Have you ever wonder if you can get a job after university? Or if the course you are thinking of pursuing will get you a job upon completion? The New Vision newspaper conducted a survey analyzing job opportunities advertised in 2015 and 2016 that showed that Business Management and Administration, Health Science, Finance, Budgeting and Taxation jobs were the most advertised.

This doesn’t mean that the rest who are not going to offer the courses related to the career fields above won’t get jobs, it just points out how the job market behaved in the last 2 years. A total of 8,356 jobs reviewed. They were grouped in 16 career fields as defined by the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Sports, Career Guidance Handbook, meant to provide information for career guidance.

According to the findings Business Management and Administration had the highest proportions of job opportunities advertised in the period under review accounting for 32%, followed by Health Science at 12% then Agriculture at 11% as well as Finance, Budgeting and Taxation at 10%.

The career fields with the least number of advertised jobs were Manufacturing, Hospitality and Tourism plus Governance and Public Administration with 19, 42 and 70 opportunities respectively.

The survey also showed that different job opportunities have varying requirements. Surprisingly, gender had little or no bearing on most of the jobs which were advertised. Only 0.3% (23) of the jobs were gender-specific (with 17 specifically asking for females and 5 for males), 99.7% of the jobs were gender-neutral.

Another was that employers did not a lot of emphasis on experience contrary to perception. This requirement scored 22% of all the advertised jobs. But the most important requirement for most jobs was an undergraduate degree (61%).

The survey reviewed the jobs advertised in the New Vision newspaper every Monday between 2015 and 2016 with a particular focus on the career clusters.

(SOURCES: The New Vision newspaper university guide, the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Sports, Career Guidance Handbook and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics)