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FAQ ↓

  • What is the average graduate salary in Nottingham in 2026?

    The average graduate salary in Nottingham in January 2026 is £26900, based on analysis of all graduate jobs in Nottingham the past 3 months. The average graduate starting salary across the UK in January 2026 is £29654.

    The latest graduate salary analysis 2026

  • How difficult / competitive is it to get a graduate job in Nottingham in 2026?

    Based on data gathered in the past three months we estimate that it is challenging to get a graduate job in Nottingham in January 2026, compared to other major locations.

  • Is Nottingham a popular destination for UK students & graduates?

    Nottingham is ranked 9 out of our 45 most popular location for graduates. Nottingham is therefore ranked as 'about average popularity' as a career destination for UK graduates and students.

  • What kind of graduate job can you get in Nottingham ?

    In the past 18 months the Management sector has received the most job postings located in Nottingham , followed by Consultancy and Customer Service .

    It could be suggested these are typically the type of graduate jobs you can get in Nottingham.

  • Which companies are most active recruiting graduates in Nottingham ?

    In the past 18 months Enterprise Mobility and KPMG have advertised the most graduate jobs in Nottingham .

Read more about working in Nottingham ↓

Nottingham

Nottingham has two very large universities that are internationally recognised. The graduates from this city head into the work place with a mix of academic achievement and work readiness. So much so the University of Nottingham was recently voted the favoured university by employers to try and source talented graduates from. But we wanted to know what made graduates from the East Midland's city so special and what made them different from graduates from the rest of the United Kingdom.

To do this we looked at the data from Nottingham graduates when they signed up with graduate-jobs.com between the years 2009 and 2014. We looked to see if they differed in any way in terms of career ambitions, attainment during their studies and whether or not they had managed to accumulate any work experience before they left university. When looking at this data we could easily see why Nottingham was the place all graduate employers wanted to visit.

Sectors

When looking to see if graduates from Nottingham's two universities had a particular leaning when deciding what they wanted to do with their career, there was little difference to the rest of the UK. The top five most popular sectors that graduates from Nottingham chose were exactly in line with the choices of graduates from the rest of the UK. The five sectors, Marketing, Management, Banking, Finance and Advertising and PR are extremely popular across all graduates and Nottingham's graduates were certainly in the running to excel in these sectors.

The one difference that could be pointed to would be the volume of graduates from Nottingham universities that wanted to pursue a career in Marketing. Not only did this displace the national trend as the most desired career destination for graduates, but it was also chosen by 34% of the graduates from this city, while 28.3% of graduates from the rest of the UK wanted to pursue this sector as a career.

Most popular sectors for Nottingham graduates

Degree Classifications

Graduates who studied in Nottingham will have to work extremely hard to get there, however it appears when looking at the degree grades that some graduates received the hard work didn't stop there. Graduates who studied in Nottingham had the second lowest rate of First Class degrees among the city's alumni. Behind students from Northern Ireland, just 7.8% of graduates received a First, a long way off the national average of just short of one in ten.

While Nottingham's universities save the top marks for the brightest students, it appears 2.1 degrees are much more readily available in the East Midlands. A whopping 59.7% of graduates from Nottingham received a 2.1 degree, a long way up on the national average of 48.1%.

Degree classifications for Nottingham graduates

Work Experience

Completing the package for the employable graduate, Nottingham's alumni fair better than the average UK graduate. With 17% of Nottingham graduates having work experience, they tend to offer themselves as slightly more employable than the average UK graduate of which only 16.6% have undertaken some form of work experience. Nottingham is not the best however and has got to go a long way to catch of Northern Ireland, who has 24.9% of graduates having already undertaken work experience and Sheffield with 18.7%.

Percentage of Nottingham graduates with work experience