communities was also important for helping graduates who were

working outside the creative labour market to stay engaged with their creative discipline. For

graduate D8, online communities “helped make me feel more connected” and provided a

“digital link back to other designers” while they were working in the public service.

However, the graduates were mostly passive participants in these online communities.

Although they might occasionally have a work-based problem to discuss or an interesting

article to post, they found that observing others in the group having discussions was just as

useful, if not more useful, as starting discussions themselves. For graduate D10, being a

member of a range of online communities allowed them to create “an aggregated feed of all

the things you like” that they could access when they had spare time, such as during their

work commute. Graduate VA4 liked that membership of online communities was a low

maintenance activity, and that they could review their communities every few weeks to glean

the information of most interest to them.

Additionally, the graduates valued online communities for providing access to job

opportunities. While online communities allow graduates to build connections with other

students and graduates in their industry or discipline, industry also uses these communities to

advertise jobs and source new recruits. As a result, graduates from both visual arts and design

stated that they had located employment opportunities through the online communities they

were a part of:

Both of my jobs I came across on groups on Facebook. There are quite a few design

groups. (VA4)


While I was overseas, I applied for an internship [back in Brisbane] because a tutor from

uni had posted on the graduate page. She posted on the graduate page that there was a

paid internship going a couple of days a week at a design studio, so I applied online and

did a Skype interview and I landed it. (D7)

Being a member of online communities therefore indirectly contributed to some of the

graduates being employed through the sporadic posting of job advertisements that the

graduates might not otherwise have been aware of and through providing the graduates with

access to discipline-related content and conversations that helped them develop industry

acumen. Additionally, graduate D7’s experience, as quoted above, was one of the few

instances where a participant explicitly made reference to engagement with their university

networks and institutional resources when discussing how they had used employability

strategies during their early career.

Attending industry events

One-third of the graduates (N=10) stated that they had deliberately chosen to attend industry

events. There were differences between the disciplines in relation to the types of industry

events that the graduates attended; the design graduates (N=5) mostly attended industry meet-

ups, networking events or workshops, whereas the visual arts graduates (N=5) attended

gallery openings and art exhibitions. There were also mixed opinions amongst the graduates

about the value of attending industry events. The graduates – both visual arts and design –

who attended industry events, valued attending events because they helped them “keep a

pulse on the industry” (D13) and facilitated them to “connect with others in the community”

(D1). Similarly, attending events helped the graduates to transition into their desired industry

because such events allowed for networking to take place, which helped the graduates to be

seen and recognised by those already within the industry. For example, graduate VA4 felt

that attending events helped them to build a profile as a designer within their local design

community:

Going to events, part of that is just being seen, especially as you’re coming out of uni.

I’ve gone to a few, and they’re like ‘You’re that chubby, blue-haired girl’ and I’m like

‘Yes, I am’, which helps. You’re seen and it’s known that you’re serious. (VA4)

There were key discipline-based differences in how frequently the graduates used industry

events to network with others. In particular, the design graduates appeared to network more


deliberately and in a more traditional sense than the visual arts graduates. There was a general

feeling amongst the visual arts graduates in particular that being overly strategic in making

connections with others was inauthentic to how a visual arts career should be developed. For

some, networking at events felt inauthentic to their personal approach to their career, “I don’t

go out with the strategic idea of, like, ‘I’m going to go out and network and meet as many

people as I can and I have to talk to this…’, I’m just not that guy” (VA7). For others, their

resistance to formal approaches to networking was influenced by observing industry norms,

“there are specific networking events sometimes, but they’re not really the thing. I don’t think

that they’re really the go-to” (VA8). The visual arts graduates valued events that allowed for

more authentic and natural networking to take place, such as exhibition openings, rather than

focusing on networking for instrumental outcomes. This was not as great a concern amongst

the design graduates, who were more comfortable with networking at events as a specific

strategy for career progression.

The graduates also valued industry events for professional and personal development reasons.

Attending events where they could discuss their ideas with other likeminded people helped

the graduates to critically reflect on and improve the work that they were making at that time

and would potentially make in the future, a benefit applicable to all graduates. The graduates

also attended events for the enjoyment factor and to support others. This was more common

amongst the visual arts graduates, as many felt it was important to support their friends and

peers by attending their exhibition openings or art shows. Nevertheless, a small number of the

graduates did not value attending events particularly highly. Some recognised that attending

events was something they “should do more” (D13), but that they often forgot or other things

became more important. For graduate VA5, attending events took time that they could

instead be spending on their main career priority, producing art, “Occasionally I’ll go to

events that are important. Otherwise, most of the time I’m making work”. Other graduates,

such as Graduate VA1, felt “it can be difficult to meet new people, everyone kind of stays in

their own circles [at events]” (VA1) so industry events could be intimidating for recent

graduates.

Similar to membership of online communities, attending industry events appeared to have a

largely indirect effect on the graduates securing and retaining employment. While attending

events contributed to the graduates being engaged with industry, their attendance at events

did not directly result in employment.


Mentoring

Only three of the 30 graduates interviewed indicated they had engaged in a mentoring

relationship with an industry professional. While all three indicated that having a mentor

within their industry was something that they sought out, the mentoring relationships also

occurred because the mentor was conveniently located to them (i.e., there was a pre-existing

relationship) and the mentor was willing to participate. Graduate VA15’s mentoring

experience occurred within an organisational setting, the graduate was undertaking a six-

month internship at a design studio and her mentor was the studio’s creative director.

Graduate D1’s mentoring experience occurred in a semi-organisational setting, their mentor

was a new employee in their parent’s business, who was hired as a designer and web

developer. Graduate D2’s mentoring experiences occurred on a more ad hoc basis, with the

graduate having had a number of mentoring relationships during their early career.

Collectively, these graduates valued having a mentoring relationship for the genuine industry

insight it provided and for facilitating direct access to industry practitioners, especially when

the mentor worked in a role that the graduates aspired to. For example, graduate VA15

reflected that the best part about mentoring was having “someone who’s an expert” take an

interest in their work and be available for one-on-one guidance. For this graduate, mentoring

was an invaluable experience that they felt gave them the confidence to seek a paid design

position at the end of an internship. The other two graduates valued mentoring as a way to

learn about the industry, while also seeking work-related guidance from someone with more

expertise.

So, I could have a job and go to my business mentor and say ‘Hey, I don’t know how to

price this. What’s the best way to approach getting the client to pay that amount of

money?’ and he’d come back and say ‘Here’s how you do it’. Or I go to the creative one

and say ‘How do I fix this design?’. He doesn’t care what the overall problem is, he just

knows that I want to solve this one little task I can’t do. (D2)

While none of the graduates’ mentoring relationships directly resulted in them gaining

employment, graduate D1’s experience was a mutually beneficial relationship that helped the

graduate to develop on-the-job experience (albeit unpaid and casual) in the design industry.

I was struggling to find a job in my field and I talked with my family, and my family was

like ‘Oh, we just hired this web developer, maybe you could pick her brain’ and from

there we came up with an arrangement. She had too much work but couldn’t afford extra


staff, so we made an arrangement where I would do work for her and she would give me

guidance and help teach me once a week (D1)

In a similar way to other work exposure strategies, mentoring offered graduates the potential

of securing employment, but for the three graduate interviewees here, mentoring was a

strategy that assisted the graduates to develop employability rather than directly contributing

to them securing and retaining employment.

Joining professional associations

Only two of the graduates indicated that they had joined a professional association. Both

were visual arts graduates who had at one point been a member of the National Association

for Visual Arts (NAVA). Graduate VA10 found their membership of NAVA beneficial, as it

provided them with an industry newsletter and information on grants and gave them access to

events such as one-day workshops and talks with industry practitioners. Graduate VA2 found

their NAVA membership less useful, only paying the membership fees for a short period of

time.

I used to be a member of NAVA for $7.50 a month. It was OK. I think [the] BNEArt app

is better for opportunities because the NAVA ones are very Sydney-centric. You know,

there’s grants for NSW artists. And, I guess, I applied for $300 and spent an hour doing

the application and didn’t get it. (VA2)

Graduates gave several reasons for why they had not joined professional associations as an

employability strategy. First, the graduates felt that the professional associations available to

new graduates or early career creatives were more suited to mid-career professionals. Second,

many of the graduates were unwilling or unable to pay membership fees, which could be

quite substantial in some cases. Third, in some cases, the graduates were unaware that such

professional associations existed in their industry. Professional associations have some

potential to help the graduates to find employment by notifying members of job

advertisements and through sponsorship grants; however, most graduates were not engaging

with these associations in any significant way.

Applying for grants

Applying for grants was a work exposure strategy used exclusively by visual arts graduates

who were pursuing careers as visual artists. Of the graduates who had applied for grants


(N=6), they valued grants solely for the financial income they could potentially generate. The

graduates did not view successfully applying for a grant as employment in itself, but

considered that the grant would provide money for the work they were already doing (i.e., to

fund their visual arts practice) or fund an exhibition, or cover the costs of travelling to

another city or country to engage in arts-based activities. In terms of success, only three

graduates stated that they had successfully applied for a grant as an individual during their

early careers, and that this had only occurred for each of them on a single occasion. These

low rates of success, coupled with the significant amount of time and energy required to

complete a grant application, were factors that discouraged the graduates from applying for

future grants.

I did go through a series of that [applying for grants], applying for a few things but

nothing came through. And, for me, I need to be able to pay my rent, so it’s trying to find

the balance there. (VA1)

It can take days to write an application and not get anything from that, so I can

understand why you might not want to do that. (VA2)

Graduates appeared to have more success in applying for grants when they were part of a

group submission. Higher rates of success amongst group submissions may reflect that those

completing the grant on behalf of the artists involved have more experience in grant writing.

It may also reflect industry preferences to support multiple artists with grant money where

possible.

Not [successful] with a single application but with group applications, yes… it does seem

like the funding, that a lot of people would prefer to give money to an exhibition that has

a few artists in it rather than giving money to one artist for a solo show. (VA8)

I’ve had curators apply for grants on my behalf, which is amazing. And they’ve secured

grants for me, which is really nice. I’m super lucky for that. (VA14)

How these graduates came to be involved in group submissions was not always clear. In

some cases, the curators of an exhibition invited them to contribute. In other cases, the

graduates had to apply to participate in group shows for which a grant application was being

submitted. Applying for grants was therefore not an employability strategy that the graduates

valued particularly highly because their applications were frequently unsuccessful and the


financial returns on offer were often perceived as incommensurate with the effort involved in

submitting a grant application.

6.2.4 Theme 4: Job seeking

Graduates used five strategies for the purpose of seeking and applying for employment.

These strategies were job search, agent/gallery representation, having an online presence,

geographical relocation, and unsolicited job applications.

Job search

All of the graduates had engaged in job search strategies, primarily to seek employment

opportunities with an existing organisation. In using job search strategies, the graduates relied

on online resources, looking at general job advertisement websites such as Seek.com and

Linkedin.com, creative-specific job advertisement websites such as TheLoop.com.au and

Pedestrian.tv/jobs, and more general ‘classifieds’ websites such as Gumtree.com.au. Some

graduates also monitored the websites of specific organisations they were interested in

working at, such as individual galleries or museums. For graduate D2, regularly checking the

websites of their favourite galleries was important because “there are some jobs that they

don’t advertise” in other places. By not checking organisation’s websites, the graduates

risked missing out on those employment opportunities. For many of the graduates, job search

was an activity fraught with stress and anxiety. This was because most of the graduates only

engaged with job search activities when they were already unemployed or were nearing the

end of an existing employment contract.

I was in a position where I left a job last year because it was atrocious and went back into

retail for a few months just because I couldn't deal with it. Then, as Christmas dried up, I

got really desperate. So I started applying for everything and really stressing. (VA4)

I applied for every job that I met the criteria for. There was a good six months of hunting

around… by the end of that time, I was kind of just applying for everything I felt I met

the criteria for or would be happy to do for a little bit of time. (D6)

Job search was also a demanding process, requiring the graduates to invest significant time

and effort to find suitable positions and prepare organisation-specific applications.


I did a lot when I was doing my searches, changing my key words, spending a lot of time

on that. Even like googling ‘what does this job description mean?’ and then catering my

searches to those key words again, so just honing my search. (VA11)

This was often a disheartening experience for graduates, many of whom described feeling

like they were not “qualified for anything” (VA6) they were finding on job sites. The

graduates also described a dearth of advertising for entry-level creative positions and felt that

most job advertisements were for “mid to senior level” positions (VA4). Overall, job search

was a frustrating experience for the graduates. Though some of the graduates stated that they

had secured employment through submitting applications for jobs they had seen advertised,

most had received significantly more rejections to job applications than job offers. However,

applying for jobs remains an essential step in securing employment in contemporary labour

markets.

While employment was the main intended outcome of job search for most graduates, some

found the experience of looking at online job advertisements doubled as a research activity

that provided insight into “what new roles are coming up and what skillsets [employers] are

looking for” (D14). Job search also allowed graduates to learn about the different

organisations in their industry, providing a “springboard” for them to explore their potential

career pathways and the organisations they might want to work for in the future.

Agent/gallery representation

Representation – whereby a creative practitioner engages an agent or gallery to represent

them and obtain work opportunities for them – was a strategy used by only two of the

graduates interviewed. Both were from visual arts and both were pursuing careers as

practicing visual artists. However, representation was not a strategy that either of these

graduates deliberately sought for themselves. In both cases, they received offers of

representation based on gallery owners seeing and liking their work in previous exhibitions.

The graduates accepted the offers of representation because they felt it was a good

opportunity at the time and the particular representation offer aligned with the direction they

wanted their arts practice to go.

The effectiveness of representation in helping these graduates to find and obtain employment

was relative to the individual representation relationship. For example, being represented by a

gallery guaranteed graduate VA7 a solo exhibit once every two years but could not also


guarantee that the graduate would sell any work through that exhibition nor that they would

be offered other opportunities to exhibit during that two-year period. This graduate was also

restricted from exhibiting in other galleries, so there were also negative implications from

having representation. Nevertheless, the graduates felt that having representation was of

value because it guaranteed them at least one exhibition, gave insight into the visual arts

industry, and provided them with a means to receive ongoing, constructive feedback on their

work, “Every time I'd come in [to the gallery], he'd [the agent] always had a really good chat

with me. Sometimes I'd be there for an hour” (VA5). Most graduates had not sought

representation. This was either because it was not relevant to the work they were pursuing (as

was the case for graduates of design), or in the case of many of the visual arts graduates, they

had so far been able to participate in exhibits without feeling the need to engage agent or

gallery representation.

Online presence

All of the graduates maintained a professional online presence as a deliberate employability

strategy. The most common online platforms used by the graduates were social media sites

such as Facebook.com and Instagram.com, as well as their own website. For the design

graduates, portfolio-based sites like Behance.com were also commonly used. This was for

several reasons. First, the graduates valued an online presence for showing potential

employers, clients, or others in industry their past work and creative style. For example, for

graduate VA8, having an online presence allowed them to keep a record of their arts practice,

which could be shown to people after an exhibit has ended. This was essential in situations

where they were required to provide samples of their work.

As a performance artist, I need documentation, otherwise the work doesn’t exist without

it. Once it’s gone from the gallery, it’s gone until I make it again. There needs to be

documentation of that for people to understand what I’m doing and what I’m about.

(VA8)

In many cases, the graduates felt they were fulfilling an industry expectation by having an

online presence. Not only did a website and social media presence allow the graduates to

display their skills to a potentially large audience, they also allowed them to compete with

other creative practitioners, most of whom have “some sort of website” or online presence

(D4). The graduates also placed value on an online presence, particularly one that is well-

curated and up-to-date, in terms of giving employers the impression that they are more


developed and more serious about their career than people who do not have an online

presence. Graduates were also of the view that not having an online presence would mean

running the risk of missing out on employment opportunities.

I now have a proper website and I think that’s crucial. I was talking to a curator recently

and the worst thing you can have for a practitioner is a website without a contact, without

an email address. You may be producing some of the best work and have a website but

they can’t take it any further. (VA12)

One thing I’ve noticed with myself and a few other designers around the same place in

the industry, is that people contact you with opportunities if your online presence is

really great. I think it’s good to keep your options open. (D8)

While all graduates had an online presence, very few were actively using it for self-

promotion or to build a following. Instead, they tended to use or update their online presence

only when they were actively seeking work. When they were employed, particularly those

from design, and were not seeking additional work, they were less engaged in updating their

online presence.

Interviewer: How often do you update your website?

D7: Probably once a year I would say, maybe a bit less frequently, but it probably

coincides, not right now, but coincides with when I'm going for a role.

Interviewer: Do you have any social media sites in a professional sense?

D6: No. Just Behance, and to be honest, now that I’ve got my full-time job, I’ve not

looked at it since.

Some of the graduates used a passive online approach to their advantage, such as graduate

D2, who created a LinkedIn profile as a “professional courtesy… it just sits there in case

people need to reach out to me”. For most, a lack of regular engagement with their online

presence reflected a lack of confidence rather than a lack of interest. Setting up an online

presence, especially designing their own website, required some of the graduates to spend

some time learning about coding and the different content management systems on offer, to

ensure that their sites were of a professional standard. Similarly, for some of the graduates,

their lack of engagement reflected that they were unsure of how best to use certain platforms

to their advantage, “I’ve got LinkedIn… I don’t find it very clear to use, but I do definitely

pop on there every now and again” (D5). Other graduates felt that there were benefits to


having an online presence: “I recognise the appeal of having social media. Whether or not it

actually works for me, I’m not sure it will, but technically it seems to work for other artists”

(VA3). However many, such as Graduate VA3, were yet to experience any of those benefits

directly.

Digital portfolios of past work, integrated as part of an online presence to target employment,

were maintained by most graduates (N=25). The only graduates who did not find this strategy

relevant to their career goals were a small number of the visual arts graduates who were

pursuing curating and arts management roles rather than arts practitioner work. The graduates

predominantly valued a digital portfolio for its traditional purpose – as a way of showcasing

their past work to potential clients and employers, particularly during job interviews. They

also felt there was a significant amount of industry expectation attached to having a portfolio,

particularly when targeting creative jobs.

Everyone’s got their own personality and own creativity, organisations are looking for

someone with a certain style or someone who can meet their style, so it’s important for

them to see what your style is or if you’re able to adapt to the different styles. The

expectation is there that you will have a portfolio that you can show. (D6)

Some graduates also maintained a physical copy of their portfolio, again as a way of

emphasising their range of experience to potential employers.

Having that physical work also helped… I brought that I was able to do digital work, as

well as print, so having the best of both things was a tick. (D6)

Overall, having an online presence, often a combination of an individual website, as well as

various social media accounts, did not directly result in employment for any of the graduates.

However, having an online presence contributed indirectly to graduates securing employment

because an online presence provided a space for them to publicly list their contact

information and host a digital portfolio of past work.

Geographical relocation

While most graduates (N=28) had considered geographical relocation as a strategy for

pursuing employment opportunities, less than a third (N=6) had deliberately moved away

from the city where they had studied their undergraduate degree (and where most were born

and raised) to pursue work in general. As discussed in Chapter 4, the interviewees had all


studied in the same metropolitan Australian city (Brisbane). From an employment

perspective, some of the graduates felt that larger cities could offer a greater variety of

employment experiences, which provided greater opportunity to learn new things and

diversify their careers.

Brisbane feels really small, and like, Sydney and Melbourne, for example, are a lot more

ahead than us. They do have the more specialized UX roles where you have the UX

designer and then you have the UX researcher separately. And then there's other kinds of

different roles within that, whereas in Brisbane, I feel like you’re just UX. (D14)

Especially salient for the visual arts graduates was the idea that different cities were more or

less accepting of creative work and that they were interested in working in an environment

that was more receptive to their creative career aspirations.

I wanted to give it a shot down here [in Melbourne], especially because the culture down

here is a lot more… there’s [a] more creative culture in general. You don’t get criticised

for choosing visual arts or being passionate about philosophy and that kind of thing down

here, whereas in Queensland, if you can’t get a job up there, it’s because you didn’t

choose the right thing or because you didn’t work hard enough. (VA1)

However, pursuit of work was also only part of the reason why these graduates had decided

to geographically relocate. While employment was an important part of their decision to

move – “I basically moved down to Victoria because there’s more work down here” (VA1) –

many of the graduates stated that there were multiple factors that contributed to their

decision. The opportunity to travel to and live in different cities was a key motivating factor;

for example, “[moving away] gave me the opportunity to do a big hunk of travel before really

settling into my career. I didn’t want to feel itchy and like I wanted to constantly go on

holidays” (D8). Dissatisfaction with their current job or personal life was a catalyst for one

graduate to explore their options to work overseas; in feeling “a bit disheartened” by their

post-graduation job search, graduate VA15 started for looking for work outside Brisbane,

eventually finding and obtaining a two-year job in Canada. Personal relationships also

factored into the graduates’ relocation decisions. For graduate D6, their decision to move to

Melbourne after graduation was partly to chase employment opportunities in design but was

fast-tracked by the fact that their partner had been offered a transfer to Melbourne.


When I finished uni at the end of 2015, I had a casual job and the plan at the end of uni

was to move to Melbourne, partly because my partner wanted to move down here for his

career aspiration and I thought ‘why not?’. (D6)

For the graduates who were not interested in relocating, at least at this stage of their careers,

their decisions directly contrasted with those of the graduates who had moved away. From an

employment perspective, some of the graduates were reluctant to move or did not feel that it

was necessary to move elsewhere because they already had a job that they loved and they felt

there was enough opportunities in Brisbane, “I think a lot of people go elsewhere with this

dream that it's so creative and it will be great. But they just do exactly what they do in here”

(VA4). The graduates also felt strongly that if creative workers continued to congregate only

in specific cities (specifically Melbourne and Sydney in Australia) then other cities would

never develop a strong creative labour market. Many therefore rejected relocation as a

strategy, actively choosing to stay in Brisbane to help develop and strengthen the creative

culture there.

I've never wanted to move to Melbourne or Sydney, and people who do, I always say,

like, people should stop and stay here and help build a better community in Brisbane. I

think if everyone just keeps leaving, then no it's not going to get better and there's not

going to opportunities because you're not willing to stay and help. (D12)

It's such a cop out. Everyone wants to fricking go to Melbourne. Everyone moves to

Melbourne to be a creative. I think that's such a load of BS. Like, if you can't do well

here, why do you think you'd do any better there? Maybe that's a real[ly] cynical answer.

But if you're not kicking arse here, why do you think you'd go and kick arse somewhere

else? (VA5)

There were also several personal reasons given by the graduates as to why they did not want

to relocate. Cost of living was a significant deterrent to graduates moving away from

Brisbane to other metropolitan cities, “I think Melbourne is great, but it’s also a lot more

expensive” (VA4). The visual arts graduates in particular were quite fiscally conservative.

Even though other cities may have more opportunities, the graduates were aware that “there’s

also more people going for the same thing” (VA15) in those cities, and the graduates could

not afford to be without work for very long. Being close to family was also important for

many of the graduates, and a key reason why they would not move away unless they

absolutely felt they had to.


I really like being in Brisbane. I just found the Sydney lifestyle wasn't for me. I did like it

and made friends down there, but I just love being around family and that my boyfriend's

placed here for a while. (D7)

I’m married and my partner has a stable job that she loves, and so I wouldn’t pick up our

lives for me, especially if it didn’t work out in a couple of months. And we’re really

close to our families as well. (VA2)

In terms of the effectiveness of geographical location in helping graduates to find and obtain

employment, there were mixed results amongst the graduates’ experience. Some graduates

had moved away and found a job soon after, whereas others had moved and struggled for

months to obtain work. Yet, the graduates who had not moved faced similar experiences.

While geographical relocation could physically locate graduates near employment

opportunities, the act in itself did not necessarily assist graduates to more easily secure

employment. Graduates also needed to use additional strategies to find and secure

employment.

Unsolicited job applications

Only two of the 30 graduates discussed having submitted unsolicited job applications to

organisations they desired to work for, and in both cases this was unsuccessful. These

graduates believed they had failed to gain employment because they perceived the

effectiveness of unsolicited job applications to be relative to whether the organisations or

employers they targeted had the capacity to provide employment opportunities.

I’ve sent a couple of emails to councils and things like that, but haven’t really heard

back. I think everyone is pretty tight at the moment. (VA1)

In contrast, graduate VA4 reflected that, although unsolicited job applications did not help

them to obtain employment, it contributed to them developing a profile within a particular

industry and put them on the radar of organisations they could see themselves working for in

the future.

I've got a video that I send to people, which is a little animation of weird vintage

collages. Totally whack. It's like ‘I'm interested in this and this is what I do, give me a

call’. I've gotten some really good traction. I applied for a job in Melbourne actually. I

don't know why, I just liked the company. They said ‘You’re not quite what we're


looking for but next time you're in Melbourne, call us about the video, it's what we're

interested in’. (VA4)

Therefore, the effectiveness of unsolicited job applications as a strategy for assisting

graduates to secure employment appears to be contingent on industry demand and the

capacity for organisations to have employment opportunities available.

6.3 CHAPTER DISCUSSION

6.3.1 What employability strategies do creative industries graduates use and how do

they use them during education-to-work transitions?

Graduates used employability strategies in four key ways: for professional and personal

development, for work exposure, for industry engagement, and for job seeking. Although

employability strategies assisted them to develop employability capabilities, they deliberately

used strategies to secure employment rather than also thinking proactively about how the

strategies were assisting them to develop employability. Many strategies were used by all

graduates; however, some of the strategies were used only by the visual arts graduates who

were pursuing specialist creative work as visual artists. Ultimately, the ways in which the

graduates used employability strategies was relative to the type (e.g. specialist creative,

embedded creative, etc.) and discipline of work the graduates were pursuing at that time. In

contrast, no significant distinctions in how graduates selected or used strategies were

observed based on gender or year of graduation.

Figure 6.2 shows the extent to which graduates used individual employability strategies.

Strategies outlined in green dotted lines were used exclusively by visual arts graduates.

Strategies with high rates of usage were used by between 20 or more graduates, strategies

with medium rates of usage were used by between 10 and 19 graduates, and strategies with

low rates of usage were used by nine graduates or fewer. Graduates’ use of employability

strategies was influenced by how successful they perceived a strategy would be for assisting

them to secure employment. Graduates for whom the use of a strategy resulted in positive

employment outcomes often spoke positively about that strategy, while graduates who did

not achieve an anticipated employment outcome when using a particular strategy often

attributed negative value to that strategy and were discouraged from using that strategy again

in the future.


Figure 6.2: Graduates’ use of individual employability strategies during their education-to-work transitions

Note: Strategies outlined in green dotted lines were used only by the Visual Arts graduates

The graduates’ use of strategies was also influenced by their perception of how commonplace

a strategy was in their particular industry. As discussed in this chapter, graduates felt that

strategies such as work experience and education and training were benchmark requirements

for contemporary creative work. The expectation that graduates will have pursued these

strategies is reinforced by those around them, particularly family and friends, and more

broadly by education institutions, the media, and government policy, as these strategies are

thought to lead to positive employment outcomes. How graduates came to use employability

strategies was therefore a nuanced process influenced by a range of personal and structural

factors and undertaken for the ultimate outcome of achieving employment rather than also

developing employability.


6.3.2 How effective are the employability strategies used by creative industries

graduates for securing them employment during their education-to-work transitions?

Very few instances were observed of a single, individual employability strategy having a

direct, positive effect on graduates securing employment. For example, participating in

unpaid work assisted some graduates to secure employment, such as being offered paid

employment to continue working with an organisation at the end of an internship. However, it

is important to highlight that even where a strategy directly affected one graduate securing

employment, there were many other graduates using the same strategy who did not have

success with securing employment. It was more often the case that, while all employability

strategies had the potential to contribute to graduates securing employment, graduates

secured employment by using a range of strategies that worked in complementary ways.

Individually, many of the strategies assisted the graduates to develop employability

capabilities, such as discipline-related skills and knowledge, which prepared them for

employment. This applies most strongly to strategies such as education and training and self-

directed learning. However, discipline-related or technical skills were only one element upon

which employers made hiring decisions. Some strategies assisted graduates to have proximity

to employment, such as geographical relocation and agent/gallery representation, but the act

of moving to a different city or accepting representation in itself was not the sole reason why

graduates who participated in those strategies were able to secure employment. Additionally,

the potential for some strategies to lead to employment did not eventuate for the graduates.

For example, attending industry events provided graduates with the opportunity to network

with others, which could potentially lead to employment opportunities. However, none of the

graduates described securing employment through the act of attending an industry event.

Likewise, submitting unsolicited job applications has the potential to lead to employment, but

only where an organisation has the capacity to offer the applicant employment, which was

not the case for the two graduates analysed here who used this strategy. Overall, there was no

single combination of strategies used at a particular time or in a particular way that resulted in

multiple graduates securing employment. Structural factors outside the graduates’ control,

such as worker supply and demand and professional networks, also influenced where, when,

and how graduates secured employment.


6.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter is the first of two chapters in this thesis that present the findings from an

analysis of the qualitative data collected through interviews with recent creative industries

higher education graduates. The purpose of the analysis presented in this chapter was to

explore how creative graduates used employability strategies, while also reflecting upon the

relative effectiveness of the employability strategies for assisting creative graduates to secure

employment, comparing the experiences of the visual arts and design graduates throughout

the chapter.

This chapter showed that the ways in which the graduates used employability strategies

reflected a primary concern with securing employment rather than graduates also considering

how strategies assisted them to develop employability. This chapter also showed that the

relationships between graduates’ use of strategies and their employment outcomes were

relatively weak. No single strategy or combination of strategies emerged as increasing a

graduates’ likelihood of securing employment. Rather, how graduates secured employment

was the result of complex interrelationships between different employability strategies bound

within a particular context. Structural factors outside the graduates’ control also played a role

in shaping how they secured employment. Chapter 7 presents further findings from the

analysis of the qualitative interview data to explore the broad structural factors that shape

creative graduates’ education-to-work transitions in greater detail.


Chapter 7 : Interview findings: The structural issues which shaped Creative Industries graduates’ education-to-work

transitions

This chapter is the second of two chapters that present the findings from an analysis of

qualitative data collected through interviews with recent creative industries higher education

graduates. Chapter 6 explored how creative graduates used employability strategies, as well

as the effectiveness of employability strategies for assisting them to secure employment. This

chapter builds upon the findings presented in Chapter 6 to examine structural issues that

shape creative graduates’ education-to-work transitions.

7.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODS

As detailed in Chapter 4, the data analysed in this chapter were collected via semi-structured

individual interviews, conducted in late 2017, with recent creative industries higher education

graduates. The sample (N=30) encompassed 15 graduates from design undergraduate degrees

and 15 graduates from visual arts undergraduate degrees. All participants graduated from

their creative undergraduate degree between 2013 and 2015 and had originally entered their

degree directly from school. The purpose of this analysis was to provide a qualitative

perspective to the overarching research questions of this thesis. The findings presented here

specifically address the first overarching research question:


graduates?

As with the previous chapter, the interview data in this chapter were analysed using an

inductive coding process to identify emergent codes, categories, and themes that explain the

structural issues that shaped and influenced the creative graduates’ early careers. These issues

often influenced how the graduates used employability strategies as they transitioned from

education into the labour market. The experiences of the visual arts (VA) and design (D)

graduates are compared throughout the chapter.

7.2 RESULTS

Five key structural issues that shaped the creative graduates’ education-to-work transitions

were identified: fluidity, precarity, money, personal connections and professional networks,

and career management training. Within each of these themes, it was evident that some


dynamics facilitated graduates’ efforts to be successful in the labour market, while other

dynamics hindered their attempts to find and sustain employment. As the findings presented

in this chapter show, these dynamics were rarely discipline-specific, but rather transcended

the graduates’ discipline, broadly shaping their early career experiences.

7.2.1. Fluidity: The need to be flexible in envisioning creative career futures

As Chapter 6 showed, the creative work that the graduates were pursuing was often

precarious. As a result, many were engaged in portfolio careers, holding multiple jobs at one

time (Ashton, 2015a). Though most of the graduates desired to work in a single position with

pay and hours equal to a full-time job, they also recognised that it might be some time before

that was achieved. Others enjoyed having a portfolio career because it offered them flexibility

of hours and the opportunity to participate in a range of jobs. Regardless of how the graduates

felt about it, the requirement to be flexible and responsive in approaching their careers was a

key factor that shaped their early career experiences. Additionally, the demands of fluidity

had a profound effect on how the graduates’ developed their creative identities and reconciled

those identities with their career aspirations.

At the forefront of the graduates’ minds in approaching their careers was their sense of

identity as a ‘creative’. For most graduates, creativity was not an outcome of tertiary study

but rather something much deeper, often aligned with experiences of having been creative for

as long as they could remember. As a result, the graduates’ education-to-work transitions

were strongly influenced by a fundamental drive to be creative. Participant VA2 described

this feeling as something they had no control over, “it’s part of your make-up… If you’re an

artist, you’ll always be an artist and nothing will stop you from doing that because you have

to do it”. Because of this, being creative was not just an activity that the graduates

participated in for the sake of enjoyment or employment, they perceived it as being a core

part of their identity as a person. In the initial stages of transitioning between education and

work, the graduates’ exploration of their creative identity – through experimentation with

different art forms and different creative activities – often took precedence over targeting a

specific job or employment outcome. This was a perspective shared by all graduates.

I didn't know whether I wanted to be an illustrator or a web designer. I had no idea [but]

at that time that I knew I wanted to use digital tools. (D10)


The reason I chose [visual arts] wasn’t career based. It was more ‘I like this, I’m engaged

in this’ and if I’m not going to get the professional aspect at the other end of it that I

want, that’s ok. (VA11)

As the graduates progressed through their undergraduate studies, they began to think more

about career aspirations and potential employment pathways. When asked about their career

aspirations, all graduates indicated that they were pursuing a creative career, with two-thirds

saying that they were pursuing a creative career to a great extent. However, more often than

not, the graduates’ career pathways involved both creative and non-creative work as labour

market constraints forced graduates to opportunistically find employment. This resulted in the

graduates having a range of work experiences during their early careers, which often differed

from the initial career identity to which they had aspired. For one visual arts graduate, their

flexible approach to career planning reflected their desire to “embrace the energy of what’s

happening now” (VA14). This was a perspective shared by graduate D11, for whom focusing

too much on the future would mean they would be missing out on the “constant

opportunities” that were occurring in their industry at the current time. During this time, most

of the graduates did not have specific job roles in mind, but rather took opportunities that

would orientate them towards work that aligned with their creative identity and interests.

There was also a shared perception amongst the graduates that focusing on a single career

pathway post-graduation would limit their ability to pursue other creative career interests,

both now and into the future. They had internalised a belief that the labour market required

them to be agile and responsive to changing demands. As one graduate stated, “you can’t

limit yourself, especially nowadays, when everything’s so competitive” (D4). Similarly, some

graduates felt that being flexible with their career plans meant they could better respond to

and manage the challenges of contemporary work: “Doing a lot of different kinds of work, I

don’t have my eggs all in one basket. If you lose one job, the business can pick up or I could

get a huge order of paintings” (VA2). The graduates’ openness to different employment

opportunities therefore represents a pragmatic response by many of the graduates to the

difficulties of seeking work and building a career in a tight and competitive labour market.

However, this openness only extended so far, with the graduates still predominantly pursuing

work that aligned with their creative identities.

The graduates’ pursuit of creative careers was facilitated by the possession of personal

qualities, such as adaptability and self-awareness. Graduates who were adaptable were better


able to deal with change, recognise new opportunities, and be resilient to failure during their

education-to-work transitions. Positively, the graduates in this study displayed awareness of

the need to be adaptable, including noticing its absence in others, as the following example

from graduate VA11 exemplifies.

I’ve got friends [with creative career ambitions] who I’m talking to and saying things

like ‘Have you done this?’, ‘I can help you do this’, ‘What about this?’ and they haven’t

even thought of these things. Which is fine, it’s how I was four-five years ago, but… it’s

an issue. (VA11)

A small number of graduates possessed rigidly-defined career aspirations from the outset.

These graduates often chose to target one specific job role, eschewing interest in alternative

careers or career ‘plan B’ (VA6). One graduate dismissed the concept of having a fall back

career, believing that this helped them to focus on their primary career goal, “If you force

yourself to have a Plan A only, then it pushes you to make that happen” (VA5). These

graduates also identified that focusing on a single career goal, particularly at such an early

stage in their careers, was less stressful than considering multiple career pathways

simultaneously: “I feel like you can’t slave for two masters, you have to commit to one. If I

was doing [both], I know I would burn out” (VA12). However, having clear employment

goals did not mean that this small number of graduates were not attuned to the notion that

creative careers were challenging to pursue. While these graduates were committed to

achieving a desired career outcome, they were not necessarily tied to a single method for

achieving that outcome. Therefore, regardless of the extent to which graduates held strictly-

defined career aspirations, almost all of them were keeping their options open and had

adopted fluid and flexible approaches to envisioning their futures post-graduation.

7.2.2 Precarity: Navigating careers in the creative labour market

The experience of precarity in the creative labour market meant that graduates did not believe

they could accurately predict when their next employment opportunity would appear or how

it would present itself. While the graduates had some idea of the challenges they would face

in pursuing creative careers, the full reality of the creative labour market was something they

discovered only when they were actively engaged in the process of searching for and securing

employment. As a result of widespread precarity in the creative labour market, the graduates’

process of learning how to navigate opportunities and develop a career under those

circumstances was often drawn out. Precarity in the creative labour market therefore shaped


the graduates’ education-to-work transitions because their capacity to deal with the

challenges they faced affected the career they envisioned for themselves and the kinds of

work they felt comfortable pursuing.

Despite graduates showing a rich knowledge of the creative labour market, pursuit of stable

employment was an overriding concern for many graduates. Many expressed high levels of

anxiety about job seeking, particularly in relation to opportunities to find more stable

employment. The graduates felt that jobs were scarce and that securing employment was

often highly competitive.

If only you had a crystal ball. (VA2)

Most of the people I know in those positions are holding on for [sic] them for dear life

and they definitely didn’t make way for the next load of grads. (VA1)

I applied for countless jobs, many I didn’t hear back from. Lots of tears because your

self-esteem has plummeted. You’re worried that you’re not actually a good designer.

You get panicky because you think you haven’t designed for a year, my skills are going

to be out of date by now or the industry has changed so much that you’re not going to be

able to get in. There’s so much anxiety. (D1)

Graduates’ feelings of anxiety associated with selecting a career pathway was shaped by their

experiences of precarious work. On average, the visual arts graduates held 1.7 current jobs,

having had an average of 5.2 jobs since graduating three to five years earlier. Most visual arts

graduates were primarily working a casual job with no fixed hours, often alongside additional

casual or freelance jobs to supplement their income. Similarly, the design graduates held 1.6

current jobs and had held an average of 4.1 jobs since graduating three to five years earlier.

Some graduates indicated that they had held as many as 10 different jobs since graduation.

Only 12 of the 30 graduates interviewed held a full-time role at the time of interview, with

the majority of these being design graduates. Though many of the design graduates were

working full-time, most of these graduates were also undertaking additional freelance work

or self-employment.

Overall, precarity in the creative labour market played a key role in shaping how graduates

identified and selected potential career pathways. For graduate VA9, “job security and

salary” were the key reasons they chose to pursue work as a visual arts high school teacher


rather than as a practicing visual artist, which had been their initial ambition. A similar theme

was found amongst the design graduates, for whom employment as an in-house designer,

where they would be more likely to have “a job that [they] knew [they] would have every

day” (D6), had greater appeal than being self-employed, where there was the potential of

“running out of work” (D4). Some of the graduates had made the decision to prioritise more

stable employment opportunities long before they themselves entered the workforce, often as

a result of seeing their parents struggle in precarious careers, both within and outside the

creative industries. As a result, several graduates actively avoided freelancing as their only

source of income due to its instability and the high potential for employment to be irregular.

This was a key worry for graduate D8:

It came down to the not knowing when your next job was, based on other people. I didn’t

want to have to rely on a network of people, on others, rather than a contract saying I’m

employed. (D8)

Similarly, some graduates exhibited a lack of self-confidence around their capability to deal

with employment precarity, which affected the type of work they pursued. A lack of

confidence was evident in accounts of avoidant attitudes towards work they did not feel they

possessed the skills and knowledge for.

[on starting a small business] I want to have more years under my belt and working with

other people and running a business too. I think I'd want to learn a bit more how to do

that properly on a full-time scale. (D7)

[in talking about curating/museum work] Maybe one day, but at the moment I’m just

focusing on doing things that I’m comfortable with. I think curating would be something

really nice to take on board, but… I don’t know if I trust myself yet to do that. (VA8)

The insecurity of employment was just one element of the precarious contemporary creative

labour market that made it difficult for the graduates to achieve their employment goals.

Some graduates struggled to align their creative process with the time frames demanded of

particular types of creative work. For example, graduate VA4 aspired to be self-employed as

a graphic designer. However, she found it difficult to maintain a continuous roster of clients

because many potential clients asked for short (two to four week) turn-around times and she

took longer than that to complete a design brief to an industry standard.


Whenever I'm doing a client brand, I can start brainstorming but it will take me six weeks

until that idea crystallises. For my process, I just need to let it simmer. There’s only so

much I can do [in a short space of time]. (VA4)

Likewise, graduates’ previous interactions with the creative industries they desired to work in

had made it clear to them that it was crucial to project the right image that would ingratiate

them more readily into the industry. While graduates felt that it was important for

employability to have a highly visible online presence, their interactions with industry left

them feeling uncomfortable about using their online presence in a “superficial” way (VA12)

or to simply promote their work. One specific example was the tension between commercial

and non-commercial work amongst the visual arts graduates. Graduate VA14 believed

integrity was crucial to long-term employability as a visual artist and was therefore not

interested in creating artworks for a purely commercial purpose. Graduate VA7 had observed

a similar expectation during their short time in the visual arts industry:

The art world proper, and what I mean by that is this higher echelon of GoMA, IMA, that

kind of world, it can hurt. It can hurt doing this other stuff. You want to be seen in a very

specific light… art and commerce is the unholy alliance and you want to be careful on

how you’re seen and how that’s approached and if I was there showing this work that I

did that has no conceptual merit or no standing. I don’t know, I stay away from that.

(VA7)

Networking was another strategy that many of the graduates were hesitant to be seen using in

an inauthentic or overly strategic way.

When you are networking, connect because you want to learn from someone or because

they can make your experience richer. Don’t connect with someone with such a narrow

mind, connect with them because you think you could help each other. (D1)

I’ve definitely seen the benefits of being a social butterfly… but not necessarily with the

intention of ‘I have to tell everyone about my new work, they’re going to love it’.

(VA14)

Some graduates acknowledged that seeking to project an industry-accepted image at the

expense of using employment strategies in a more strategic way had potentially inhibiting

their career success: “I think I’d get a lot further if I did [use an artist-run initiative to

promote themselves] but I don’t” (VA8). Significantly, most participants believed that it was


more important to be perceived as authentic rather than strategic when pursuing a career in

the creative labour market, even at the expense of potentially missing out on paid

employment opportunities.

High expectations demanded of workers by employers and industry more generally also

remains a concern in the contemporary labour market (P. Brown & Hesketh, 2004; Stewart &

Owens, 2013; Tomlinson, 2008). Industry demands job ready graduates who not only possess

a portfolio of relevant skills and knowledge (Tomlinson, 2012; Wickramasinghe & Perera,

2010), but also whose participation in work is not hampered by personal commitments and

responsibilities (Holmes, 2013; V. Smith, 2010). This is compounded in the creative

industries where precarious work, including irregular working hours, is highly prevalent

(Ashton, 2015b; Bridgstock et al., 2015; Comunian & Faggian, 2014). Personal

considerations affected graduates’ capacity to adopt precarious work during their early

careers. For example, geographical relocation was often an issue that the graduates

considered during their early careers in trying to find more stable work. However, because

the graduates’ creative employment was often precarious, geographical proximity to family

support and partners with a stable income became key factors in determining the career

choices they made.

“Me and my partner [sic] are both from Cairns and his family is from there and my

family is from there and it's not until you sort of move away that you realise how much

you miss just being home” (D9).

A small number of graduates also mentioned that there were personal considerations that they

preferred not to discuss in detail – including mental health conditions and family health

matters – that had affected the type of work and careers they felt they could pursue.

Paradoxically, the demands of precarious work heightened graduates’ reliance on stable

family networks and partners, which then reduced some graduates’ capacity to engage with

precarious work in the future.

7.2.3 Money: The inescapable need for financial income

As introduced in the previous two sub-sections of this chapter, gaining employment was a

key priority of the graduates during their education-to-work transitions. In looking for and

accepting work, some graduates indicated that any employment, creative or not, was

preferable to no employment. For graduate D6, their post-graduation job search had become


such a protracted experience that they would be happy to take on “any job, really”. For

graduate VA11, there seemed to be a dearth of interesting or engaging jobs available to

graduates, so their approach to accepting work was to take “the first thing that came along

that didn’t sound like a complete disaster”. Ultimately, financial need was a common catalyst

for the graduates’ focus on employment during their early careers. This was because,

regardless of the graduates’ career aspirations, the need to “pay the bills” (VA2) was a reality

that most of them could not overlook. For graduate D4, working as a university tutor

provided them with a regular and important income that was also flexible enough to allow

them to engage with freelance work on the side, without needing to rely on income they

generated from their freelance creative work. Employment was therefore a priority for the

graduates because it provided them with financial income and security.

Having a financial income, often from paid employment, enabled the graduates to pursue

their creative career aspirations. To create creative products, the graduates first needed a

source of income to help them purchase the requisite supplies – anything from paint and

paintbrushes for producing physical artwork to a laptop and software for producing digital

designs. Financial income also provided the graduates with the means to buy general work-

related equipment. In particular, having access to equipment was essential for providing

graduates with the opportunity to participate in certain kinds of work, especially enterprise

and self-employment. For example, both graduate VA3 and graduate D2 were able to

participate in freelance photography work because their paid employment put them in a

financial position to purchase their own camera equipment. Graduates’ creating their own

enterprise or pursuing freelance work were therefore pathways that were particularly

contingent on the graduates’ financial income.

In fact, most of the career pathways and employability strategies pursued by the graduates

required some financial investment, from buying supplies to make artwork, to having phone

and internet access for job search and to set up an online presence. This points to the

importance of paid employment in shaping graduates’ use of employability strategies.

Though all graduates reported having sufficient financial income to participate in common

strategies, such as online job search, those who had greater financial incomes and greater

financial security were better able to participate in additional strategies that required greater

financial investment. Graduates with limited income were similarly constrained in using these

strategies. Examples include graduates not maintaining their own website because they could


not justify the website hosting costs, and graduates not pursuing education and training

because they could not afford the upfront tuition and materials costs. While some of the

graduates were of the mindset that they would do whatever they could to achieve their career

aspirations, the reality for many of the graduates was that their career aspirations, and the

strategies they used to achieve those aspirations, were contingent on the financial income and

security they could generate through paid employment.

Though paid employment could provide graduates with financial income, some types of paid

employment also shaped graduates’ early careers by constraining their capacity to participate

in additional employment (including desirable creative roles). Specifically, a small number of

the graduates were hindered from using some employability strategies during their early

careers because of contractual obligations to an existing employer. For example, graduate D5

could not publicly share the work they produced in the course of employment in a portfolio or

on a social media website because it was commercially sensitive. Likewise, while graduate

D8 had participated in freelance work in the past, they were unable to continue doing so

alongside their current job: “Yeah, so we’re not really allowed to freelance at [current job],

on the side, but when I was at [previous job], I was doing a lot more on the side”. For

graduate VA7, being represented by an art gallery restricted them from exhibiting at other

galleries: “Most spaces I can’t show at because it’s against my contract. I can’t show at a

gallery when I’m contractually obligated to show at the gallery that represents my work”.

Graduate VA7 was therefore prevented from using exhibiting as a strategy more often

because of the contractual restrictions imposed on them by an existing paid position.

Similarly, paid employment also constrained the amount of time graduates had available to

pursue their creative career aspirations and develop employability through additional

strategies. In particular, having insufficient time due to working in jobs not aligned with their

primary career aspirations prevented them from pursuing all of the strategies they were

interested in or that would be relevant to their chosen career pathway.

I just can't manage having a full-time job nine-to-five and try[ing] to do all of my other

stuff at the same time, it's just too much. (D9)

I have been talking a friend about [creating an artist-run initiative] for a while but we

don’t really have a space that we can work in at the moment and a combination of being


busy at work and that kind of thing, it’s one of the things I just keep putting off doing.

But I have definitely thought about it a lot. (VA10)

Graduate D5 also felt strongly that they would only participate in creative freelance work

when they could devote sufficient time and energy to producing good work, which was not

possible with their current full-time work commitment: “I would love to be doing more

invitations and freelance work, but I just know that I wouldn’t be able to give the customer

what they would need from me or do as good a job as I would like”. Graduates working the

equivalent of full-time hours (sometimes more, depending on the graduate), even when the

work was aligned with their creative career aspirations, adversely affected how much energy

the graduates felt they then had to devote to other career-related activities.

Even in a full-time arts position, you get home from work and you don’t feel like making

art, and on the weekends the lawn needs mowing. (VA2)

Sometimes I’ll just get home and I’ll want to do something that night, like finish off an

assignment or go to an art show, and I’ll just go home and I’ll crash completely, I’m just

so tried from the day at work. (VA10)

Therefore, while employment could provide graduates with the financial income and security

they needed to achieve their career aspirations, the need to participate in paid employment to

meet financial obligations constrained graduates’ access to opportunities and also reduced the

time and physical energy graduates had to further develop their careers and build

employability.

Critically, graduates’ family members and partners provided them with, sometimes

substantial, financial support during their early careers. In fact, some graduates were able to

circumvent reliance on paid employment for financial income and security by drawing upon

their parents and spouses for financial support. Specifically, the graduates’ pursuit of work as

creative practitioners and use of strategies such as unpaid work, education, and training, and

creating their own enterprise were all made possible by their support networks taking

responsibility for the graduates’ living expenses.

The main thing that's basically allowed me to work on my practice so much is that I live

at my parents' house… It has allowed me to put most of my energy into my work. I know

that people struggle with needing to get another day's work and then another day's work,

so then that means they can't be in the studio. (VA6)


My boyfriend of eight years is studying to be a doctor. So, I guess there's always that,

that that worry is taken away. That things might be okay and that I can pursue design. I

know that's probably not a good thing to put all my eggs in one basket, but I guess that's

kind of provided me comfort in thinking ‘Okay, if anything fails, I'll probably be alright’.

(D7)

By providing the graduates with financial support, such as covering living expenses or

providing rent-free accommodation, often over an extended period of time, the graduates’

support networks made it possible for them to pursue low paid, unpaid, and precarious work

in the pursuit of employability during their education-to-work transitions.

7.2.4 Personal connections and professional networks: It takes a community to build a career

Inside knowledge of work and the labour market afforded to graduates by those closest to

them is known to contribute to graduates’ having successful labour market outcomes (Ross,

2008; Taylor, 2012). For participants in this study, the graduates’ personal connections and

professional networks - family, friends, employers, and teachers – assisted them in

developing and pursuing careers. Those closest to the graduates, especially their parents,

played a key role in assisting the graduates to explore their creative identity and effectively

engage in employability strategies. In many cases, parents were the graduates’ inspiration for

pursuing their creative interests. For some, observing their parents working in creative roles

was the catalyst for them to follow a similar career pathway.

I love doing art and my dad is an artist as well. So, even growing up in a household

where he encourages me to do Aboriginal art in any way or express where we're from

and do all of those things is a motivation in itself. (D9)

For this graduate, observing their father’s pursuit of creative work afforded them a familiarity

and an understanding of what a creative career would entail, which made them more

confident in their choice of creative career. Parents were also often the first people to

encourage the graduates to pursue their creative interests, providing a support environment

throughout the graduates’ lives, both before and during the graduates’ higher education

experiences. For example, graduate D1 described pursuing higher education in design as “a

bit of a no-brainer” for them because their parents had not only cultivated “a high priority for


education” in their household, but had also recognised that graduate D1 appeared more

interested in creative subjects than any other subjects during their school years. Similarly,

graduate D13’s parents were the main source of guidance that shaped why the graduate

selected their design undergraduate degree:

When I was in school, I was sort of gravitating towards something to do with computers,

something with IT. And then my parents came along with me when I was going to the

different universities and they were thinking it would be better for me to do something

more broadly than just that. And then creative industries sort of tied into that. (D13)

Professional networks are known to be important for assisting workers to find and secure

employment throughout a career, particularly within the creative labour market (Allen et al.,

2013; Towse, 2006). While existing networks were pivotal to the graduates’ during their

formative years, emerging new networks became more important as the graduates

transitioned between education and work. For some graduates, seemingly serendipitous

meetings, which fit with the often-used colloquial phrase of ‘being in the right place at the

right time’, was associated with their experiences of securing employment. For example,

graduate D1 felt that there had been significant amount of “luck” involved in when and where

she had been offered her first full-time job. The graduate felt this way about that particular

situation predominantly because it was a job she was recommended for by others and not a

job that she had formally applied for herself: “If I didn’t know those two people who

recommended me for those other jobs, I would not have gotten this job” (D1). Most graduates

had also largely internalised the belief that labour markets are meritocratic and that career

progression is based on a person having relevant skills and knowledge, passion for the work,

and a willingness to work hard. This prompted many of the graduates to adopt the mindset

that the “right opportunity will come along” for them and that their careers “will just fall into

place” (VA2) if they persevered and work hard.

However, while there may have been an element of luck involved in how some graduates

came to be employed, many graduates actively sought to develop networks that had the future

potential to result in a positive employment outcome. For example, in the case of graduate D1

(as introduced above), it was their decision to cultivate professional and personal

relationships with others in the design industry. Though this graduate may not have pursued

these relationships with the intent for them to lead to future employment, the graduate was


aware of the importance of social networks for career development and cultivating future

opportunities.

You should always add everyone you go to university with on Facebook. Or keep

connections with people that have interests in your field, because one of you are going to

end up in that field and you’re going to want to help each other out. Hence, why my

graduating year has a Facebook group specifically for design students, so we can help

each other and give each other advice. (D1)

A similar experience was observed involving graduate D8. Although the graduate had not

been actively searching for a job at the time, a seemingly random interaction with a customer

during a shift at the graduate’s retail job resulted in them being invited to an interview for a

design-related job.

I didn’t apply for it. What happened was, I worked in a [retail] store as a sales

consultant… and one of the people I met was a manager at [a government department]. I

told him that my internship was coming to an end and he was like ‘Well, I have an

analytics team and we’re looking for someone who has design thinking, who is creative,

who can help us to visualize our data and statistics’ – I’d never heard of that before, but

he was like ‘But seriously, let’s catch up for coffee and we’ll go from there’. It was a

chance occurrence and I wouldn’t have applied for that job. I probably would still be in

sales right now.” (D8)

Although the graduate could not have predicted that that particular man would enter the store

on that day, nor that she would be the one to serve him, the graduate explained that she made

the effort to engage all of her customers in conversations, often about their own work. This

small act cultivated an environment that could potentially result in something more

significant, such as an offer of employment. Another example of such a moment was

described by graduate VA7, as follows.

When I was in my first year of art school, I just had work up in the studio and the person

who took over the [State Government department] that looks after all the murals and

does all the mural projects was, at that time, finishing his masters at [the same university]

and he walked through the studio essentially and saw some of my paintings and asked if

he could have a sit down with me [to discuss the mural project]. (VA7)

Not only do emerging networks enlighten graduates to the employment opportunities

available to them within the labour market, they are often in a position to make those


opportunities a reality. The process of how creative graduates developed a career and secured

employment was therefore often shaped by support, guidance, and opportunities afforded to

them by professional networks.

7.2.5 Career management training: A necessity for pursuing creative careers

Graduates were disappointed with the quality of career management support they had

received during their undergraduate studies and often described feeling unprepared for the

challenges they encountered in pursuing creative careers as a result. Successful career

development use of employability strategies relies on graduates having career management

skills (Bridgstock, 2009; V. Smith, 2010; Wittekind, Raeder, & Grote, 2010), particularly

within the creative industries (Bridgstock 2011; Bridgstock 2013). However, most graduates

recalled that guidance in that area was provided only superficially during their degrees. For

example, graduate D1 noted that they did not receive in-depth guidance around job search,

which they felt would have been useful for them as they transitioned between education and

work.

Something was missing in that ‘find the work’ thing. I think uni skims a lot of topics but

doesn’t go in-depth enough. That’s the thing. We just skimmed everything and then they

said ‘Good luck, goodbye’… but I have more questions though! (D1)

Similarly, graduate VA10 felt their visual arts degree addressed creative practice

development quite well, but that more general career management capabilities, such as

networking, were often overlooked.

It wasn’t really ‘this is how you put on an exhibition’ or those practical, employable

skills, it was ‘what is your practice?’. They did do a really good job of teaching you how

to communicate a practice but other than that, nothing really about networking,

development, that kind of thing. There wasn’t that kind of support. (VA10)

In comparison, some graduates did recall receiving informal rather than formal guidance

around employability strategies for creative career development. This was more common

amongst the visual arts graduates, although it was found most useful by the visual arts

graduates seeking to work as creative practitioners.

I wouldn’t be going to shows if it wasn’t for all the people at uni being, like, ‘You need

to go to shows’. They were all, like, ‘I didn’t see any of you at the show on the weekend.

Where were you?’. (VA14)


I would say [career management training was] mostly informal. There was no work

readiness aspects of the curriculum but tutors saying ‘go to this conference’ or ‘sign up

for this newsletter’, those kinds of things. (VA2)

Despite graduates stating that this informal guidance provided them with some insight into

relevant strategies for developing a creative career, they also believed that the needs and

norms of the creative industries more broadly were insufficiently incorporated into university

curriculum in ways that could facilitate them to develop appropriate career management

capacities. For example, graduate D11 did not feel that pursuing further higher education as

an employability strategy was relevant to them, despite broader societal expectations to do so,

because they were meeting very few people within their chosen design field of user

experience who had completed a postgraduate qualification. Likewise, graduate D12 did not

feel like they needed to maintain a website, despite being told during their undergraduate

degree that it would beneficial to create one, because they had never previously used a

website to obtain employment in design. For graduate D5, the expectation that they should

have a website or professional online presence to promote themselves as a designer did not

align with their current role as a graphic designer, as most of the design work they produced

was commercially sensitive. They therefore felt that it would be inappropriate for them to

share those materials publicly on a personal website or social media page.

Graduates also felt there were certain employability strategies that had been reinforced during

their degrees as important for a creative career, but that in reality were only relevant during

their studies and immediately post-graduation. For example, though graduate VA7 had been

involved in grass roots artist-run initiatives (ARIs) in the past, they felt that student-run ARIs

were no longer a strategy that was relevant to them. However, this was not something that

was communicated to them during their degree when they first learned about the potential

benefits of creating an ARI.

The people I know, they’re a couple of years out. We’re putting together proposals for

more established artist spaces rather than the pop-up ones that last a year or two. A lot of

these places just… they flick up a space under a house, show all their friends’ work for a

year or two, and then develop their opportunities and move on. (VA7)

Likewise, some graduates indicated that they had not previously used a strategy because they

were completely unaware of what the particular strategy was. For example, when graduate

VA2 was prompted to name which sites they maintained as part of their online presence, they


indicated that image hosting website Flickr.com “doesn’t ring any bells”, despite it being a

platform that is well-known and used by many creative workers. Similarly, when graduate

VA9 was asked about whether they had ever joined a professional association, they indicated

that they “hadn’t really considered it, to be honest”. The graduates therefore lacked

awareness of strategies they might have used to develop employability and generate work in

the creative industries. Overall, while most graduates had been able to identify and pursue

career pathways post-graduation, they often believed that the career management guidance

and support they had experienced at university insufficiently prepared them for the challenges

they would face in pursuing a creative career.

7.3 CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter was the second of two chapters in this thesis to present the findings from an

analysis of qualitative data collected through interviews with recent creative industries higher

education graduates. The purpose of the analysis presented in this chapter was to explore the

structural issues that shape creative graduates’ education-to-work transitions. In doing so, this

chapter identified five structural issues that shaped graduates’ experiences. First, the

graduates’ careers were shaped by their creative identity, which demanded a fluid, flexible,

and adaptable approach to work. Second, the process through which the graduates sought

employment and developed their career was significantly influenced by the prevalence of

precarious work the creative labour market. Third, the reality of financial necessity was a

factor that shaped graduates employability strategies during their early post-degree careers.

Access to money, provided either through employment or family and partner support,

strongly shaped graduates’ decisions about where to seek employment and the extent to

which graduates could maintain creative employment. Fourth, graduates’ early careers were

often made possible by significant support, guidance, and opportunities provided by personal

connections and professional networks, both existing and emerging. Finally, graduates were

highly critical of the quality of career management support they had received during their

undergraduate studies and often felt unprepared for the challenges they had encountered in

pursuing creative careers.

The following discussion chapter brings together the findings presented in this chapter, as

well as the two previous chapters to compare the findings and reflect upon their significance

in relation to the existing literature.



Chapter 8 : Discussion – Challenging existing approaches to employability for the context of the Creative Industries

The preceding three chapters of this thesis presented the findings of the mixed methods study.

Chapter 5 presented the findings from an analysis of quantitative survey data derived from

individuals who graduated from a creative undergraduate degree from a single Australian

metropolitan institution. Chapters 6 and 7 presented the findings from an analysis of


graduates. As discussed in Chapter 4, this mixed methods research study was conducted

using a convergent study design, whereby the data collection and analysis were conducted

separately for each method, with each method being designed to consider the research

problem from a particular perspective. Both studies addressed all three of the overarching

research questions of the study. This chapter therefore compares the results of the two studies

and critically reflects upon the findings in light of the existing literature in order to advance

knowledge in this emerging field, and inform policy and practice as it relates to graduate

employability.

8.1 TENSIONS IN THE LOGIC OF EMPLOYABILITY MESSAGES RECEIVED BY CREATIVE GRADUATES

8.1.1 Employability versus employment: Deciphering the mixed messages

The graduate participants recruited for this study indicated that they had been the recipients

of mixed messages concerning employability and employment. This affected how they

selected work and careers to pursue and how they used employability strategies in pursuit of

employment goals. As explored in Chapter 2 of this thesis, there have been many and varied

conceptualisations of employability, particularly over the past 20 years. Over this time, in line

with significant shifts within the labour market, the onus of employability has become

increasingly centred on the individual worker (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013). However, the

worker-focused perspective is a key weakness of contemporary conceptualisations of

employability because it often ignores the role that structural and contextual factors play in

how employment is obtained (P. Brown et al., 2003).

Defining employability too closely with employer needs has also been an additional criticism

of some government and education policy agendas because it foreground the needs of

specific employers at a particular time without also encouraging the development of more

long-term and future-relevant capabilities within workers (Jones, 2009; Moreau &


Leathwood, 2006). Supply-focused definitions of employability disproportionately favour

employers over workers (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013; McKeown & Lindorff, 2011;

Tomlinson, 2008). Additionally, while the existing academic literature states that

employability should not be synonymised with employment, this distinction is not as clearly

maintained in grey literature or the public lexicon, where the term ‘employability’ is often

used to refer to the act of securing employment. The challenge of conceptualising

employability for the current and future labour market therefore produces several mixed

messages that can be difficult for graduates to critically evaluate and apply to their individual

situations.

Despite receiving some messages around employability and employment issues during their

early careers, financial need and the pressures of modern life resulted in creative graduates

focusing most of their attention on securing employment in the short-term rather than

simultaneously conceptualising their continued and future employability development. The

graduates’ focus on securing employment then manifested as a preference to fulfil the needs

of the people and organisations who were able to offer them paid employment around the

time they were graduating. Similarly, across both studies in this thesis, graduates used

employability strategies in pursuit of employment, often to meet perceived employer

expectations in their industry of choice. Due to the desperation of struggling to secure

employment amongst the highly competitive creative graduate labour market, employability

and employment become an either/or dichotomy. Employability can be a difficult and

abstract concept for graduates to appreciate, and the bombardment of mixed messages, which

favoured a supply-side focus, pushed graduates to fall back on an overly simplistic message

they could more readily apply to their own situations: ‘if you have the skills and experience

that industry needs at the current time, you will secure employment’.

8.1.2 Mixed messages around employability in the creative industries

These mixed messages were further compounded within the context of the creative industries,

where general conceptualisations of employability that shape labour market and education

policy agendas do not always reflect core creative labour market expectations of creative

workers. There is a significant amount of literature that addresses why creative workers,

especially those at the beginning of their careers, should be proactive, agile, strategic, and

responsive to change if they are to meet the employment challenges of the contemporary

creative labour market (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, 2009; Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015). This


aligns with how employability continues to be defined more broadly. However, industry

norms within the creative industries have propagated certain expectations around creative

workers needing a strong and well-defined creative identity to have employability for certain

types of creative work. This is most often the case in industries focused on cultural

production and creative practice, such as visual arts (Taylor, 2012).

The findings from the interviews highlighted that discipline-based understandings of graduate

employability can constrain creative graduates’ early career pathways, and there were key

differences between the two disciplines studied. The strength of the visual arts graduates’

creative identities provided them with a personal foundation that kept them motivated and

creatively focused during the tough times. However, visual arts graduates were encouraged

by industry and their university to focus most of their time on creative arts practice. The

visual arts industry has often had an uneasy relationship with the notion of the modern career.

As a result, many creative practitioners and education institutions continue to cling to the

“bohemian identity”, where creative identity and practice comes first and creatives are

discouraged from pursuing “market-friendly behaviour”, as the most respected way to pursue

life as a visual artist (Lindström, 2016, p. 50). This kind of limited conceptualisation has been

shown to adversely affect the early career success of graduates from creative practice

backgrounds by limiting their career aspirations to a small number of rigidly defined

pathways that do not reflect the breadth of contemporary creative work (Bennett &

Bridgstock, 2015), not only in terms of employability but also socially acceptable career

pathways. Therefore, one body of knowledge tells graduates that creative employability and

creative career success is achieved through remaining agile and open to new opportunities,

while another suggests that a career is only truly and respectably creative when it reflects

long-perpetuated ideals, but not necessarily the realities, around what a creative career should

be.

Reflective of these perceptions, most of the visual arts graduates in this study were pursuing

careers within the very limited field of visual arts practice, which led to anxiety and

disappointment for the vast majority who were unsuccessful in securing ongoing paid

employment as visual artists. Likewise, many of the visual arts graduates expressed an

understanding of “market friendly” strategies related to visual arts practice, such as selling

their artworks (Lindström, 2016, p. 50). However, these graduates did not engage in these

strategies because they believed that industry would negatively judge an overt interest in


commercialism and money. As a result, the visual arts graduates’ desire to be accepted by the

industry and to secure employment came at the expense of using employability strategies

more strategically.

In comparison, the design graduates did not encounter the same pressure from industry or

their university for their creative identity or work to fulfil narrowly-defined expectations. It

was also more acceptable within the design industry context for design graduates to be seen

to use employability strategies to achieve employment and career goals. This stark difference

may reflect the type of work the graduates were pursuing. While the visual arts graduates

most often pursued cultural production, business-to-consumer work, the design graduates

most often pursued creative services or embedded creative work, which is more business-to-

business focused (Bridgstock et al., 2015). The findings from both studies in this thesis also

showed that while the graduates from the different disciplines used several the same

strategies, their discipline was a still key influence on how, when, and why graduates did (or

did not) use certain strategies. Overall, this highlights the importance of adapting general

conceptualisations of employability within a particular context in order to reflect the

intricacies of different industries. This may eliminate some of the mixed messages that

creative graduates receive when employability initiatives are delivered more broadly.

These findings also highlight the difference between employability and employment within

certain creative industries. Particularly within the context of visual arts, the employability

capabilities that industry foregrounds as most important – a strong, practice-focused creative

identity and keeping their arts practice untainted by commercial imperatives – are not the

factors that this research found to be most significant for graduates securing employment.

While creative graduates need relevant skills and knowledge, this research shows that the

path to employment in some creative industries is not always neatly aligned with the

perceived employability norms and preferences of those industries.

8.1.3 The need for theory to acknowledge structural influences on employability

The findings discussed in this section, as well as findings throughout the thesis, strongly

support the criticism of many conceptualisations of employability that neglect the influence

of structural issues on graduates’ early career experiences and their capacity to actively

develop employability during that time. The literature confirms that broad labour market and

economic factors are important to how the majority of people, not just graduates, find work

and build careers (Boden & Nedeva, 2010; Rafi, 2017; Yorke & Knight, 2007); however,


these issues rarely come to the forefront when employability is conceptualised or discussed.

This was highlighted in Chapter 2 as a key flaw of the most popular conceptual models of

employability, with employability still often framed as a supply-side issue. As noted in

Chapter 7, some graduates described that they were only able to meaningfully reflect on their

employability development once they had secured stable, ongoing employment, often in a

single full-time job. Likewise, the analysis in Chapter 7 showed that there were several

structural labour market factors that hindered the graduates’ engagement with their own

employability during their early careers. In examining these broader structural factors and

how they affected the graduates’ early careers, the findings of this thesis confirm that factors

outside the graduates’ control played a key role in shaping their career trajectories, often

determining the availability and accessibility of employment opportunities.

Deficits in conceptualisations of employability to acknowledge the significant role that

structural factors play in how creative graduates engage with employability on a conceptual

and practical level does a disservice to graduates. Specifically, creative graduates may

continue to believe that a challenging early career experience is solely the result of an

individual lack of employability or “not trying hard enough” (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013, p.

705) rather than being substantially influenced by the contexts into which they have

graduated. To more realistically represent the contemporary graduate experience, it is

imperative that future theory and policy around employability continue to progress beyond

supply-side perspectives to more substantially acknowledge the role of the labour market and

wider economy in how graduate employability is defined and achieved.

8.2 THE CHALLENGE OF EMPLOYABILITY DEVELOPMENT WITHIN THE PRECARIOUS CREATIVE LABOUR MARKET

While the extant literature robustly documents the challenges that creative graduates can

expect to face during their early careers, the literature often skirts the issue of how these

creative labour market conditions affect graduates’ ability to continuously and proactively

develop employability. As discussed throughout this thesis, many conceptualisations of

employability emphasise that employability development should be participated in

continuously and proactively by graduates across their working lives (Fugate et al., 2004;

Sanders & de Grip, 2004; Van Der Heijde & Van Der Heijden, 2005). This is particularly

pertinent within the context of the contemporary labour market, which is characterised by

changing employment patterns and increased expectations from employers (Haukka, 2011).


Graduates must also prepare themselves for the ‘future world of work’, which promises to

bring significant disruption to the lives of workers across most industries (Bakhshi et al.,

2017; World Economic Forum, 2018).

Not only do creative graduates have to contend with these broad labour market challenges,

they must also learn to navigate the challenges of the creative labour market. The creative

industries have long involved precarious working conditions and it is common for creative

workers to participate in contract, part-time, and freelance work, as well as self-employment

(Comunian et al., 2014). Positives associated with these kinds of irregular working patterns

include increased flexibility of hours, greater autonomy for workers (Bridgstock et al., 2015;

Mathieu, 2012), and increased opportunities to explore different kinds of creatively-fulfilling

work, both within and outside an individual’s specific creative discipline (Bennett &

Bridgstock, 2015; Cunningham & Higgs, 2010).

From a positive perspective, the graduates studied in this thesis exhibited behaviours

associated with employability development amidst the creative labour market challenges they

experienced. Specifically, the graduates were observed as having the capability to be agile

and responsive to change, capable of using a range of strategies, and having an understanding

of when it might be appropriate to use a particular strategy. For example, many graduates

reflected upon their use of strategies as they moved through their early careers, adjusting how

they used individual strategies and sometimes selecting new strategies where the use of their

original choice of strategy did not have the intended outcome. The graduates also showed

themselves to be capable of using some strategies in a pragmatic and efficient manner. For

example, some graduates chose to engage with self-directed learning rather than pursuing

postgraduate tertiary studies because self-directed learning was better aligned with the level

of knowledge they needed to develop at that specific time. However, despite these positive

dimensions, common creative labour market conditions were also found to have a profound

negative effect on the graduates’ ability to engage with and develop employability.

High competition for relatively few creative work opportunities and the need for graduates to

earn an income meant that the graduates were constantly concerned about securing and

maintaining paid employment. There is high competition amongst creative graduates for

entry level work (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, 2009; Mathieu, 2012) and the expectation for

creative graduates to be “oven-ready and self-basting” (Atkins, 1999, p. 1) is stronger than

ever. The “threat of unemployment” can also be a key source of anxiety for graduates during


their early careers, significantly influencing their job search behaviours and the kinds of work

they are willing to accept (Fadjukoff, Kokko, & Pulkkinen, 2010, p. 301). This fear of being

unemployed and having insufficient income to support themselves was a strong early career

motivation for most of the creative graduates studied in this thesis, particularly those involved

in casual or short-term contract work. As a result, many of the graduates were using strategies

solely for the purpose of securing employment in the short-term, which is challenging for two

key reasons.

First, focusing on employability development for specific, individual jobs meant that the

graduates were not only neglecting more long-term consideration of their employability but

also neglecting their employability for work more broadly. The graduates’ use of

employability strategies was also then dominated by short-term thinking, with less

consideration given to how strategies could assist graduates to develop capabilities that would

contribute to long-term employability. Second, graduates’ short-term focus on employability

for specific jobs was not always successful in securing them employment. In an effort to be

‘oven ready’ for their first post-graduation jobs, the graduates were also at risk of lacking

longer-term employability without any guarantee that a short-term employability focus would

result in the paid employment they were so desperate to secure.

Many of the creative graduates relied upon personal networks, most often parents and

partners, to financially support them to pursue a career within the creative labour market.

Students and graduates from low socio-economic status backgrounds tend to have more

difficult education-to-work transitions as they do not have access to the same financial

resources to support their employability and career development as their more privileged

peers (Taylor, 2012; Throsby & Zednik, 2010). The need for financial income to support

creative practice, but also to support living expenses, is one of more biggest influences on

why creative workers are discouraged from creative work (Throsby & Petetskaya, 2017). As

discussed throughout this thesis, the graduates with greater capacity to sustain the precarity of

creative work, often because of financial support from those closest to them, could also

participate more readily in employability strategies that involved significant cost, such as

repeat participation in unpaid work, internships, and volunteering. This put the graduates who

did not have access to such financial support at a significant disadvantage, effectively

perpetuating existing inequalities amongst the graduates. Expecting graduates to receive

financial support from others to participate in a creative career or to meet industry


expectations around employability strategies is also not particularly sustainable, especially

over the long term; relationships break up, while parents as a financial resource can be

exhausted (Clark et al., 2015; Tomlinson, 2012). Having to rely on others financially is also

not conducive to graduates achieving more general milestones, such as buying their own

house or starting a family. While this is not a new issue, this research reasserts that it is an

issue that requires significantly more consideration.

Ultimately, government and education policy often focus on how graduates can develop

employability but greater consideration needs to be given to when graduates might have the

opportunity to actively engage with their employability once they are in the labour market.

As the findings of this thesis show, the many challenges that creative graduates will face in

pursuing precarious creative work can significantly affect graduates’ ability and opportunity

to consciously and continuously develop creative employability.

8.3 CAREER SUPPORT DURING DEGREE PROGRAMS: THE NEED FOR GREATER INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSES TO THE FRAMING AND DEVELOPMENT OF EMPLOYABILITY FOR CREATIVE GRADUATES

8.3.1 Career management challenges faced by creative graduates

Career management has become an increasingly essential graduate employability capability,

as knowing where and how to find relevant work assists graduates to access the labour

market (V. Smith, 2010; Wittekind et al., 2010). Career management capabilities are

considered especially relevant for graduates pursuing work in the creative industries because

the precarity of creative work and the prevalence of non-permanent, non-full time working

conditions suggests that creative workers will move between jobs and employers more often

than workers in other industries (Ashton, 2015b; Comunian & Faggian, 2014). As described

in Chapter 7, the graduates interviewed for this thesis were disappointed with the formal

career management education and guidance provided by the higher education institution they

attended. In receiving little formal guidance around career management issues during their

degrees, the graduates had to individually develop their own knowledge about industry norms

and expectations and how they might use employability strategies to develop a creative

career. While it was relatively easy for graduates to learn about the basic requirements for

their chosen creative career or which strategies were considered relevant, they did not always

understand how to apply this knowledge strategically to develop or further their emergent

careers.


Research has shown that creative workers, particularly those pursuing specialist creative

work, can take many years to become established in a career. For example, Throsby and

Petetskaya’s (2017) study of professional visual artists in Australia found that most felt they

had only become established in their career through securing ongoing paid employment and

industry recognition as an artist, around their mid-30s, with the median age of establishment

being 37 years. It is therefore imperative that creative graduates, the majority of whom are

young adults during their education-to-work transitions (Universities Australia, 2018),

understand the realities of the creative labour market and possess sophisticated career

management capabilities to support them to maintain a creative career in the long-term.

Graduates, particularly from visual arts, were also observed as participating in behaviours

that could be perceived as being counter-productive to career development, such as

eschewing potential commercial applications of their creative work due to a desire to meet

industry expectations that a creative career should uphold creative purity and eschew

financial gain. Without a strong, empirically-informed, objective foundation of career

development knowledge to draw upon, the graduates experienced significant stress and

anxiety as they developed their careers, often privileging employers’ short-term needs rather

than their own long-term needs and ambitions.

8.3.2 A call to action for Higher Education Institutions

There is an existing call from employers and industry more broadly for education institutions

to provide greater employability and career guidance to students during their studies

(Confederation of British Industry, 2015), a notion supported by the graduates interviewed

for this thesis. The higher education sector has witnessed immense change over the past 30

years, in Australia and internationally, in line with increased government focus on graduate

employability. However, amongst these changes, many higher education institutions (HEIs)

continue to grapple with a desire to stay true to their historical function of providing a higher

level of education, while also fulfilling new expectations around graduate job readiness

(Boden & Nedeva, 2010; Holmes, 2013; Tomlinson, 2008).

The majority of Australian universities have instituted programs and created resources

designed to develop employability amongst students, such as the national strategy for work

integrated learning (WIL) (Universities Australia, 2015). However, institutions often deliver

these employability initiatives within the context of curricula, which privileges a discipline-

specific skills-based approach to employability that can overlook the career management


element of employability (Andrews & Russell, 2012; Higdon, 2016). As the findings of this

thesis show, certain employability initiatives, such as WIL or careers advice, can feel

perfunctory to graduates when the information or experiences that are included are generic or

rely on the student to shoulder the preparatory or organisational work that is required to

participate. Similarly, HEIs are happy to market themselves on the employability of their

graduates, often through referring to large graduate surveys that predominantly measure

short-term graduate employment outcomes (McCowan, 2015; University of Sydney, 2018;

UNSW Sydney, 2017; University of Queensland, 2018), yet may be under-delivering on

assisting students to develop the specific career management capabilities they need to secure

that graduate employment. It also seems that many HEIs are yet to sufficiently acknowledge

that the possession of a degree, and the accompanying skills, knowledge, and experiences

developed within it, is insufficient in and of itself to support graduates to successful labour

market outcomes. This presents a key opportunity for higher education institutions to

improve careers and employment services and provide more sophisticated career

development and employability guidance to students (Clark et al., 2015), particularly within

the creative industries.

For example, educational programs, and undergraduate degrees in particular, play an essential

role in promoting equitable labour market participation amongst young people because they

can provide students with the opportunity to access a range of employability strategies that

some of those students might otherwise not have access to (Andrewartha & Harvey, 2017).

Longer-term educational programs also increasingly allocate time for graduates to participate

in employability strategies, especially work exposure, often bearing the responsibility of

organising those opportunities on behalf of students and ensuring their quality. HEIs can

therefore equalise graduate opportunities, not only by providing a skills-based education, but

also by assisting students to access and use employability strategies during their course. As

this thesis demonstrates, these kinds of work exposure can be counteractive to student

success, because they can absorb students’ time away from paid work opportunities, which

privileges more wealthy students. In many industries, individual employers and educational

institutions already have programs and processes in place to address these issues and support

people from lower socio-economic backgrounds into employment-related opportunities, such

as scholarships, bursaries, and mentoring programs. Higher education career development

support could therefore also assist students to recognise how these kinds of personal


economic issues may affect their employability and employment outcomes and where they

can seek assistance.

HEIs should also ensure that the provision of work exposure strategies delivered as part of

the curricula, such as unpaid internships as part of WIL units, is governed by equitable rules.

This could include having weekly time limits to allow students adequate time for study,

leisure, and paid work to cover essential living expenses. Many institutions that offer WIL

already have such restrictions in place. However, HEIs should also critically reflect upon the

value of such opportunities for finding employment in a particular field and the broader

expectations that WIL reinforces in terms of unpaid work becoming a mandatory rather than

optional component of career pathways. While an increasing number of HEIs are

implementing WIL subjects institution-wide, many students participate in additional unpaid

work outside of their degrees, such as through potentially exploitative ‘open market’

internships (Harthill, 2014). In ensuring that the unpaid work exposure opportunities they

provide are governed by requirements that protect the best interests of their students, HEIs

should also educate students on their legal rights (see for example, Owens & Stewart, 2016)

as workers, so that the students can avoid potential exploitation, both during and after their

studies.

Many higher education institutions are also increasingly focused on developing relationships

with industry. Harnessing these relationships more effectively to harvest tacit industry

knowledge around career management and how and where graduates might secure work in

the future has been shown to enhance students’ understanding of employment pathways

(Mann, Rehill, & Kashefpakdel, 2018). This thesis also demonstrates that graduates’ personal

and professional networks often facilitate graduates to access and secure employment, with

professional networks playing a key role in directly offering employment to graduates.

Similarly, graduates’ labour market success has been shown throughout this thesis to rely

upon a range of factors external to graduates, particularly financial support from others and

the relative prosperity of a particular labour market at any one time. HEIs must also

acknowledge the role of serendipity and timing in how and when employment opportunities

are made available to graduates.

As a counterpoint to perceived meritocracy within the contemporary labour market, creative

graduates’ best laid employability and career plans will not always come to fruition as

anticipated. Likewise, interesting and meaningful employment opportunities may appear for


creative graduates when they least expect them. In drawing upon industry and the labour

market as references for developing student-focused career management support, it is

essential that this myriad of structural factors is acknowledged by HEIs as having an

influence over where, when, and how creative graduates might secure employment. HEIs

could also empower students and graduates by sharing research findings, such as those within

this thesis, that detail how strategies are used in successful ways by graduates and emphasise

that the effectiveness of strategies is often context specific.

Ultimately, career management and employability guidance should be introduced early in a

program and reinforced on a recurring basis throughout the program to have the greatest

impact on graduates (Gutman & Akerman, 2008). While the graduates studied in this thesis

were able to develop their own knowledge around how to use employability strategies in

pursuit of a career, they also felt that receiving more formal career management education

during their degrees could have assisted them to be better prepared for the challenges of the

current and future labour market before their careers even began. This career management

education should provide formal development of discipline-specific employability strategies

that have been proven to have the biggest impact for graduates, while also providing broader

insight into discipline-specific work pathways and labour market characteristics. This

education could also be expanded even more broadly to enlighten students about demand-side

economic issues, as well as their employment rights, to prepare them for the prevalence of

precarious work in the contemporary creative labour market and to protect them from

exploitation through unpaid and contract work. Such an approach to career education is

supported by current education policy in Australia, particularly the Australian Government’s

recently launched National Career Education Strategy (Department of Education and

Training, 2019).

8.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY

In line with this mixed methods research study’s convergent study design, this chapter

compared the results of the quantitative and qualitative studies and critically evaluated the

findings in light of the existing literature. In doing so, this discussion chapter highlighted

three key debates around employability that the findings of this thesis challenge. First, this

chapter highlighted tensions around the logic of the employability literature when it is applied

to the specific context of the creative labour market. Creative graduates often receive mixed

messages about what it means to be employable, which significantly affects how they select


and pursue their chosen career. Second, this chapter confirmed the need for future

conceptualisations of employability to acknowledge the influence of structural labour market

and economic factors on the early career experiences of creative graduates. High competition

for few jobs resulted in graduates being significantly focused on securing employment in the

short-term, which came at the expense of graduates also devoting time to deliberately

developing employability for the future.

Third, this chapter discussed the need for a radical reframing by HEIs regarding how

employability is framed and developed amongst creative graduates. As the graduates studied

in this thesis received very little career management support during their degrees, there is

therefore a prime opportunity for HEIs to provide creative students with greater, more

sophisticated career development and employability guidance during their studies. More

broadly, this radical reframing would include discipline-specific demand-side economics

education, discipline-specific formal development in the employability strategies proven to

have the biggest impact for graduates, a review of unpaid internships and WIL policy, and

education for students regarding their rights in employment contexts. The following chapter

concludes this thesis, providing a summary of the key findings of the study; its limitations,

significance, and implications for a range of stakeholders; and potential future directions of

the research.



Chapter 9 : Conclusion

This concluding chapter presents a summary of the key findings and discussion presented in

this thesis. In doing so, this chapter restates the overall aims of the research, as introduced in

Chapter 1, and summarises the findings for each of the three overarching research questions.

This chapter then addresses the original contribution to knowledge that this study makes and

discusses the implications of the research and its limitations. Finally, this chapter considers

potential future directions of the research.

9.1 RESEARCH AIMS

The broad purpose of this research was to address knowledge gaps related to how graduates

navigate the process of securing employment and building careers as they transition between

education and work. A need for greater and more nuanced research into how graduates used

employability strategies during this time was also identified. These knowledge gaps were

identified through a critical review of the extant literature, as presented in Chapters 2 and 3.

Through this literature review, three specific research aims emerged. First, this research

sought to examine the personal and structural factors that shape the early careers of

graduates. Second, the research sought to investigate how graduates evaluate, select, and use

strategies during their early careers. Third, this study sought to explore the ways in which

employability strategies align with graduates’ employment outcomes to evaluate whether

particular employability strategies have greater potential for leading to employment than

others.

As outlined in Chapter 4, this thesis was guided by a critical realist approach and collected

data using a mixed methods approach integrating the analysis of quantitative survey data and

qualitative interview data. Section 3.3 of this thesis suggests that quantitative data often

cannot account for the intricacies of labour market experiences (Bridgstock et al., 2015).

Therefore, while the quantitative analysis provided some insight into how creative graduates

used employability strategies, the qualitative data was also required to delve deeper into

graduates’ perceptions of their early careers and to explore the factors that shaped their

experiences and behaviour. Creative graduates in an Australian context were selected as an

ideal sample to study, not only because they face a number of challenges in building a career,

but also because exploring how creative graduates navigate an already precarious labour


market could produce findings of value for workers navigating other labour markets that are

becoming increasingly precarious.

Overall, the purpose of this thesis was to provide empirically-based practical insight that

could assist current and future graduates to be better prepared for using employability

strategies to build a career as they move through higher education and into the labour market.

To assist workers – graduate or otherwise – to be better prepared to meet the challenges they

will likely face in the future world of work, we need to know more about how previous

graduates have successfully used employability strategies and the various purposes and

outcomes that those strategies could be used for.

9.2 SUMMARY OF RESEARCH FINDINGS

Through the combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, the education-to-

work transitions of creative graduates and their use of employability strategies were analysed

from multiple perspectives. As Chapters 5-8 showed, significant findings emerged from the

research in relation to each of the study’s overarching research questions.

Chapter 5 presented the findings from an analysis of secondary quantitative survey data

collected from a sample of Australian creative graduates who graduated during the period

2007-2012. This analysis explored how the graduates’ early career outcomes shaped their

education-to-work transitions and how the graduates used employability strategies during this

time. The analysis also explored how the creative graduates’ early career employment

outcomes were linked to the employability strategies they had used. The use of demographic

variables provided additional depth to the analysis. In terms of factors that shaped the

graduates’ early careers, being employed and working creatively were the employment

outcomes that most consistently aligned with how employable, successful, and satisfied the

graduates felt during their early careers. The graduates were less motivated by earning higher

incomes and working a greater number of weekly hours. In analysing how the graduates used

education and job seeking strategies during their early careers, the graduates predominately

used those particular strategies to develop job-related skills and knowledge and to find and

secure employment. Some strategies were found to be industry- or job-specific, and as such,

were more relevant to graduates pursuing particular kinds of work across the creative trident.

The analysis also found some alignment between employability strategies and the graduates’

employment outcomes, with study area and year of graduation influencing the existence of


statistically significant relationships. However, the analysis could only determine correlation,

not causation, between the variables. Therefore, while there was alignment between strategies

and employment outcomes, whether a certain strategy directly resulted in a graduate securing

employment could not be conclusively determined. It is likely that when used together,

employability strategies work in complementary ways to contribute to graduates securing

employment.

Chapter 6 was the first of two chapters that presented the findings from an analysis of


graduates. This analysis identified a range of employability strategies available to the creative

graduates during their education-to-work transitions, though some strategies were more often

and more widely used than others. A range of factors influenced how the graduates selected

employability strategies. The graduates were more likely to use a strategy when they were

familiar with it, when they perceived it as being relevant to fulfilling their career goals or

effective for gaining employment, and when it was accessible to them, particularly

financially. Overall, the graduates were found to use employability strategies for four main

purposes – professional and personal development, work exposure, industry engagement, and

job seeking – for the primary goal of securing employment. These findings provide an

indication of the purpose for which creative graduates might use different employability

strategies, the contexts in which it is appropriate to use particular strategies, and the relevance

of strategies to different kinds of creative work.

This chapter also highlighted the important role that creative discipline plays in shaping

creative graduates’ use of employability strategies. The ways in which the graduates used and

selected strategies were relative to their particular discipline and the type of work they were

pursuing, both historically and at the time of the interviews. As a result, the list of

employability strategies discussed in Chapter 6 is not intended to represent an exhaustive list

that all creative graduates would utilise, but rather a comprehensive range of strategies that

graduates may draw upon (or not) at different stages of their career journey. Some strategies

may be generic, and therefore may also be utilised by graduates from creative disciplines that

were not the focus of this study (e.g., unpaid work, job search and online presence), while

others may be specific to visual arts and design. Similarly, as the graduates studied were

working across the creative trident, different strategies were specifically aligned with the

disciplines in which the graduates were working, as well as the particular type of creative


jobs (i.e., specialist creative work, embedded creative work, or creative support work) the

graduates were targeting.

In analysing the relationship between strategies and employment outcomes from a qualitative

perspective, most strategies used by the graduates were observed as having an indirect rather

than direct effect on them securing employment. Strategies indirectly assisted graduates to

secure employment through helping them to develop employability capabilities relevant to

the creative labour market. Employability strategies also worked in complementary ways to

assist graduates to secure employment; it was often a combination of strategies working in

complementary ways rather than the use of individual strategies used in isolation that

contributed to graduates securing employment. Ultimately, there was no single combination

of strategies used at a particular time or in a particular way that resulted in multiple graduates

securing employment. Structural factors outside the graduates’ control, such as labour market

supply and demand, also influenced where, when, and how graduates secured employment.

Chapter 7, the second qualitative data results chapter, focused on analysing the structural

factors that shape creative graduates’ education-to-work transitions. In doing so, this analysis

identified five themes representing key structural issues that had a particularly profound

effect on the graduates’ early careers: fluidity, precarity, money, personal connections and

professional networks, and career management training. These themes shaped how graduates

accessed the labour market, how they sought and secured employment, and how they

generally experienced their working and personal lives while they completed their creative

undergraduate degrees and developed their careers. In particular, graduates who had access to

financial income and support and who could draw upon networks to learn about the labour

market and meet employer expectations regarding skills and work experience were best able

to sustain precarious work patterns, both within and outside in the creative industries. Again,

although the findings of this chapter can only be asserted with confidence in relation to the

focal disciplines – visual arts and design – they may also have applicability to labour market

issues that impact graduates from across the creative trident.

Chapter 8 discussed the findings of this thesis in line with the convergent study design to

present a comprehensive understanding of the research problem and to critically evaluate the

findings in light of the existing literature. In doing so, the discussion chapter highlighted three

key debates around employability that the findings of this thesis challenge. The chapter

highlighted tensions around the logic of the employability literature when it is applied to the


specific context of the creative labour market. Creative graduates often receive mixed

messages about what it means to have employability, which significantly affects how they

select and pursue their chosen career. The discussion chapter confirmed the need for future

conceptualisations of employability to acknowledge the influence of structural labour market

and economic factors on the early career experiences of creative graduates. While graduates

can prepare for any number of potential employment opportunities, the results of this study

reinforce that there is not necessarily a single combination of employability strategies that

can, with complete, consistent accuracy, predict or ensure employment outcomes. This is

because, in addition to the graduates having control over how they used employability

strategies, the graduates’ employment outcomes and career decisions were also influenced by

a range of contextual factors, such as a graduate’s particular creative discipline and the

existence of employment opportunities in the labour market. High competition for few jobs

resulted in graduates being significantly focused on securing employment in the short-term,

which came at the expense of graduates also devoting time to deliberately developing

employability for the future.

This discussion chapter also highlighted the need for a radical reframing by HEIs regarding

how employability is framed and developed amongst creative graduates. As the graduates

studied in this thesis received very little career management support during their degrees, a

prime opportunity exists for HEIs to provide creative students with greater, more

sophisticated career development and employability guidance during their studies. More

broadly, this radical reframing would include discipline-specific demand-side economics

education, discipline-specific formal development in the employability strategies proven to

have the biggest impact for graduates, a review of unpaid internships and WIL policy, and

education for students regarding their rights in employment contexts.

9.3 ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE

The existing graduate employability literature, both academic research and grey literature,

predominantly addresses the job-related capabilities, skills, and knowledge that graduates

should possess to be successful in the labour market. As a result, analysing graduate early

career trajectories in terms of the employability strategies they use to develop their careers

has been a relatively unexplored topic within graduate employability and employment

research. The first major contribution of this research is therefore providing new and

empirically-based knowledge around how creative graduates use employability strategies.


The second major contribution is aligning graduates’ use of employability strategies directly

with the employability capabilities that much of the existing literature focuses on. In doing

so, this research provides future students and graduates with an indication of the

employability purposes for which they might use strategies in their own careers and points to

strategies that work best within specific creative disciplinary contexts.

The research design of this thesis also differs from existing studies that have focused on the

university sector, particularly large-scale graduate destination studies, because it analysed

employability strategies within the broader context of the graduates’ early careers. In doing

so, this research extends existing knowledge about employability strategies beyond abstract

ideas to providing specific, evidence-based insight into those strategies within the

contemporary labour market. The findings also challenge the existing research agenda around

graduate employability that focuses predominantly on measuring graduate success through

full-time employment rates and salary levels. The sampled creative graduates defined success

as achieving paid employment within the creative industries and having the capacity to

continue to engage with creative practice, rather than whether they were employed full-time

or their overall earnings. This highlights the importance of encompassing a broader range of

perspectives in future research in order to paint a more realistic picture of creative graduate

careers. This thesis also contributes to the field of graduate research through its innovative

research design and methods. Few academic studies in the field of graduate employability

and graduate career trajectories have utilised quantitative and qualitative methods in the same

study to address the same research questions from multiple perspectives. This study therefore

provides an example of how mixed methods research designs can be applied to studies about

graduate employment and employability.

Deficits in how employability and employability strategies are conceptualised in the existing

literature were also highlighted through this thesis. In particular, employability is

predominantly framed as an individual issue, and many conceptualisations and graduate

studies therefore overlook how broad contextual factors influence what makes a person

employable and how employment is obtained in reality. In particular, the findings highlight

that employability strategies should not be conceptualised or valued separately from: (1) the

context in which they are being used, (2) the labour market they are being used in, and (3) the

individual who is using them. For example, it is misleading to claim that particular strategies

are inherently more valuable than others in assisting graduates to develop employability


capabilities and secure employment because these outcomes are heavily dependent on the

context.

9.4 IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH

The findings of this study, considered through the lens of the early careers of creative

graduates, have much broader relevance and applicability and there are several stakeholder

groups for whom the results have significance. This includes students, graduates and workers,

educators and institutions, and employers and industry. There are also significant

implications for employability and employment policy.

9.4.1 Implications for graduates, students, and workers

The findings of this study provide significant insight into the early career experiences that

students and graduates might have in the labour market as they move through and beyond

education, with particular emphasis on the factors that may influence their career

development, the range of employability strategies available to them, and the purposes for

which they might use employability strategies. They also offer insights for creative graduates

who are seeking to build careers within the creative labour market, especially those from the

visual arts and design disciplines. More generally, by building new knowledge around how

graduates navigate education-to-work transitions and providing discipline-based examples of

how graduates have used employability strategies in a labour market context, this research

assists graduates, students, and workers in general to be better prepared for dealing with the

challenges they might possibly face during their careers. These findings may also assist

graduates, students, and workers to understand that several factors will play a role in how and

when they secure employment, some of which they will not necessarily be able to control or

predict.

9.4.2 Implications for educators and institutions

As people who are well placed to assist students and graduates to be prepared for the labour

market, there are significant implications here for educators. While this thesis has focused on

higher education graduates, the findings would be relevant for educators throughout the

secondary and tertiary education sectors, careers-specific educators or otherwise. Most

obviously, this study provides educators with a list of employability strategies that their

students might find useful and details the situations in which students and graduates might

use them. The issues discussed throughout could also be used by educators to help students


develop an understanding of employability as a concept and how it relates to their career over

the long-term. Specifically, this research provides examples that show the distinction between

employment and employability and why thinking about employability and not just

employment will benefit graduates over the long-term. Educators, particularly those in a

position to provide guidance around careers and employability, need to make clear to students

that their employability is fluid and will change relative to the labour market.

While many educators and institutions, particular within the higher education sector, remain

uneasy with the perspective that they should focus more on directly preparing graduates for

the labour market, there is immense opportunity for educators to prepare graduates for the

future world of work in ways beyond discipline-specific skills and knowledge while still

maintaining their educational function. Additionally, as this study has noted, support

networks play a key role in teaching graduates the ‘tricks of the trade’ of the labour market.

In providing careers and employment advice to students, education institutions are in the

position to contribute to the labour market becoming more egalitarian by assisting students

and graduates without the benefit of personal support networks to gain insight into how to

effectively use employability strategies to build a career. Many institutions already have

dedicated careers services and employment-related resources available; it may be that these

need to be made more visible and accessible to students and graduates.

Education institutions, particularly within the tertiary education sector, are well placed to

advocate for structural changes within the labour market and to address the many labour

market challenges that graduates disproportionately face during their early careers. This

thesis also challenges educators and institutions to advocate on behalf of students and

graduates for greater accountability regarding unpaid work opportunities in the creative

industries. This could include a review of institutional policy around the integration of unpaid

work into curricula, scholarships to support lower socioeconomic status students into these

opportunities, education on employment rights, and stricter guidelines to govern unpaid WIL

experiences.

For careers educators in particular, there is a general need for careers and employment advice

that is more nuanced and discipline-specific. Educators providing careers advice, particularly

at a graduate level, should not only endeavour to provide advice that is tailored to graduates’

discipline and career stage, there should also be room to acknowledge which strategies will

be most useful now and which will be more useful in the future. Career guidance should also


address, and be realistic about, the potential for negative career outcomes, such as

unemployment or a particular employability strategy not having the desired effect.

9.4.3 Implications for employers and industry

Employers and industry are major influencing factors on the early career trajectories of

graduates. Not only do they play a role in determining the capabilities that make a graduate

employable, they are also the gatekeepers of employment. Though employers and industry

benefit immensely from supply-side perspectives of employability, as was discussed in

Chapter 2, employers need to adopt a more community-minded attitude in helping to cultivate

the incoming workforce by making opportunities available to graduates and through

supporting workers to develop employability capabilities. This is supported by a recent report

from the World Economic Forum (2018), because as the future world of work becomes

reality, employers need to own the fact that they play a “fundamental role” in assisting

graduates into the labour market, both now and into the future (p. ix).

The findings of this study are therefore significant for employers and industry, because this

research provides an indication of how creative graduates are thinking about their careers and

the strategies they are using to develop those careers, while providing insight into why

graduates are participating in those behaviours. Employers should be encouraged to critically

reflect upon their existing expectations and industry norms around staffing decisions,

expectations of unpaid labour, and the affect that these, sometimes stringent, requirements

have on new graduates looking to break into the labour market. Employers should also reflect

upon how they can better support graduates and other job seekers by providing them with

more meaningful opportunities, especially around work exposure strategies, such as unpaid

work and internships. Additionally, if employers want graduates to be ‘job ready’ and want

high quality graduates to find them, there is an opportunity for employers to work with

educators to share knowledge about how to build a career in their industry.

9.4.4 Implications for employability and employment policy

Just as there are opportunities for employers and industry to contribute to positive change in

the labour market, these findings also represent a ‘call to action’ for employability and

employment policy makers. In particular, this study provides significant insight into the

purposes for which employability strategies can be used, which provides potential

groundwork for future job seeker policy and resources. It also highlights the need for policy


around employability and employment to legislate for equitable outcomes. For example,

policy should avoid promoting the use of employability strategies for which personal or

structural factors may hinder many peoples’ participation in said strategies, or indeed where

participation in the strategy would have significant costs to the individual. This is most

applicable to strategies such as unpaid work, which favour job seekers in higher socio-

economic backgrounds who have the financial backing to support working for free. This also

creates opportunities for policy to make participation in employability strategies that are cost-

prohibitive or hard to access for certain groups of job seekers more accessible.

Through reviewing the existing literature and the data analysis, this thesis has thoroughly

outlined the complexity of how creative graduates find work and build careers post-

graduation, shaped by personal factors, but also by industry trends, context, and government

policy. A key recommendation for policy makers is the need for more collaboration between

governments, industry, and graduates when designing policy that focuses on graduate

employability and employment initiatives.

9.5 LIMITATIONS OF THE METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH DESIGN

As discussed in Chapter 4, this study adopted a mixed methods approach combining

quantitative and qualitative research methods. While this research design was appropriate for

this study, there were some limitations to the chosen methodology and research design. The

timeline of a PhD limited it to a cross-sectional design, with the decision made to focus only

on the early careers of creative graduates and the process through which they secured their

initial industry jobs.

9.5.1 Limitations of the quantitative methods

Firstly, the quantitative data set represented self-report data from a single source. Although

some comparisons were drawn between the quantitative results and findings from other

graduate studies in Chapter 5 (see page 82), self-reported data relies on respondents to be

accurate and truthful in their responses, which may not always be the case, particularly when

some respondents were being asked to provide data five to six years post-graduation. The

scope of the quantitative study was also limited by the use of existing survey data in a

number of ways. For example, the data set included only a small number of career outcome

measures. Similarly, although the data set included a selection of employability strategies that

were insightful, additional potential research perspectives were not included. Respondents


were not asked to indicate why they did or did not use employability strategies, nor required

to detail how frequently they had used strategies. Additionally, the survey only included a

pre-determined selection of employability strategies that the graduates may have used during

their early careers. These gaps were addressed in the qualitative study, whereby the interview

guide was designed to collect data on these topics.

9.5.2 Limitations of the qualitative methods

Targeting a relatively homogenous sample reduced the sample size required to achieve data

saturation. However, the homogeneity of the sample may have impacted on the observable

effect of demographic and socio-cultural factors known to affect career trajectories, such as

gender. While the scope of this study did not allow for greater exploration of demographic

and socio-cultural influences, the inclusion of these variables in future studies is necessary to

achieve a holistic understanding of graduate career trajectories and all of the factors that

influence them. The graduates sampled in the qualitative study also only represented two

creative disciplines. Though there were commonalities between the visual arts and design

graduates in terms of the employability strategies they used and the factors that impacted on

their careers, study area differences relating to how graduates experienced their early careers

were found. It would therefore be beneficial to study how graduates of other creative

disciplines use employability strategies before making conclusive generalisations to all

creative graduates.

Additionally, as individual interviews required the participants to reflect on their behaviours

and thought processes over the previous three to five years, their responses may have

involved bias or have been recounted through rose-coloured lenses. The use of other

qualitative methods in future studies could potentially provide different perspectives on

graduate employability and graduates’ use of employability strategies. Future studies could

also differentiate more specifically between students’ use of strategies during their studies

and their use of strategies post-graduation.

9.6 FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF THE RESEARCH

Several future research topics could expand on the findings of this study. Contextual factors

related to the graduates’ discipline were found to play a key role in shaping their early

careers. Accordingly, it would be relevant to adjust the sampling parameters and continue

building knowledge around employability strategies for other graduate populations. Further


research could therefore be conducted for graduates from other creative disciplines to explore

the full breadth of graduates’ experiences in the creative labour market. Likewise, this

research study could be replicated for graduates of other disciplines and expanded to explore

the experiences of graduates from other tertiary institutions, such as TAFEs or private

colleges, to consider how graduate experiences and use of employability strategies change

dependent on discipline and industry context.

There is also a need for greater research into the structural factors that affect when and how

graduates secure employment. While this is a broad topic of research, other researchers have

also recognised the need for greater research in this area, such as around the modes of

production that affect work and that reinforce systemic inequality in the labour market

(Eikhof & Warhurst, 2013). One specific future direction of research in this space of

particular interest to me is the experiences of the graduates who struggle to find work in their

discipline during their early careers and the extent to which this affects their career

progression and their relative competitiveness in the labour market. As each year produces

another cohort of graduates, existing graduates face immense pressure to stay ahead of those

emerging behind them. Comparison studies of sequential cohorts are almost non-existent in

academic graduate research, though they would be incredibly important for moving the field

of graduate research forward, as this kind of study would provide an avenue through which to

develop greater understanding of just how the labour market affects career trajectories from a

broader perspective than most previous research. Cohort comparison studies could also

analyse the impact that continued development of HEI employability programs, such as

careers education, has on graduates from different cohorts.

Finally, though existing literature and public conversation is rife with employer perspectives

about the capabilities that graduates should possess if they hope to be successful in building a

career, few existing studies have sought to capture employer perspectives around

employability strategies. There is an increasing amount of research into the content of job

advertisements and the skills requested of applicants by employers (Foundation for Young

Australians, 2016; McArthur et al., 2017) and an existing plethora of studies around graduate

perceptions of graduate skills (Lucas & Hanson, 2015); however, few studies have sought to

investigate how recruitment and staffing decisions are made.



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Appendices | Page 219

Appendices

Appendix A: Copy of 2013/14 Creative Pathways: Australian Creative Graduate Careers Survey (Note: DD = Dropdown box)

1. Which undergraduate creative industries degree did you complete at XXXX University? If you undertook more than one major, please select the creative major that you focussed most

heavily on.

DD of degrees.

2. What year did you graduate from this course?

DD of years.

3. Apart from your creative arts degree at XXXX University, have you undertaken any other tertiary education?

Yes (Go to q 4)

No (Go to q 5)

4. Starting with the earliest of your other tertiary qualifications and working forwards, please give details of your tertiary education.

3 spaces, each with Matrix DD options as seen below.

Field Level of Education Year Completed Creative arts Did not graduate Ongoing to 1960 or earlier, list

each year. Other creative industries (eg design)

Currently studying

Science Bachelor IT Honours Engineering Masters (coursework) Health Masters (research) Education Doctorate Humanities, society and culture PhD Business/Management Certificate Other Diploma Advanced Diploma

5. In which year were you born?

DD

6. Please select your gender

Male, female, would prefer not to say


7. Where do you currently live?

DD: Australia w each state, Overseas.

We define the creative arts as encompassing the visual, literary and performing arts, music and film/TV/new media.

8. Right now, to what extent do you aim to have a career in the creative arts? Not at all Very little To some extent To a moderate

extent To a great extent

1 2 3 4 5

If answer 1 or 2, go to q 12.

9. Why do you aim to have a career in the creative arts? Select all that apply. Reasons for choosing a creative arts career Talent/aptitude in the area Seeking recognition Change from previous career Family/societal expectations Doing what I love/passion Many job opportunities in the creative sector Few job opportunities outside the creative sector Express myself creatively For personal satisfaction/ fun Lifestyle reasons (e.g. maintaining work-life balance) Financial reasons (e.g. potential for significant earnings) I want to contribute to the discipline I want to contribute to society via the creative discipline Skill development Seeking challenges Don’t know Other (specify)

10. How confident do you feel that you will be successful in your creative career? Very confident

Somewhat confident

Neutral Not very confident

Not at all confident

1 2 3 4 5

11. Please explain why you have the level of confidence that you do.

Text box, type in answer

12. Right now, to what extent do you aim to have a career outside the creative arts? Not at all Very little To some extent To a moderate


1 2 3 4 5 If answer 1 or 2, go to q 14.


13. Why do you aim to have a career in at least one of these fields? Select all that apply. Reasons for choosing a non-creative arts career Talent/aptitude in the area Seeking recognition Change from previous career Family/societal expectations Doing what I love/passion Many job opportunities outside the creative sector Few job opportunities within the creative sector Add creative value to non-creative areas For personal satisfaction/ fun Lifestyle reasons (e.g. maintaining work-life balance) Financial reasons (e.g. potential for significant earnings) I want to contribute to a discipline other than the creative arts I want to contribute to society via a discipline other than the creative arts Skill development Seeking challenges Don’t know Other (specify)

14. In the last 12 months, what (if any) creative arts related formal education or training have you undertaken outside a university (Eg, masterclasses, short courses, private lessons)?

5 spaces DD Type of training What were you learning? Workshop Type in answer Short course Masterclass Mentoring One on one lessons Group lessons Vocational qualifications Online learning other

15. Have you worked since graduating from your creative arts degree? Yes No go to q 17

16. Starting with your most recent/current job and working backwards, please give details of your five most recent jobs. Please include freelance and self employed work. Dropdown box for each job (on a separate page for each job). Job role/title

Name of company

Start date (month)

Start date (year)

End date (month)

End date (year)

Sector Location

Type in Type in DD, months of the year

DD 2013 – 1991 or earlier

DD, months of the year

DD 2013 – 1991 or earlier

Government Australia, Metropolitan

Private Australia, Regional

Non profit Australia,


Rural Overseas, Metropolitan Overseas, Regional Overseas, Rural

Income (in dollars) Per Hours worked per week Type in Hour 0 – 5

Week 6 – 10 Fortnight 11 – 15 Month 16 – 20..... Year ....71 hours and over

How much did you use the skills and knowledge from your creative arts degree in this job?

Not at all Very little To some extent To a moderate extent

To a great extent

1 2 3 4 5 *Repeat the above 3 matrices for each of the 5 jobs.

17. Since graduating from your creative arts degree, have you spent time out of the workforce not working and not looking for work (such as raising family or travelling)?

Yes

No go to q 20

18. How many times have you done this?

DD

1 time 2 Times 3 Times 4 Times 5 Times or more

19. How long were you out of the workforce during the most recent occasion?

DD

Weeks Months Years 0 0 0 1 1 1 2 2..... 2... 3 .....11 ....5 4 12 6 or greater

20. Have you spent time unemployed and looking for work?

Yes


No go to q 23

21. How many times have you done this?

DD

1 time 2 Times 3 Times 4 Times 5 Times or more

22. How long were you out of the workforce during the most recent occasion?

DD

Weeks Months Years 0 0 0 1 1 1 2 2..... 2... 3 .....11 ....5 4 12 6 or greater

23. What formal strategies have you used to try and find work in the creative arts? Select all that apply. Job seeking – formal strategies. None Search job boards – creative arts/cultural production-specific (eg, The Loop, Arts Hub, ScreenHub, grapevinejobs). Search job boards – non creative arts/cultural production-specific (eg, SEEK, CareerOne). Advertise on job boards - creative arts/cultural production-specific (eg, The Loop, Arts Hub, ScreenHub). Advertise on job boards – non creative arts/cultural production-specific (eg, SEEK, CareerOne). Used an Agent/Manager. Open call to audition or submit work samples. Job search agency (eg, Serena Russo, Max Employment). Other formal (specify).

24. What informal strategies have you used to try and find work in the creative arts? Select all that apply. Job seeking – informal strategies. None Word of mouth (not active networking) Mentoring. Online networking (eg, industry discussion boards). Offline networking (eg, industry events, master classes). Online portfolio/showreel/online store/website/blog. Paid work experience/internship.


Unpaid work experience/internship. Cold calling Other informal (specify).

25. What strategies have you used to create work in the creative arts? Select all that apply. Work creation strategies. None Establish own enterprise (band/ensemble/troupe/company/business/collective). Apply for grants. Other (specify).

The next few questions are about your work situation right now

26. Approximately how much unpaid creative work do you do per week? DD

I am not doing any unpaid creative work 1 – 5 Hours per week 6 – 10 Hours per week 11 – 15 Hours per week ......... 66 – 70 Hours per week 71 Hours per week and over

27. What are the main reasons that you do unpaid creative work? Please select all that apply.

Enjoyment Career development – building career profile Use my skills Build/develop my skills Contribution to discipline Express myself creatively Challenge Other <specify> Don’t know

28. How employable in your creative field/s do you feel you are right now?

Not at all employable

A little employable

Somewhat employable

Moderately employable

Very employable

1 2 3 4 5

29. How employable in general do you feel you are right now?

Not at all employable

A little employable

Somewhat employable

Moderately employable

Very employable

1 2 3 4 5


30. If you are currently working outside creative arts, to what extent do you feel that you are adding creative value in this work? I am not working outside the creative arts

Not at all Very little To some extent

To a moderate extent

To a great extent

0 1 2 3 4 5 If answered 0 or 1, go to q 32

31. What types of creative value do you add? Select all that apply

Imagination / creative viewpoint / new ideas Critical thinking Visual aesthetic input, design Public speaking / presenting / performance Writing / editing skills Other <specify>

32. To what extent would you say that your university studies have been valuable to your career so far? In answering this question, please include course experiences like work experience and projects, as well as lectures & tutorials. Not at all Very little To some extent To a moderate


1 2 3 4 5

33. Please briefly explain why

Text box for typed answer

34. If you are presently working in the creative arts, which skills and knowledge (if any) developed during your creative arts degree do you now use as part of your creative arts work?

3 spaces available for typed answer

35. If you are presently working outside the creative arts, which skills and knowledge (if any) developed during your creative arts degree do you now use as part of your creative arts work?


36. What (if any) skills, knowledge, characteristics or qualities that add special value in the workplace do graduates from your creative field have?


37. What (if any) are the skills, knowledge, characteristics or qualities that graduates from your field need, but that were not addressed in your course


38. Using your own personal definition of career success, how successful are you in your career right now?


Very unsuccessful Somewhat unsuccessful

Neither successful or unsuccessful

Somewhat successful

Very successful

1 2 3 4 5 To what extent do you agree with the following statements?

39. I am satisfied with the success I have achieved in my career Strongly Agree

Agree to some extent

Uncertain Disagree to some extent

Strongly Disagree

1 2 3 4 5

40. I am satisfied with the progress I have made toward meeting my overall career goals Strongly Agree



Strongly Disagree

1 2 3 4 5

41. I am satisfied with the progress I have made toward meeting my goals for income Strongly Agree



Strongly Disagree

1 2 3 4 5

42. I am satisfied with the progress I have made toward meeting my goals for advancement Strongly Agree



Strongly Disagree

1 2 3 4 5

43. I am satisfied with the progress I have made toward meeting my goals for the development of new skills Strongly Agree



Strongly Disagree

1 2 3 4 5

That's all of the questions. Many thanks for participating!


Appendix B: Recruitment flyer



Appendix C: Interview guide and demographic questionnaire

Today I’m going to ask you some questions about the strategies you have used when looking for work. These strategies could be anything from education to work experience to networking to specific job search activities to utilising or working on personal qualities – anything that you have done that you would call a strategy. Were there any questions you had for me before we start?


PART ONE 1. What influenced you to study (and complete) your chosen creative industries undergraduate

degree? 2. In doing your undergraduate degree (visual arts/design), did you have a specific career aspiration

that you wanted to pursue? 3. How would you describe the state of your industry, particularly in terms of opportunities? 4. So what has been your general approach to finding work and building a career? Would you say

you’re actively pursuing a certain career?

5. So what have you done to pursue work or build a career in Visual Arts / Design?

6. Let’s make a list. What strategies did you use to look for work / build your career during your undergraduate degree?

o Can you give an example of how you used that strategy?

o What influenced you to use that strategy at that particular time?

o Where did you learn about that strategy?

o What did you want to achieve by using that strategy?

o Did you feel that the strategy was successful in helping you achieve the outcome you

intended? Why/Why not?

o Is that strategy regularly used in the industry / for the work you were pursuing? 7. Was there anything you did as part of a job/position that would be considered a strategy? (E.g.

workshop, personal development day, subsidised training)

- Did you choose to do that?

- Do you see it as contributing to your employability? In what way? (creative/general)

PART TWO 8. Do you have a particular career goal / identity that you are pursuing now? 9. Let’s make another list. What strategies have you used to look for work / build your career since

you graduated from your undergraduate degree?

o Can you give an example of how you used that strategy?

o What influenced you to use that strategy at that particular time?

o Where did you learn about that strategy?

o What did you want to achieve by using that strategy?


o Did you feel that the strategy was successful in helping you achieve the outcome you intended? Why/Why not?

o Is that strategy regularly used in the industry / for the work you were pursuing?

10. Was there anything you did as part of a job/position that would be considered a strategy? (E.g.

workshop, personal development day, subsidised training)

- Did you choose to do that?

- Do you see it as contributing to your employability? In what way? (creative/general) 11. Are there any expectations of how to pursue a career in Visual Arts / Design?

12. What have you done in your career to meet these expectations?

13. (If there is a strategy they didn’t talk about)… You didn’t specifically mention that you used or considered <employability strategy>? What are your thoughts on that <employability strategy> as a strategy that a graduate might use? - Education - Training - Work experience / Internships (paid / unpaid) - Volunteer work - Community activities - Job search strategies - Career management / personal development - Enterprise / entrepreneurial activities - Self-promotion / Portfolio / Website / Social Media - Membership of professional associations - Moving / Diaspora - Specifically targeting a particularly industry/consumer market

14. How do you feel about the expectation / widespread nature of unpaid work (or other things) in

Visual Arts / Design?

15. Have you considered – freelance? – finding work in an organisation?

16. Are there any strategies you are planning to use in the future? 17. Why have you chosen that particular strategy? 18. Is there anything that you’ve done to find work or build a career that hasn’t worked for you? That

you’ve done in the past but don’t use or find helpful anymore?

PART THREE Now that we have a nice picture of the strategies you’ve used over time, let’s reflect on these. 19. Are there any strategies that you have used more than others?

i. Which are they? ii. Why did you use those strategies more?

20. Which would you say have been the most useful strategies for you? Why?


21. Have any of the strategies you have used specifically helped you to obtain a role / work? Why? 22. What has been your biggest struggle in finding work or building a career?

23. Do you see yourself as having a single career or separate careers – a creative career and a non-creative career?

24. Do you see yourself as having a creative career now or is it something you are still working towards? How will you define when you are in a career?

25. Nobody likes to talk about money but are you able to make a living from your creative work / practice?

26. What affect has finding work and building a career had on you personally? (e.g. stress, depression, anxiety etc)

27. What makes you want to continue pursuing creative opportunities / work?

28. How long do you think you’ll continue pursuing creative opportunities / work?

29. Do you feel like have the skills / experience to pursue work in non-creative jobs if you needed to?

Let’s reflect on your career experience and your chosen degree a little more… 30. How has your chosen creative industries undergraduate degree fitted into your career path?

31. In hindsight, how valuable do you believe your chosen creative industries undergraduate

education was for you? 32. Do you feel that your creative industries undergraduate education has played a role in your

understanding of your own: o Employability? o Career identity? o Personal identity?

33. What makes you feel employable?

34. Do you think you could have a career (in Visual Arts / Design - like the one you are pursuing) without having done your undergraduate degree?

35. Did you receive any support / guidance during your degree specifically around career management or how to navigate creative labour markets?

And just a few questions about digital capabilities in particular… 36. In what ways did your creative industries undergraduate education help you to develop digital

skills or capabilities? 37. Are there any key digital skills or capabilities that you wished that you'd developed during your

degree? Can you explain…

To finish up, I’d like to get your opinions on a few things. 38. Is there anything, in hindsight, that you wish you knew before you started out?


39. What advice would you give to someone wanting to study visual arts / design or wanting to pursue a creative career?

Great! That’s about all the questions I have for you today. Just to summarise what we’ve talked about today… Before we wrap up… 40. Is there anything else you’d like to add / that you think I should know that would be helpful for

my study? 41. Were there any questions you had about anything we’ve talked about today / the process etc?



Appendix D: Interview participants’ job information

Total number of jobs Current Job 1 Current Job 2 Current Job 3

Participant Paid Unpaid Status Paid / Unpaid %creative Status Paid / Unpaid %creative Status Paid / Unpaid %creative

VisualArts1 2 0 Casual Paid 0 Self-employed/freelance Paid 100

VisualArts2 2 1 Self-employed/freelance Paid 50 Casual Paid 0 Part-time Unpaid 50

VisualArts3 0 1 Casual Unpaid 50

VisualArts4 3 0 Part-time Paid 80 Part-time Paid 80 Self-employed/freelance Paid 80

VisualArts5 2 0 Casual Paid - Self-employed/freelance Paid 100

VisualArts6 2 0 Self-employed/freelance Paid 90 Self-employed/freelance Paid 50

VisualArts7 3 0 Self-employed/freelance Paid 75 Self-employed/freelance Paid 100 Self-employed/freelance Paid 50

VisualArts8 2 0 Casual Paid 80 Self-employed/freelance Paid 100

VisualArts9 1 0 Full-time Paid 50

VisualArts10 1 1 Casual Paid 0 Casual Unpaid 40


VisualArts12 2 1 Casual Paid 20 Casual Paid 90 Self-employed/freelance Unpaid 95

VisualArts13 3 0 Casual Paid 20 Casual Paid 50 Casual Paid -

VisualArts14 1 2 Casual Paid 20 Self-employed/freelance Unpaid 100 Self-employed/freelance Unpaid 100


Design1 1 0 Full-time Paid 90

Design2 1 0 Self-employed/freelance Paid 70

Design3 1 0 Casual Paid 40

Design4 2 0 Self-employed/freelance Paid 100 Casual Paid 50

Design5 2 0 Full-time Paid 60 Self-employed/freelance Paid 80





Design9 2 0 Self-employed/freelance Paid 100 Casual Paid 100



Design12 2 1 Part-time Paid 30 Casual Paid 10 Self-employed/freelance Unpaid 90



Design15 1 0 Self-employed/freelance Paid 90