jobs.ac.uk attracts a diverse and highly skilled audience globally, seeking positions in academia, professional services, and PhD and studentships. Our 2024 jobseeker insights, provide a valuable breakdown of our audience from over 3,500 jobseekers from their employment and advert preferences to their experience, education, and international mobility.
Key Jobseeker Insights
Our audience is highly educated with 96% of our academic jobseekers and 78% of our professional jobseekers holding a Degree, Master’s or Doctorate. Over 90% of our jobseekers are looking for full-time work on a permanent or fixed-term contract and 17% (a 4% increase from 2023) are looking for a PhD or Master’s opportunity.
The main reason our jobseekers are looking for a new job is for career progression, and a reputation as a great place for research/work continues to be the number one reason jobseekers consider an opportunity.
This year, we have seen an 8% increase in our academic jobseekers interested in information about the organisation and for information on career development and training information in the job advert.
Our professional audience has a range of work experience from the FE, HE, private and public sectors, with 61% looking for an employer in Higher Education, followed by commercial businesses and publicly funded organisations.
For our PhD audience, a clearly defined research project was the greatest deciding factor for 75% of respondents when considering a PhD.
Amongst our jobseekers, international mobility has increased across academic, professional and PhD audiences by an average of 9%. Beyond the UK, some of the most popular destinations for our jobseekers are Germany, Canada, USA, UAE, the Netherlands and South Africa.
This year we saw a 10% increase in jobseekers subscribing to our “jobs by email”, with 88% of respondents using our JBE service, and 49% regularly searching the site, making this an ideal channel to reach your target audience.
Audience Demographics
Visitors to jobs.ac.uk are diverse in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity. The majority of respondents are aged between 25 and 54, with half of the audience identifying as Caucasian, and 39% identifying as Black or Asian. Gender representation is balanced, and nearly 10% of our audience identifies as LGBTQ+.
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