Graduates without work experience face struggle to secure job

Report highlights importance of work experience

Britain’s top employers are set to recruit more graduates this year but a record number of jobs will be filled by graduates with work experience.

Despite the uncertain economic outlook, there will be more graduate vacancies available for university leavers this year – making it the third consecutive year that the number of graduate jobs has increased.

The Graduate Market in 2012 – a study of graduate vacancies and starting salaries at Britain’s one hundred leading employers conducted by High Fliers Research in December 2011 – shows that employers expect to hire 6.4 percent more graduates in 2012 than they did in 2011.

Half the employers included in the research have increased their graduate recruitment targets for 2012 and there are additional roles on offer in nine of the fourteen industries and employment areas featured in the report.

Despite the recruitment freeze at many Government departments and agencies, graduate vacancies in the public sector are expected to increase by a fifth this year – in part because of the expansion of the Teach First scheme which is set to hire 1,000 graduates for the first time in 2012.

But the report also warns that graduates from the ‘Class of 2012’ who’ve had no work experience at all whilst at university stand little or no chance of getting a job offer from the country’s most prestigious graduate employers – and that a record 36 percent of this year’s graduate vacancies are expected to be filled by applicants who have already worked for the organisation during their studies.

Martin Birchall, the managing director of High Fliers Research, said the rise in graduate vacancies was ‘very welcome news’.

“But today’s report includes the stark warning to the ‘Class of 2012’ that in a highly competitive graduate job market, new graduates who’ve not had any work experience at all during their time at university have little hope of landing a well-paid job with a leading employer, irrespective of the academic results they achieve or the university they’ve attended,” he said.

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