Graduate market remains resilient

A packed agenda for the thirteenth TARGETjobs Breakfast News event, held at London's Just St James on Thursday 17^th June with the support of TMP Worldwide, featured a whole range of up-to-the-minute graduate market developments from the latest economic data to the AGR's regular ‘snapshot' of employer confidence, a student perspective on graduate websites, and some of the lessons to be learned from consumer marketing.

Market outlook
Following a sumptuous ‘full English', the event kicked off with Bryan Finn's usual comprehensive round-up of economic, recruitment and graduate market prospects.  Although the previous Breakfast News event took place only a couple of months ago much has changed since, with the European sovereign debt crisis and a new coalition government helping to redefine Britain's economic landscape.

Bryan noted that the graduate recruitment market was continuing to prove more resilient than the recruitment market in general.  But with economic news continuing to be dominated by the UK's budget deficit and potentially draconian public spending cuts, GDP growth forecasts have again been downgraded to around 1% for this year and 2.3% for 2011.  If this level of growth materialises, recruitment markets could expect to grow by around 9% next year.  But the big ‘if' is the impact of government cuts on the economy - will the private sector manage to take up the slack, or will we be pushed into double-dip recession?  The jury is still out on this one so we'll just have to wait and see how things pan out, reckons Bryan.

Recruitment targets rise
AGR chief executive Carl Gilleard provided some welcome news in terms of AGR member firms' hiring intentions: 41.3% of firms plan to take on more graduates this year, and only 18.5% fewer - a positive net balance of 22.8%.  But there are huge variations between different sectors, of course, and the AGR's own survey, due to published in July, will reveal just how fragmented the overall picture is.

Looking at the wider issue of business confidence, there was a little more optimism around than three months ago - and, for the first time, employers' attitudes to the prospects for the UK economy and their own businesses proved to be almost identical.  Encouragingly for graduate job-seekers, Carl noted that - even by mid-June - only 36% of organisations had filled all their graduate positions for this year, and more than half (54.3%) were still accepting applications.

The AGR research also asked for feedback on employers' graduate sites, roughly half of which were stand-alone and half embedded in corporate sites.  An encouraging proportion of these were updated regularly, while almost a third (31.5%) had reviewed the quality of candidate experience they provided within the past six months.  Around half of firms also use their graduate sites (or intend to shortly) to ‘keep offers warm.'

Undergraduates' online journeys
TMP Worldwide's Neil Harrison added to these insights with an overview of employers' graduate sites from the students' perspective.  Citing recent research based on GTI's user base of final and penultimate-year students, he noted that the most popular way to access employer sites was via the careers service portal.  And while students start to access employer sites at various times in their university lives (and continue to do so post-interview and offer), they don't tend to spend too long on them, making it essential to communicate key material - such as information on graduate schemes and application processes - as effectively as possible.  Games and interactive elements also proved to be of significantly less interest to students than relevant video material such as ‘day in the life' clips, trainee profiles and virtual office tours.  That said, self-suitability quizzes and ‘tailored' content both generated enthusiastic responses.

The practical benefits of developing a well-researched graduate site from scratch were then outlined by Alison Bending, head of direct entry programmes (EMEA) at DHL, part of one of the world's top ten employers.  In just two years DHL's graduate site has not only become a hugely effective recruiting tool but also picked up the 2010 TARGETjobs award for best graduate recruitment website.

Tracking and measuring success
For the final session, Dave King - chief executive of Digitalis Media - drew some interesting parallels with the world of consumer marketing.  As with consumer purchases, the undergraduate job-applicant's online journey has lost any simple linearity.  Dave also observed that the graduate recruitment sector as a whole is missing out in a big way in terms of search engine optimisation and marketing.  He stressed the need to monitor employers' own and competitors' campaigns - and the online conversations about their organisations - very actively, and listed some of the many tools available for doing this.

With the event drawing to a close, Carl Gilleard announced that the AGR had just succeeded in securing new universities minister David Willetts to speak at its annual conference in early July.  (And, with a few rooms still available at the five-star Celtic Manor resort, he advised booking promptly to avoid disappointment.)

Finally, GTI sales director and master of ceremonies Simon Rogers announced that the next Breakfast News session will take place in London on Wednesday 22^nd September.