Graduates: Is a 2:1 (2nd Class Upper) the best qualification for landing a job?

Two-thirds of large employers say they use a 2:1 to sift job applications. Now a new criteria – the Hear report – aims to offer a more rounded method of assessing students' abilities

You do not need to take up extreme sports to convince an employer you are resilient. Think of examples from your work experience placements or part-time job.

Is the 2:1 an effective gauge of a graduate's employability - and if not, why are employers increasingly using it as a filter? That was the question under discussion by graduate recruitment and higher education experts in London last week.

Delegates at the Graduate AnswerTime event, hosted by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), Bernard Hodes Group and Totaljobs.com, heard that around three-quarters of large graduate employers – a proportion that has risen significantly in the past two years – routinely use the 2:1 to sift out applications. But despite that, most employers say they have little faith in the integrity of the classification.

A poll earlier this week on the Guardian Careers site revealed that around 60 per cent of readers thought employers should stop using the 2:1 to shortlist graduate applications. This year will see the national rolling out of the new Higher Education Achievement Report (Hear), following the recommendations of a steering group led by the Leicester University Vice-Chancellor Robert Burgess, described traditional degree classifications as “a blunt instrument”. Hear reports are intended to provide a more rounded measure of students’ abilities, but initially will complement rather than replace traditional degree grades.

The Hear report is welcomed by the AGR, despite its chief executive, Carl Gilleard, admitting that 75 per cent of its member organisations now use the 2:1 as their primary screening tool. He said this had risen from around 66 per cent during the last two years, simply because it is a legal way of reducing the volume of applications. “Last year there was an average of 83 applications for each job,” Gilleard said. “Employers have to find a way of getting them down to manageable numbers.

“If you include the 2:2, that takes you up to 98 per cent of employers, so pity the poor graduate with a third. They don’t stand a chance of getting a job with a large corporate organisation.”

Abigail Morris, employment adviser for the British Chamber of Commerce, which represents many small- and medium-sized enterprises, said despite BCC members’ mistrust of the qualification, many did not have the capacity to use other criteria. “SMEs often do not have the time or HR resource to go through all those CVs, so they use the 2:1 to sift. But what businesses tell us is that they don’t trust qualifications as a whole. Of a survey of 6,000 businesses, only 45 per cent said they were very or fairly confident of taking on a graduate.”
Source: Punch Education News