What is a graduate scheme?

The majority of top employers offer a graduate training scheme. This is an opportunity for companies to recruit the best graduate talent into their organisations. Graduates are recruited from a wide range of degree disciplines into a wide range of roles. The purpose of graduate training schemes is to offer students the opportunity to experience various roles within an organisation before deciding upon a specialism.

Companies invest in the training and development of their graduate talent, their leaders of tomorrow. As a result, the training presents a range of opportunities and exposure to various departments and individuals, but requires dedication and hard work from graduates. In turn, graduates are rewarded with a competitive salary, career opportunities and a targeted training and development programme.

In order to be successful in gaining a place on a graduate scheme, students need to start their search at least a year before graduation to ensure they are aware of company deadlines and recruitment procedures. A typical recruitment process will include:

• the completion of an online application form
• a telephone interview
• psychometric testing
• invitation to an assessment centre, including a face-to-face interview.

Getting the basics right

Every year a significant number of graduate vacancies go unfilled, despite employers receiving over 60 applications per vacancy. Employers search for the mix of knowledge, skills and attributes that will make their organisations perform effectively. Getting the right job may seem a daunting task fraught with uncertainty. But get the basics right and it could be more straightforward than you think.

• Know thyself. Socrates may not have realised it but he was disseminating careers advice 2,400 years ago. Reflect on what tasks you are good at, enjoy and can do well even when tired. Then look for an area of work that will let you deploy your talents.
• Be passionate. If you enjoy reading the Financial Times at the weekend you will probably enjoy a business career. If the sight of blood doesn’t make you faint maybe you should be a medic. To be successful you need to work hard and you will only work hard at a thing over a long period of time if you are passionate about it.
• Understand that a group assignment is not teamwork. Every student completes a group project at some point in their academic career. When did you get something done with and through others when you weren’t told to? This is teamwork.
• Admit mistakes. The candidate who has not made a mistake is either lying or hasn’t pushed him or herself. It’s ok to make mistakes as long as you learn from them and don’t repeat them.
• Try on the shoes of your interviewer. Recruiters want to hire people. Rejecting a candidate is a negative outcome and, in essence, is wasted time. Think about it. What is your prospective employer looking for? What will make them invest time and resources in hiring you? Would you hire yourself?

Be the candidate that gets the offer call – someone will.

Stephen Isherwood, Chief Executive,
Association of Graduate Recruiters

Overview of the graduate market

Despite the continued growth in the graduate market since the recession in 2007, the graduate market still remains increasingly competitive. Not only are you competing with current graduates but also with graduates who have not found positions in previous years. The Destination of Leavers in Higher Education Report (DLHE, 2015) stated that in 2013/14 there were 424,375 UK and EU leavers (UK 398,105 and EU 2,270). This represents almost a 50% increase in the number of leavers compared to a decade ago. In 2015 the number of graduate vacancies was the highest since the recession in 2007 with a total of 22,300 vacancies. (High Fliers Research, 2016)

Despite this increase, the Association of Graduate Recruiters also noted that there has been a steady decline in the number of applications received per graduate vacancy. In 2012/13 there were 85 applications per vacancy and this number has decreased every year with only 69 application in 2013/14 compared with 65 in 2014/15. (AGR, 2016, p. 32)

This is good news for students graduating, but when the actual number of applications received is considered it is a staggering 4,522 applications per graduate scheme. The importance of being able to communicate your skills and attributes becomes even more important in order to stand out. As stated previously, there are an increasing amount of graduates (72%) graduating with a 2:1 or a first, which increases the importance of engaging in extracurricular activities to ensure your application has a clear unique selling point.

The graduate market is improving, with a forecast increase in 2014 of 8%, which High Fliers Research states is the ‘largest annual rise for four years’. The graduates of 2016 could expect a further 7.5% rise in 2015. The competition is still as fierce as ever, but you always have to keep in mind that there are positions available and you only need one company and one job. You will be rejected on several occasions, but you need to keep going until you find a company that can see the brilliance in you.

Graduate employment

When the global recession took hold in 2008, graduate employment was one of the first parts of the UK economy to be hit. In little more than 18 months, organisations featured in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers cut their graduate vacancies by almost a quarter, leaving tens of thousands of university-leavers either unemployed or in jobs that didn’t require them to have a degree.

It has been a long slow recovery since, but by the summer of 2015, graduate recruitment at the country’s top employers finally returned to pre-recession levels and several of the UK’s most sought-after organisations were reporting a record number of entry-level vacancies.

The outlook for 2016 seems even more upbeat with the number of jobs on offer for new graduates expected to increase by a further 8% (see figure below).

Source: The Graduate Marker 2016, © High Fliers Research Limited 2016

Graduate pay is also increasing. After four consecutive years when starting salaries were frozen, the median package for new graduates with one of the UK’s leading employers in 2016 is expected to be £30,000, with even more generous salaries on offer from the top City investment banks (an average of £47,000), law firms (£41,000) and banking and finance firms (£36,000). In the table below is a list of graduate salaries in 2016 by industry or business sector.

	Median graduate starting salaries for 2016
Accounting and professional services	£30,300
Armed Forces	£30,000
Banking and Finance	£36,000
Consulting	£31,500
Consumer Goods	£29,000
Engineering and Industrial	£26,000
Investment banking	£47,000
IT & Telecommunications	£30,000
Law	£41,000
Media	£27,000
Oil and Energy	£32,500
Public sector	£21,000
Retailing	£26,000

Source: The Graduate Marker 2016, © High Fliers Research Limited 2016

Despite this upbeat picture, there remains a word of warning. The number of new graduates leaving university from full-time undergraduate degree courses in the summer of 2016 is expected to top 400,000 for the first time – nearly double the number who graduated from UK universities 20 years ago. And yet there are unlikely to be more than 200,000 graduate-level vacancies available across all parts of the UK employment market.

This means inevitably that even in a comparatively buoyant job market, many of those graduating from the ‘Class of 2016’ – almost all of whom have invested up to £9,000 per year on tuition fees – will still face tough competition to land their first graduate job.

Martin Birchall, Editor, The Times Top 100 Graduate
Employers and Managing Director, High Fliers Research

The range of graduate vacancies

The Destination of Higher Education Leavers Report 2015 stated that 68% of the 2013/14 first full-time degree leavers, whose destinations were known, found full-time employment classified as professional.

Although the High Fliers Research report 2016 states that graduate vacancies are at an all time high since the recession, with a further increase due in 2016, the number of vacancies is still not representative of the number of students graduating. Another concern is the fact that in 2015 alone 1,000 graduate vacancies among the top 100 employers were left unfilled. This is an alarming figure as it only represents those companies covered in the survey. You begin to question how many graduate vacancies were left unfilled if we were to consider all of the graduate employers.

In 2016 the accounting and professional services firms, public sector employees, engineering and industrial firms and investments banks will represent 70% of the graduate vacancies. Despite the growth in the number of vacancies, graduates should note that 32% of these vacancies will be filled by those who have already engaged with the company either through work experience, internship or placement. (High Fliers Research, 2016)

It is therefore in students’ interest to research carefully companies where they wish to undertake work experience, internships or placements.

The location of 80% of graduate vacancies will be in London, with the second highest region being the south east of England, followed by the south west and north west. Despite companies trying to highlight opportunities in other regions of the country, London still dominates the graduate sector for vacancies.

The other interesting factor about graduate vacancies is the range functions, which are more likely to generate graduate vacancies. IT graduate vacancies top the table at 55%, which is reflective of the digital and technological age that organisations operate within. Finance and human resources are in second and third place with 51% and 39% respectively.

The fact that IT tops the table with the number of graduate vacancies demonstrates that IT skills are wanted at more than just IT companies. It proliferates many sectors and plays an important role within the accounting, public sector, banking and engineering sector.

Source: The Graduate Marker 2016, © High Fliers Research Limited 2016

Source: The Graduate Marker 2016, © High Fliers Research Limited 2016

Work experience

The vacancies in relation to placements and internships emphasise the level of importance placed by employers on students gaining work experience. Employers recognise their role in making these opportunities available, in order to develop students’ employability skills.

Some 59% of the UK’s top 100 graduate employers offered 6- to 12-month industrial placements. Seventy-six per cent of UK’s top 100 graduate employers provide paid internships or vacation placements for penultimate year undergraduates.

By engaging with students at this early stage in their studies, employers are able to identify suitable candidates for their graduate schemes. Internships and placements enable organisations to build relationships with promising students. This is further illustrated in the data as a third of all graduate roles are filled by graduates who have already worked for the employer during their degree.

Sixteen per cent of the UK’s top employers in 2016 have more than 250 work experience places. This further emphasises the desire of employers to engage with undergraduates, but also illustrates their willingness to provide opportunities for students to gain experience in the marketplace. Graduates with no work experience will find it hard to compete as companies want students to be able to provide practical demonstrations of their employability skills.

The table below lists the number of paid work experience places by industry or business sector.

Source: The Graduate Market in 2016, High Fliers Research

It is important to emphasise the need for work experience. Undertaking an internship or placement is a chance for the company to trial your ‘product’ and, if the company is impressed, you can receive preference for their graduate schemes. It is therefore essential to gain work experience relevant to a sector of interest.

Diversity and graduate recruitment

Organisations monitor diversity data to ensure that they are receiving applications from a range of candidates and can introduce measures where necessary to increase the diversity of applications and recruits from under-represented groups.

The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) found in its 2015 annual survey that in 2013/14 there was a significant disparity between females hired: 41.6% compared to 58.7% who graduated in the same period. This is not the same when compared to data related to Black, Asian and minority ethnic hires. The disparity between actual hires 15.6% and the number of undergraduates at 18.6% was very minimal.

The other dimension of diversity employers measured was socioeconomic background. Ninety-five per cent gauged socioeconomic background by capturing data on whether graduates were the first in their family to attend university. Other indicators included the attendance at state or private schooling (82.5%) and whether the graduate had claimed free school meals (62.5%).

Nearly 90% of graduate recruiters monitored levels of diversity with almost 80% having an active strategy to monitor and improve the levels of diversity in their graduate hires. It was found that 62.8% of employers focused their efforts on increasing the levels of diversity in relation to gender, compared to 43.9% that actively sought to increase the ethnic diversity of their staff.

Challenges facing graduate recruiters

To address the continued amount of graduate hires who reneged on graduate vacancies, which on average was 8.2% in 2015, employers made offers to 111 applicants for every 100 positions. The number of graduate hires who reneged once having accepted the position, increased with accounting and professional services to 12.9% and banking and financial services to 12.8%. But it is the engineering and industrial companies that offer the highest with 118.3% of offers for every 100 graduate positions, and 115% for the public sector. This suggests an underlying problem to attract talent or a shortage of candidates.

Industry or sector

Understanding your industry or sector is paramount. To be successful you need to be aware of the skills needed to compete in your chosen field. There are many ways to develop industry-specific knowledge. Joining a professional body can provide you with regular updates, e-bulletins and networking opportunities with professionals from your chosen industry. The careers service will have specific information on the sector and information on the various roles found within the industry.

Your degree will also provide you with a range of industry-specific links from websites to journals to industry speakers. Using the alumni is another avenue to not only find out about the industry but also possible opportunities for work experience in their organisation.

Your degree

Employability is embedded in the curriculum and your lectures and assessments will present current trends in your industry. Your assignments will include research into changes in the industry, company-specific case studies and future developments impacting the development of the sector. As a result, your course is one of the first sources of information about the industry.

Reading material will be targeted and provide an insight into industry trends, industry-sector journals and magazines and relevant websites. Lecturers will often invite industry professionals to deliver lectures on challenges facing the industry and changes in the macro-environment impacting the organisation.

Joining a professional body

All industries have a professional body or network which can provide an insight into the industry. Becoming a member is not as expensive as you may think (student membership can range from £20 to £40). Below is a sample of professional bodies and their membership fees.

Careers service

Don’t forget to use the wealth of experience available in your careers service. The advisors will have links with employers and can advise you on the expectations of graduate recruiters. There are also degree-specific graduate industry magazines that can provide you with additional information. The careers service will also organise a number of graduate and placement fairs, presenting opportunities for you to speak directly with employers.

Alumni network

You are not the first to graduate from your course, so learn from the experiences of others. Use the alumni to field questions about expectations in the graduate market. How hard was it to find a job? What was the interview process? How many jobs did you apply for and when? Alumni are a valuable source of information so either contact your alumni office or speak to lecturers about asking students from previous years to give a talk to the current cohort.

Company annual reports and websites

Annual reports and websites display current information about both the industry and the company. This is displayed in many formats including downloadable reports or video content. It’s a valuable online resource and can provide insight into both the company and the sector. Companies need to attract the brightest and the best, so it is in their interest to provide as much information as possible to attract the right candidates.

Review the website of the company you would like to work for. How informative is its website about the company or about the industry? Can you register for any e-bulletins or newsletters?

• A graduate scheme is an opportunity for companies to recruit the best graduate talent.
• Graduates are recruited from a wide range of degree disciplines into a wide range of roles.
• In 2016 graduate vacancies have risen to pre-recession levels.
• The majority of industries or business sectors are experiencing a growth in their recruitment targets, with public sector, banking and finance employers and engineering and industrial companies experiencing a significant increase.
• The number of graduate positions available in IT and telecommunications has seen an increase in 219% from 2006 to 2016. (High Fliers Research, 2016)
• More than 80% of graduate recruiters offered graduate vacancies in London, followed by 51% in the south east. (High Fliers Research, 2016)
• £30,000 was the average salary with investment banking topping the table at £47,000.
• Companies use internships and placements to trial your ‘product’ and, if impressed, will aim to offer you a place on their graduate scheme.
• Knowledge is power so make sure you research your industry and leading competitors. Be aware of developing industry challenges and trends.
• Research the professional body associated with your degree and find out what hints and tips they offer to students.
• Use all the resources available to you, such as the university careers service or alumni network.
• Company websites will provide you with an insight into the company and the industry.
• Learn from the experiences of previous graduates on your course. They will be able to give you their experience of the industry and advice on finding a job in it.