The big issue

The telecoms industry is innovating rapidly, and the blend of skills required is changing. Digital skills are now highly sought after in the sector, yet there is widespread shortage of graduate applications, and a need to diversify the graduate intake.

Our response

We need to understand more about the aspirations, motivations and career needs of graduates with digital skills, in order that employers can design roles, programs and recruitment strategies that attract them. This research project is organised in three phases:

1. Understand the specific digital skills needs of telecoms employers through a series of semi-structured interviews. We have interviewed employers to understand the specific digital skills they require, and the barriers they perceive to attracting this talent.
2. Generate evidence on the potential barriers and enablers to meeting these graduate recruitment needs. We have interviewed undergraduates from three countries to understand their needs, aspirations, and perceptions of a career in telecoms.  
3. Discern preferences and needs of graduates to support more attractive job opportunity creation. The data from the previous graduate and employer interviews has informed the design of a survey to be released internationally. The survey will help to understand the global trends as well as regional preferences on the job of the digitally skilled graduates and inform employers on how to improve their offers to these graduates.

STUDENTS TAKE THE SURVEY

The benefits

Our insights will help inform employer responses to the digital skills gap, including TM Forum, an association of 850 member companies. TM Forum’s Talent Consortiaare exploring the development of a ground-breaking Graduate Programme based on the evidence collected in this research.

We will also share our insights with students - ensuring they get access to information onwhat employers are looking for,andgraduate career opportunities in the telecoms industry.

Digital talent survey

Outcomes

Review the results of the survey in our dashboard.

How is BDFI involved?

This project is led by a Bristol Digital Futures Institute academic. We are managing the research and outcomes for this project.