Engineering Graduate Oportunities

Mind the Gap Findings: Graduate Employment

In the second of our Mind the Gap posts, we focus on graduate employment (view post 1 demographics). We asked all our respondents what year of study they had attained, 41 respondents indicated that they were graduates.  Of these only 4 (10%) indicated that they were currently employed. 

Kenya Engineering Graduates in Employment

Two (5%) were working in engineering fields and only 1 (2.5%) in the oil and gas industry.  The only graduate who is now working in the oil and gas industry was an intern at Kenya Pipeline Company and became aware of the internship via personal contacts.  Some other facts about this small group of employed graduates:

  • They all undertook an internship and all within the oil and gas or geothermal sectors.
  • All 4 employed graduates had attended Kenyatta University
  • 3 of them studied Petroleum Engineering and 1 Mechanical Engineering. 
  • All four of these employed graduates were male. 

For comparison Create, indicate a distinctly more sunny outlook on the global stage stating that 80% of engineering graduates can expect to be in full time employment within 4 months of graduating.  

The remaining 37 graduates were asked what the main challenges were to finding a job.  Each respondent was able to choose more than one response.  The following reasons were provided:

  • I have been applying for jobs without success: 25
  • Insufficient positions in the field: 20
  • I have insufficient experience in my field: 14
  • There is too much competition in the field: 6
  • I am deciding what to do next: 0
  • Other reasons: 2, these included that the mining sector was under developed and that positions are being taken by expats.
Barriers to Engineering Graduate Employment Kenya

Of the 14 people who indicated that they had insufficient experience in the field 9 of them had undertaken an internship in the following fields*:

  • 3 oil and gas
  • 2 geothermal
  • 2 mining
  • 4 other

*note one individual had experience in 3 sectors

This data demonstrates that your likelihood of securing employment in any field are increased if you have undertaken an internship.  However even if you have undertaken an internship it does not mean that graduates will have enough experience in the field to enter the job market – even outside of their own field of engineering.  This raises 2 questions:

  • How can we ensure that all undergraduates are able to access work based internships?
  • How do we ensure that these internships are of sufficient quality for graduates to feel confident that have enough experience to be able to secure a position.

Are these findings what you would expect? Feel free to leave your comments below.