Employment opportunities for final-year students and new graduates are looking positive. New research from the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) predicts that there will be a 16.4 per cent increase in vacancies this year, on top of last year’s healthy growth; it also found that more than two thirds of the 217 major employers questioned are worried that they will face challenges in recruiting graduates this year.

So, that makes it a good year to kick back, pump out some applications and wait for the offers to roll in, right? Not in the least, says Carl Gilleard, chief executive of the AGR. The top firms would rather leave a vacancy unfilled than recruit someone who doesn’t meet their standards. “Employers are investing so much money that they have very high standards and they are more careful about how they recruit,” he says. “They don’t want to make mistakes.”

Alongside this, a quarter of recruiters now look overseas to fill their vacancies, meaning that UK grads will be competing against applicants who may well be able to offer linguistic skills and international experience as well as excellent qualifications. Tracy Ross, the recruitment marketing manager at Rolls-Royce, says that the engineering giant wants to hire the best graduates that it can, wherever they’re from. “We are starting to do more to attract candidates from outside the UK,” she says. “About 25 per cent of our graduates are from outside the UK.

“Big employers do have a choice and... if they feel that they’re not getting the candidates that they want in the UK, they can go and search in the rest of the world.”

The AGR survey found that most UK graduate recruiters who look overseas (75 per cent) do so because they want to hire the best talent available; 25 per cent say that it was because graduates from other countries have a strong work ethic and desire to succeed; and 22 per cent say that it’s because there are not enough candidates with the right qualifications in the UK.

“The message for graduates and final-year students is that, although there are a lot more vacancies, you cannot afford to be complacent,” Gilleard says.

However, anecdotal evidence suggests that a number of this year’s students are. “A lot of [employer] visits on campus have not been that well received,” he says. “There seems to be a view among some students that they will wait until their exams are out of the way before applying. That’s their choice, but who’s to say that those vacancies will still be around at the end of summer?” After all, as the state of the stock exchange shows, market changes can happen remarkably fast.

Careers fair

The Times is the media partner for the National Graduate Recruitment Exhibition on February 5 and 6 at Manchester Central.
Come along for CV clinics, mock asessments, careers presentations and lots of company information.
Admission is free.
Full-time students are eligible for up to £10 in travel expenses.
Register for fast-track entry at gradjobs.co.uk

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