New college graduates face a challenging labor market where jobs are becoming harder to find, and AI is changing and displacing entry-level work. Graduating from college with the skills, credentials, and experiences employers need is critical for students to connect successfully to work. This research brief addresses these issues by summarizing the insights of 14 employers of college graduates from the University of California system. We provide key considerations for degree programs that are incorporating nondegree credentials and work-based learning into their program.

Why This Matters

Equipping college graduates with nondegree credentials and work experience valued by employers can support strong connections to the labor market and increase upward mobility.

What We Found

• Employers value both role-specific technical skills and broader workplace readiness skills (e.g., professionalism and communication skills), but they consistently report that college graduates have the greatest skill gaps in their workplace readiness skills.
• Employers value nondegree credentials but generally do not require new hires to have a nondegree credential.
• Employers value prior work experience, including internships, and see work experience as an important way to develop workplace readiness skills. They do not think that prior work experience needs to be in the student’s field of study.
• Employers recruit new college graduates through a variety of online platforms, but many value direct connections to students through career services, job fairs, and student clubs.

We provide the following considerations for colleges and universities seeking to integrate nondegree credentials and work-based learning into their four-year degree programs:

• Consider ways to build workplace readiness skills into instruction and emphasize the development of workplace readiness skills in internships and other work experiences.
• Prioritize the nondegree credentials that employers commonly cite as generalizable across positions, such as project management professional credentials.
• Take a broad perspective on encouraging work experience and work-based learning for students that includes internships, but also other experiences that may not relate directly to the students’ degree program.

How We Did It

The data for this research brief come from semi-structured interviews with recruitment staff and hiring managers at 14 employers who have hired University of California graduates.