Staff writer Anoushka Singh highlights the disconnect between students and employers in the job market, and how IFutures can create a necessary bridge.
In 2024, the graduate market in the UK is rapidly declining with students suffering from problems of unemployment and inflation. The House of Commons Library says “The UK inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, rose almost continuously from under 1% in early 2021 to 11.1% in October 2022.”
Statistics show that the UK unemployment rate for March to May 2024, at 4.4%, is above estimates of a year ago, and increased in the latest quarter. This has been quite concerning for current students, as well as graduates. Students are working hard to become qualified for their respective career paths, many are active within societies and student groups. Students are also actively looking for internships or working part-time to make ends meet. Yet, they often face unsatisfactory results, hitting the wall early in their careers due to these issues in the UK.
This situation has grown increasingly frustrating for young minds. In 2023, employers received an average of 86 applications per graduate vacancy, yet over half of them struggled to recruit for at least one position. This disconnect suggests that the system is failing both job seekers and employers. The decline in investment in employee skills has exacerbated this issue, as businesses are reluctant to invest in training new graduates amid economic uncertainty.
According to The Guardian, graduates have described job hunting in this over-saturated market as “soul-destroying”. In my opinion, this problem has arisen because of a systematic failure within the job market that has continued to prevail. I believe, Inferential Futures might be a good solution for this and can become a safe space for these students to get help and share their problems.
Inferential Futures (IFutures) is a rapidly rising student-led online community that draws students and employers across the UK into a collaborative space. As IFuture’s tagline says, it is a community “run by students, for students” and aims to showcase this message with its core structure.
With the cost of living crisis increasing, it is also accompanied by an unemployment problem, where graduates are facing issues of under-qualification or just simply not knowing where to start. Inferential Futures, however, is a space that I think will fill this gap in the market well. This community aims to work for the best interest of students and understand their concerns and needs well.
What is IFutures?
IFutures is Dr. Patrick Fullick’s creation. It came into existence in 2020 during the pandemic, when he realised the wide gap between employers and students in the marketplace. Dr Fullick got his first degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and was a former academic at the University of Southampton.
According to the London Daily News, Dr Fullick expressed that he could recognise the struggles of students during the lockdown and understood their need for a reliable support system during these trying times. He has been very active in leading and collating student spaces from his own time as a student. It is reassuring to see that there is someone within this market who recognises these systematic failures. Moreover, someone who is willing to work on these things along with students, where they can be heard and seen. On his website, he states that:
“For nearly thirty years, my academic and professional interests have concerned the use of online social communities in developing knowledge and expertise among young people. In 1993, I established Sci-Journal, the first online space in the world designed to enable and encourage school science students to collaborate and discuss reports of school science practical work with one another, teachers, and professional scientists. The site quickly grew to attract contributions from thousands of young people.”
To expand IFuture’s mission, the IF community launched its own online discourse group space in January 2024. Here, university students across the UK and EU can come together to discuss careers and get notified about changes and developments in educational opportunities, internships, placements, industries, etc.
This community is completely free and open to all university students as well as recent graduates. It’s fascinating to see the possibility of having a combined space for employers and students to work among themselves in such a direct way that has been made possible through IF Community. Not only does it cut down the time it requires for employers to find these students, but it also makes it much easier to connect with them in an unintimidating space.
The London Daily News outlines that the development of the IF Community is being led by Yogi, a computer science student at Brune University in West London. In his statement to the London Daily News, he said:
“We wanted to create a space where students can be heard, supported, and empowered — somewhere they can truly feel like they’re not alone in facing these challenges.”
The IF Community is organised into a series of forums that are hosted by their Careers Ambassadors. These ambassadors are also current university students who have a particular passion for their area of interest and a detailed insight into their respective careers.
One of these ambassadors is Kajol, who got a first-class degree in neuroscience from Queen Mary University of London and is currently pursuing her Master’s at King’s. She is now a Careers Ambassador at IFutures for Medicine and Psychology.
IF fills a void within the student space as the organisation understands the problem within the graduate market. Companies and employers want to identify talent at an early stage but find it difficult. This is because the acquisition is siloed by universities themselves, and therefore, they have to do their research on a university-to-university basis.
I find that Inferential Futures’ place within the market is quite beneficial to tackling these problems. This is because they believe in supporting and helping the students right from the start. From your first day at university, you can be a part of this community and start your academic journey with some extra support.
Why is IF’s mission important?
Most students are taught to follow this formula of ‘hard work leads to success’ in their time at university and only come to realise this grave reality after they graduate. It is truly important to prepare and inform them of the newer methods to work within the system right at the root level. This makes the presence of these “career ambassadors” beneficial. The general process is time-consuming and indirect. IFutures states that:
“The human resource supply chain for early talent is insufficient and underdeveloped. As a solution, we propose to create, promote, grow and manage a marketplace that brings together curated young talent and companies who are seeking to recruit the best talent for their commercial purposes.’’
The IF community looks to put forward proprietary tools combined with big data from external sources to generate personalised career insights for students.
All in all, it is surely a curious case to see where this rapidly growing community goes and in what ways it will fill the huge gaps in making things more accessible for employers and young talent.
However, the evidence of their positive impact on the student community is already abundantly clear, as students now have a formal safe space to take their queries and concerns. This can be seen through their social media pages which already have over five hundred followers as seen on Instagram in the little time they have been up and running. I think it is safe to say that students are rooting for Inferential Futures just as much as IFutures is rooting for them.
