The recession resulted in many employers downsizing, introducing pay freezes and even pay reductions and as the economy slowly improves they are finding themselves needing more resource but within very tight budgets.
Increasingly many are considering graduates not as a cheap source of labour, but as an opportunity to bring in energy and new ideas into worn out and tired workforces. That is the good news. However all the usual research indicates that a huge number of this years graduates have no clear idea about what career they want to follow and employers don't want to risk taking on people who are unsure about what they want to do.
In addition a lot of roles for graduates will not be on official 'graduate schemes' but jobs for graduates with SME's (Small or Medium sized Enterprises) or larger companies who don't run graduate 'schemes' but take on graduate trainees. The major difference between jobs on schemes and jobs outside schemes is that HR or Graduate Recruitment teams manage the graduate recruitment scheme with online competency based applications, psychometric tests and assessment centres. Whereas for jobs outside of the schemes line managers, the people you will actually work for, undertake their own interviews in a much shorter, precise process. One of the things they look for is why? Why do you want the job? Why them as an employer? Why did you study your degree? Why is your work experience relevant? The answers to some of these questions may well be a truthful 'don't know' and sadly that will rule you out. Therefore to land the best graduate jobs in this challenging job market you need to do lots of research and find out about roles you have never heard of or had an interest in and find out what they are about and why people do them.
I met up with a new client last week, the Sales Director of the media division of one of the worlds biggest mobile operators. We placed him 14 years ago as a trainee sales executive with a media company. Did he go to University to come out and move into sales? No. Did he know anything about sales? A little. Did he go out and research sales roles so he could be convincing in the interview - oh yes. So if you are entering the job market and are uncertain as to what you want to do - get researching and get some certainty and a real chance of graduate employment
