Student Hub ( ESO )

Research has been published on 'The Graduate Market in 2012' based on a survey of organisations featured in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, conducted in December 2011.

The key findings:

· The UK’s leading employers expect to increase their graduate recruitment by 6.4% in 2012, following a rise of 2.8% in entry-level roles during 2011 and an increase of 12.6% in 2010. Vacancies dropped by 17.8% in 2009 and 6.7% in 2008.

· Almost half of employers expect to recruit more graduates in 2012. More than a quarter plan to maintain their intake at 2011 levels.

· Despite the widespread recruitment freeze at Government departments & agencies, public sector employers are planning to expand their graduate intake by 21.9% in 2012, an increase of @ 500 additional roles year-on-year.

There will also be a substantial rise in the number of graduate jobs available at engineering & industrial companies (up 22.4% compared to 2011), IT & telecommunications firms (up 31.6%), high street banks (up 16.0%) and retailers (up 11.5%).

· Employers in 9 of 14 key industries and employment areas expect to recruit more graduates in 2012.

· Recruitment targets for the Armed Forces have been reduced.

· Graduate vacancies at the leading accounting & professional services firms appear to have peaked after three consecutive years of significant increases.

· Though the total number of vacancies will increase in 2012, recruiters confirmed that a third of this year’s entry-level positions will be filled by graduates who have already worked for their organisations –through industrial placements, vacation work or sponsorships – and therefore are not open to other students from the ‘Class of 2012’.

· Largest individual recruiters of grads in 2012: PwC (1,200 vacancies), Deloitte (1,200), the Teach First  (1,000), KPMG (800) and Ernst & Young (740).

· Starting salaries at the UK’s leading graduate employers in 2012 are expected to stay unchanged for a third consecutive year: an average of £29,000.

· Graduate starting salaries increased by 7.4% in 2010 and 5.9% in 2009.

· A fifth of top graduate programmes will pay new recruits more than £35,000 when they start work and nine organisations are offering at least £40,000 to this year’s graduates.

· The most generous salaries are those on offer from investment banks (average of £45,000), law firms (average of £38,000) and oil & energy companies (average of £32,500).

· Public sector employers (average of £23,000) and retailers (average of £24,000) have the lowest graduate pay rates for 2012.

· More than three-quarters of top employers have maintained or increased their graduate recruitment budgets for the 2011-2012 recruitment round and just one in ten organisations has decreased their spending considerably this year.

· The UK’s leading employers have been actively marketing their 2012 graduate vacancies at an average of 19 universities in the UK, using careers fairs, campus recruitment presentations and online advertising.

· Graduate recruiters put more emphasis on social media, skills training sessions, university careers services and campus drop-in sessions

· Less emphasis is placed on advertising in sector guides, local guides and grad. directories.

· Half of employers said they had received more completed graduate job applications during the early part of the recruitment season than last year.

· On average, employers have received 19% more graduate job applications, compared with the equivalent period in the 2010-2011 recruitment round.

· A third of applications for graduate positions in 2012 have been from previous graduates who left university in 2011 or earlier.

· Virtually all of the UK’s leading graduate employers are offering paid work experience programmes for students and recent graduates during the 2011-2012 academic year – a total of 11,296 places are available.

· Two-thirds of employers are providing industrial placements for undergraduates (typically for 6-12 months) and more than half have paid vacation internships lasting three weeks or longer.

· More than half of recruiters warn that graduates who have had no previous work experience at all are unlikely to be successful during the selection process and have little or no chance of receiving a job offer for their organisations’ graduate programmes.

· Almost three-quarters of the graduate vacancies advertised this year by investment banks and half the training contracts offered by the leading law firms are likely to be filled by graduates who have already completed work experience with the employer.