This year’s grads face stiff competition in the job market as applications for graduate programmes and traineeships flood in for depleting vacancies.
Candidate application statistics from Broadbean Technology substantiate recent reports that employers are reducing graduate training programmes resulting in a lack of jobs available for grads.
Data from candidate response tracking solution, AdCourier, shows that graduate jobs receive up to 42 applications per advert, more than double than in 2007.
At the end of last month, graduate vacancies received an average of 32 applications compared to 15 in the same period last year.
Industries that Broadbean have highlighted as popular also reflect those preferred by graduates such as Media and Marketing. Creative roles receive three to five times more interest from jobseekers than jobs advertised in areas where there is a UK skills shortage such as nursing and engineering.
The revelation comes following news that the graduates of 2008 are finding themselves in colossal debts as they find it difficult to find work in the current economic climate.
Dan McGuire, Managing Director at Broadbean Technology comments,
“Almost every sector is seeing a higher level of applications than in the same period last year. Graduate applications are particularly high having more than doubled year on year. This implies that the class of 2008 are finding it particularly difficult to obtain the type of role that they went to university to get.”
“Despite the economic slowdown, we have seen an increase in recruiters choosing to use our services. It is cheaper for businesses to advertise vacancies on line so more and more people are coming to us asking how they can get the best return on their marketing spends.”
Paul Farrer, Chairman, The Graduate Recruitment Company, a consultancy that finds jobs for graduates, believes that this year’s jobless grads went into higher education with some misconceptions about what getting a degree would do for their futures. He says,
“The biggest concern for the system is that with 50,000 degree courses available at over 300 Higher Education Institutions the majority of students go to University for the ‘experience’ and to be a graduate, based on the Government claims that they will be better off in the long run. Relatively few seem to study a degree with a view to landing a degree related job”
Farrer, who started recruitment agency, PFJ, in 1992, says that graduates are aware of what is happening in the economy and they’re worried.
“They are getting and will be less picky about the roles that they take, but with the cost of living so high they do need realistic salaries; and the idea of paying off their student debt – no chance.”
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