The Chartered Institute for IT (BCS) will launch an event in the style of The Apprentice TV programme called ’The Graduate’ to give IT students and recent graduates a head start in the competitive field of graduate employment in Yorkshire.

Emma Davids, IT project manager for Yorkshire Water and representative of the Young Professionals Group at the West Yorkshire branch of the BCS, told Recruiter that employers, recruitment agencies and universities in the area were noticing that IT graduates were “technically very bright but they’re not particularly business savvy”.

From speaking to recruiters at Yorkshire Water, Davids said “graduates with good degrees were letting themselves down on communication skills”, especially when it came to filling in the application form and answering the competency-based questions.

’The Graduate’ competition offers entrants a chance to practise in a real assessment centre.

John Edwards, managing director of IT recruiter 4itRecruitment, and one of the sponsors of ’The Graduate’, agreed that the problems and issues “were common to our experience too”. He said that universities should be using recruiters’ expertise to educate students in these work skills: “We’re ideally placed to point out to graduates what’s needed.”

However, in response to comments from Gary Ashworth, executive chairman of IT recruiter InterQuest, who slammed IT graduates in an article on recruiter.co.uk (8 February), David Scarlett from Pinnacle Recruitment & Selection contended that employers could miss out on ’raw graduates’. “I do have a concern that today’s employers seem to be expecting ’ready-made employees’ without looking to invest too much in improving the ’soft skills’ that new graduates often need to acquire.”

He told Recruiter that graduates with whom his clients have “taken a chance”, have gone on to be successful “with the appropriate levels of support and guidance”.

For more on ’The Graduate’ competition, go to www.thegraduate.bcs.org