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Last updated: 14 April 2003
Graduate trends
Please note: This document is for reference purposes only and is no longer considered by the APS Commission to be current. It may contain good practice advice and/or advice on the transitional arrangements between the 1922 and 1999 Public Service Acts.
Useful references
Introduction
Graduates are an important group within the Australian Public Service (APS). Agencies commit resources to recruitment and development and, in return, graduates develop skills that enable them to become middle and senior managers within the APS. Management of graduates is now a central component of workforce planning in most APS agencies. Promotion outcomes and patterns of retention are ways in which agencies can measure the success of their graduate recruitment and development programs.
The APS Employment Database (APSED) has been used as the primary source of data for this analysis. This paper provides the first major issue-based analysis of data from APSED. It has been produced as a result of numerous requests from agencies for APS-wide comparative data, against which agencies can benchmark themselves. Employees who have tertiary qualifications, but have not been recruited under a specific graduate program, are not included in this analysis.
The first chapter, using data from the Graduate Careers Council of Australia, covers employment of graduates in both the public and private sectors, as well as information about their fields of study. It provides an overview of graduate employment in Australia, and sets the context for the detailed analysis of graduate employment in the APS that follows.
The following chapters focus on graduates employed in the APS, under the Public Service Act 1999. In Chapter 2, patterns of engagement, promotion, separation and retention are compared over time. This chapter also includes a comparison with trends in wider graduate employment described in Chapter 1. Graduates who enter the APS without being recruited as part of a specific graduate program are not included in this analysis. This is an important caveat to this analysis as lateral recruitment is increasing, and the proportion of these who are graduates appears to be increasing.
Chapter 3 addresses the cost of graduate recruitment and training for those graduates taking part in APS graduate programs during 2001.
Contents:
Graduate employment across the economy
This section provides an overview of graduate employment across both the private and public sectors. It helps set the context for the following sections, which concentrate on the employment of graduates in the APS.
APS Graduate employment
This chapter refers to those employed in the APS under specific graduate programs up to and including 2001.
Recruitment & training costs
The Australian Public Service (APS) is one of the largest recruiters of graduates in Australia.
Appendixes
A-Employment sector of working graduates
B-Field of study of working graduates
C-Field of study of working graduates by employment sector
E-Graduates by age group, gender and year
F-Education qualifications-Main fields of study, by gender
H-Highest qualification by gender
I-First promotion after advancement to an APS 3, by length of service, gender and level
J-First promotion after advancement to an APS 4, by length of service, gender and level
K-Level reached after 5 years for graduates, by gender
L-First movement to another agency by level moved to and length of service first agency
M-Number of agencies a graduate has worked in by year of separation
N-Separation by length of service, year and gender
O-Separation by level and year
