Sports Therapists' Perceptions and Experiences of Graduate Employment

Graduate employability is complex and has moved beyond the notion of subject-specific skills being sufficient for acquiring a graduate-level job, and now include important transferable skills. Sports Therapy is a rapidly expanding profession focusing on assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation of musculoskeletal conditions. These facets encompass components of critical thinking, problem solving, interpersonal skills and communication, thus courses can set up graduates for careers within or outside the industry. BSc (Hons) Sports Therapy graduates from two British Universities were surveyed about their experience of their undergraduate degree programme and their perceptions of how well the programme had prepared them for employment. The survey was distributed to approximately 150 graduates and had a response rate of 23% (35 graduates). Descriptive statistics were used to describe the responses to the multiple-choice questions and thematic analysis was performed on free-text responses. Results showed that 43% of respondents were employed as Sports Therapists and needed their degree to get their jobs. 70% of respondents felt that their degree had equipped them fully or partly for employment. Free-text responses generated three themes relating to sports therapy-specific skills, job availability and work-based learning opportunities. Managing student expectations, continued exposure to the range of career opportunities available and developing students' subject-specific skills, ‘soft’ or transferrable skills as well as personal-characteristics can facilitate employability. Courses should be sensitive to the demands of a changing employment landscape and as such, look to facilitate a student-centred approach and support placement opportunities to facilitate graduate employability.