A Review of Web-Based Job Advertisements for Australian Event Management Positions

Abstract

Strong growths in the Australian event management industry, ongoing technological changes and the internationalisation of the market place has spurred the need for appropriately educated and trained event managers and for a re-evaluation of educational and job training curriculum to meet these new challenges. In order for Australia to position itself as a world leader in event management, it is important to provide consistent high professional standards and event managers that not only meet, but exceed the demands of the industry. While there is some literature that focuses on the tourism and leisure job market (Crossley, 1992;Keung & Pine, 2000), and a small but developing literature base that focuses on event management training (Harris & Jago, 1999;Hawkins & Goldbatt, 1995) relatively little consideration has been given to a national agenda for event management skilling.To provide an indication of current employer requirements, a nationwide study of job advertisements in event management has commenced. The aims of the study are to further the understanding of the educational needs and training requirements of the industry; to ascertain the learned skills and personal attributes sought from event managers; to determine the compatibility of industry demands with current educational and vocational provisions; and to suggest post-secondary institutional avenues through which event management education and training needs can be pursued. This is an ongoing study and it is hoped that it will contribute towards a broad scale understanding of the event management job market. More importantly however, it can be used as the basis for curriculum evaluation and training needs, and create a better understanding and compatibility between event management education and industry practice. This paper reports the preliminary results from a content analysis of approximately 100 webbased job advertisements. Email alert accounts were established with several search engines to gather a sample of event management related job advertisements from around Australia. An analytical framework was devised for the analysis of the advertisements themselves. The results reveal several interesting trends including the geographical concentration of the event management job market, the range of industries that require event management specialists or event management skills, and a series of required skills and key attributes of event managers. The results of this study establish a platform from which to develop a classification of event management skills required by the industry. BACKGROUND

Culture’s Consequences for Purchasing Comparing Purchasing Job Ad Requirements from Different European Countries with Cultural Models

“…The results of the analyses of secondary data cited in the literature, such as the requirements mentioned in online job advertisements, may be considered an essential source of highly up-to-date and available information. These results provide readers with a firm understanding of what employers require from employees (e.g., Arcodia and Barker, 2003;Mathews and Redman, 2001;Rafaeli and Oliver, 1998;Shou and Wang, 2015). Nevertheless, the concise nature of the job advertisement texts sets certain limitations regarding their interpretation.…”

(Under)valuing lived experience in the disability workforce: A snapshot of Australian job recruitment

“…Thematic content analysis methods were applied for their usefulness in systematically synthesising broad and diverse extant data (Given, 2008; Neuendorf, 2017). Content analysis of the text of job advertisements has been found to be a useful method for exploratory research that studies employers' and industries' perspectives, with job advertisements providing a current and accessible data source (Arcodia & Barker, 2003; Bennett, 2002; McArthur et al, 2017). We have not found any examples of this research method being applied in studies of disability, health or human services, and as such, this was an innovative application of the method.…”

Utilising the potential of job postings for auditing learning outcomes and improving graduates' chances on the labour market

“…Iyer, 2009; Payne, 2009). The analyses included accountants, managers (Arcodia & Barker, 2003); librarians (e.g. Dunbar et al, 2016; Jackling & De Lange, 2009; Maceli, 2015; Yang et al, 2016), engineering degree programmes at one higher education institution in Leipzig (Bensberg, 2012); the GIS sector in the US (Hong, 2016); information systems (Kennan et al, 2008), big data specialists (Gardiner et al, 2018), marketing professionals (Wellman, 2010), health managers (Messum et al, 2011), library and information science experts (Wise et al, 2011) and IS graduates (Woolridge & Parks, 2016).…”