Student behaviour driving unfilled graduate vacancies, says graduate recruiter

Changing student behaviour and not a lack of skills is contributing to a high rate of unfilled graduate vacancies, according to the co-founder of a specialist graduate recruitment agency.
Wed, 28 May 2014 Changing student behaviour and not a lack of skills is contributing to a high rate of unfilled graduate vacancies, according to the co-founder of a specialist graduate recruitment agency.

Commenting on figures from the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) that 87% of its members still have unfilled graduate level vacancies for 2014 several months in to this year’s recruitment cycle, Dan Hawes, co-founder of the Graduate Recruitment Bureau, tells Recruiter that students are putting off applying until after they graduate.

“It reflects student behaviour, with students more and more focused on their studies, deciding not to start applying until after they graduate,” says Hawes, adding “they realise that finding a job is a full-time job in itself”.

“They want their time at university to count and are focused on getting a 2.1 or a 1st so some would rather leave it until after they have their degree,” Hawes continues.

He says that this fact, rather than a shortage of skills overall, is contributing to high rates of unfilled graduate vacancies.  

The AGR poll found that the highest percentages of vacancies were in the areas of IT (26%), electrical/electronic engineering (23%) and general management (18%), with AGR members reporting vacancies nationwide.

The findings follow the AGR’s 2014 Winter Survey, which predicted a 10% increase in graduate vacancies on last year.

When asked to cite why the positions remained unfilled, 55% reported that that have increased their graduate intake targets for 2014. However, 67% of employers also said that the applications they have received thus far have been of insufficient quality.

Stephen Isherwood, chief executive officer at the AGR, tells Recruiter that the results of the survey indicate that his members are “are not getting enough applications of the right quality”. But he warns that it is dangerous to generalise as to what is going on. “Talking to engineering companies they will say they are not getting the right skills.”

However, he says that other types of employers will say that their candidates are “not focused enough in their applications” and are using a scattergun approach to their job search. “It depends on which part of the labour market you are talking about,” he says.

James Callander, managing director at FreshMinds, a recruitment consultancy that places graduates, agrees that there are more graduate opportunities around this year after several years of employers being “cautious”.  

“Since the back end of last year, the appetite for risk among graduate employers has increased and vacancy volumes have increased.” He adds that there are still difficulties in filling roles that require STEM subjects.

Evidence that the graduate market is on the up was confirmed by job search engine Adzuna.co.uk, who today reported a 37% year-on-year in advertised graduate vacancies to 15,732 in May.

Boorman: Facebook passwords at interview fears a ‘storm in a teacup’

In the wake of concerns about employers asking job applicants for Facebook passwords at interview, social media guru and founder of #Tru events, Bill Boorman, tells Recruiter that such cases are still rare.

27 March 2012

headline 1

In March last year a major extension of the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) code of conduct came into force.

27 March 2012

Finnish cloud firm Hammerkit opens office and creates jobs in Liverpool_2

Finnish cloud firm Hammerkit opens office and creates jobs in Liverpool
20 January 2012

Independent help with bright ideas_2

With expansion a top priority, e2v needed to standardise its recruitment processes and turned to RPO experts Independent

25 January 2012
Top