Upcoming Graduate Recruitment Trends

Posted by David Jenkins

GradConnection - Connecting you to graduates

What's different about this year?

It seems like a long time ago since the Christmas and New Year break. Now that February is here it's time to make sure you're on top of the graduate recruitment season!

This year is shaping up to be different from years past. A few trends we've noticed with employers and graduates this year are:

  • Intakes: 2015 intakes are generally smaller than 2014 intakes.
  • Last years graduates: Although a lot of graduates missed out on graduate programs in 2014, a lot are finding employment outside of graduate programs.
  • Diversity Targeting is becoming increasingly important on campaigns we're working on with employers, ie: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander targeting, Women in Engineering, IT and Finance. We're now doing diversity profiles to help target these groups. Learn more about our diversity targeting and our partnership with Pride and Diversity here.
  • More engineering graduates using the GradConnection site than accounting graduates. In the past the volume of accounting graduates was far above any other major on the site.
  • University Events: There are less employers booked into career events. We've not noticed a consistent reason for this, some of the reasons are - smaller intakes, smaller budgets, investing in online channels, team is smaller so can no longer cover as much ground to get to as many career events.
  • Applications: Graduates are applying to on average 8 employers. - There will be over 150 employers open at the same time during March 2014 on gradconnection.com.au.
  • Summer Vacs: Employers with internship or vacation programs are filling a higher percentage of their graduate program roles through these programs than they did a year earlier.
  • Business units within organisations are taking longer to make decisions as to how many graduates they want to recruit making it harder for recruitment teams to plan ahead.
  • Technology graduates are still in heavy demand, programs with a large technology intake are generally staying stable or growing.
  • High achiever graduates from group of 8 universities still tend to have options and receive multiple offers.

These trends are what we've noticed in talking to our clients and graduates over the past 12 months.


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