When undergraduates start thinking of where they want to work on graduation, the chances are they will bring to mind large corporate organisations and blue-chip employers with graduate schemes. Hardly surprising; they are everywhere on campus and consequently hard to miss so why wouldn't they? I wonder though if they realise that by focusing on a few high profile employers they are seriously limiting their career choices?
Unconvinced? Well some leading independent research developed by Professors Peter Elias and Kate Purcell at the Institute of Employment Research identified three different categories that define a typical "graduate recruiter"(Seven Years On: Graduate Careers in a Changing Labour Market HESCU 2004).
1."Strategic" employers are the most likely to recruit graduates but are a minority of firms (20%).These are firms who have well established schemes with graduate recruitment decisions driven by company strategy and skill requirements.
2. "Occasional" employers are the largest group (45%) but are less likely to be systematic recruiters of graduates. The firms adopt a more reactive approach and recruit throughout the year with graduates favoured at short-listing and interview stage.
3. "Accidental" employers (35%) are most likely to have graduates in non-graduate jobs. These recruiters value a degree for an entry level role but have no formal graduate policy.
Looking at these findings we can see that 80% of recruiters looking for graduates may go under the radar and use less conventional methods to advertise their roles. Some may rely on networking to reach potential candidates, others may use traditional media advertising or job boards but many "occasional" or "accidental" recruiters will develop relationships with specialist recruitment agencies and not advertise elsewhere.
The hidden job market
This hidden job market is huge. At GRB we consider ourselves stealth recruiters as we quietly go about the business of placing graduates into careers and with businesses that go unnoticed by the mass market of graduates and, for that matter, the graduate recruitment sector as a whole.
Let's delve further into the hidden jobs market for graduates. Even the blue chips are affected by complex recruitment scenarios. For instance, a well-known IT recruiter will have little problem recruiting IT graduates - for their IT scheme - because that is what they are known for and even the most short-sighted IT graduate will be aware of their existence. However, what happens when that IT company sets out to recruit graduates into other disciplines such as HR, Finance, Marketing? They often struggle because graduates looking for such posts don't appreciate that IT companies recruit to a wide variety of roles.
Another example is the financial services sector where firms often struggle to attract IT graduates for the very same reason. Multiply this across all sectors and you are talking about lots of jobs - good jobs, graduate jobs. I suppose I am saying that graduates are attracted to the obvious but struggle, as do employers, with the less obvious.
Success rate
At GRB we pride ourselves in being able to overcome the barriers to the vast hidden jobs market. Graduates are always pleasantly surprised when we review their CV and connect them with employers they didn't know were recruiting. As a result we placed well over 400 graduates in 2010 with blue chip and medium sized firms across the 3 categories mentioned earlier - strategic, occasional and accidental.Compare that figure to the big mainstream corporate recruiters and it stands up to comparison. According to an AGR spokesperson "400 recruits makes the agency one of the biggest recruiters in the UK, quite possibly in the top 20 numbers wise."
With gloomy headlines reporting increased youth unemployment and growing competition for jobs amongst graduates, every job seeking avenue should be explored by those graduating in 2012. I may be biased but I think we have a success story worth telling and 400 placed graduates in employment to back the story up. The Class of 2012 could learn a lot from those who have successfully made use of the services of specialist recruitment agencies. It's a smarter approach to job hunting and ways into the graduate jobs market that, until I just spilt the beans, go under the radar.
My frustration is that the work of agencies in placing graduates into jobs, and I am not just talking here of GRB, is grossly understated. Is it because we are bad at blowing our own trumpet or is there some misguided bias against a commercial approach to placing graduates in jobs? Or, a bit of both? I cannot be sure but one thing I do know, graduates are more concerned with actually getting into work than how they find that all important first job. And so should the rest of us.
Dan Hawes
GRB
