It's always about this time of year that the news is suddenly full of unemployment horror stories; debt-laden graduates scrambling to find even a whiff of an opening to the world of work, in an ever-shrinking and increasingly uncertain job market. Reports of Bachelor waving twenty-somethings rummaging in bins for basic sustenance, or facing the prospect of moving back in with the parents, is enough to set the teeth of any student on edge. Employers don't exactly help matters. Professing that recent graduates are lacking in slightly mysterious sounding "soft-skills", doesn't help current students identify where they should be focusing their academic energy.

For those of you that don't follow his "Strategic Aesthetics" blog, Michael Roller of Kaleidoscope (you might remember Mr. Roller from his candid "5 Self-Promotion Dont's" - on Core77 here) has been on something of a personal mission to tackle this problem - at least for budding industrial designers. Gathering insights from a survey of 100 design employers in consultancy, corporate or academic practice across the globe (if a little biased towards North America), Roller has produced a simple and concise 17 page booklet, under the title "The Ideal (Junior) Industrial Designer", outlining what employers in the design industry look for when hiring a junior. So, what can we conclude from all this? Well, design tutors the world over are going to be skipping with glee to hear that, "Ideation Sketching" still, in this digital age, seems to be the most important skill for junior industrial designers. Second and third place in the study were "Quality of Ideas" and "Positive Attitude". "CAD rendering" and "Materials & Processes" knowledge figured, perhaps somewhat surprisingly for many students and tutors, way down the list.

Roller is the first to admit that his study was far from comprehensive. Whilst giving us a few interesting insights into employment in design, perhaps equally valuable here is the debate this could create. The report raises a lot of questions for students and design schools in particular, especially as schools shift focus to incorporate newer disciplines such as service design and interaction design. How does this apply to these New-Age design graduates? There's already quite an interesting back-and-forth going down on Roller's blog—graduates, employees and employers alike, expressing shock about the low ranking of computing skills, for example. A supporting one might be fitting here too.