The 2:1 degree is losing its shine as the gold standard for getting a job as employers increasingly value leadership and communication skills over academic achievement.

Companies are dropping their recruitment criteria from a 2:1 to a 2:2 to broaden the talent pool from which they recruit and to find graduates with skills specific to their own sector, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters.

The association’s annual survey, published today, found that graduate recruitment was surviving the economic downturn, despite recent gloomy forecasts.

Vacancies for graduate-level positions were 11.7 per cent higher than in 2007. More than half of the 242 major graduate recruiters interviewed for the survey expected to report an increase in the number of vacancies in 2008.

However, the survey showed the smallest rise in graduate salaries in recent years. The median salary of graduates recruited by member of the association in 2008 was £24,500, only 1.8 per cent more than last year. The most common salary range was £22,001 to £24,000.

Most employers said they did not expect to offer anything more than a cost of living rise next year.

Carl Gilleard, chief executive of the association, which represents 800 graduate recruiters in the private and public sectors, said it was clear from the survey that 2:2 degrees were becoming increasingly acceptable. This year almost a third (32.9 per cent) accepted a 2:2 compared with 24.7 per cent last year. One employer said that it would stop asking for a 2:1; another has changed the specification to a 2:2 “to widen the talent pool”.

A third said that it would accept a 2:2 if the candidate could show relevant competencies and/or work experience. In the past, it had rejected candidates with a 2:2. A fourth said that life skills were as important as academic ones.

The survey also noted a gradual trend towards demanding particular skills. Requirements to have studied certain subjects or to have relevant work experience were significantly more common in 2008 than last year.

A majority (56.4 per cent) of employers expressed concern about a lack of hard skills such as literacy and leadership and 55 per cent said that a lack of “soft” skills, such as the ability to communicate well, posed a serious problem. Many were also concerned about graduates’ ability to manage their own learning, to solve problems and to motivate themselves.

A significant proportion said that they were also worried about low levels of knowledge in mathematics and IT/technology and most believed the answer to the skills and knowledge shortage would be to focus on the development of individual elite students rather than on getting more students into university.

Less than half of employers supported the Government target of 40 per cent of the workforce having a degree by 2020, and almost a third said that they thought it was both unrealistic and undesirable.

The survey found that every vacancy was being chased by 31 new graduates, two worse than last year. The most popular employers received 112 applications for each job. Almost a tenth of employers in IT and banking had received more than 10,000 applications this year.

The top recruiting sectors were still accountancy and banking, which offered more than a third of all vacancies. Almost half (46.6 per cent) of all vacancies were in London. A further 10.9 per cent were in the South East.

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