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Graduate Careers Australia

Graduate Grapevine - Number 6, December 2006

Graduate Outlook 2006: a snapshot

Graduate Careers Australia (GCA) conducted the Graduate Outlook Survey throughout August and September 2006 to obtain an overview of current practices and future trends in graduate recruitment in Australia and New Zealand. It is a continuation of similar surveys conducted in previous years but with an increased focus on key issues facing graduate recruiters at the current time. Responses were obtained from 127 graduate employers from various industries across Australia and New Zealand.

In 2006, the top three key selection criteria used for recruiting graduates were a graduate’s interpersonal and communication skills (57.5 per cent of respondents), academic qualifications (35.4 per cent) and work experience (27.6 per cent).

When asked about the characteristics that were least desirable in their applicant pool, 40.2 per cent of graduate employers listed a lack of communication and interpersonal skills, followed by a lack of drive, motivation, enthusiasm and initiative (25.2 per cent) and a graduate’s arrogance/selfishness/aggression/dominance (18.2 per cent).

Graduate Recruitment Trends

The survey results indicate that there has been an increase in the number of graduates recruited in 2006 relative to 2005. The number of graduates expected to be recruited in 2007 is expected to be higher again.

  • There has been a decrease in the proportion of graduate employers who employed between one and 20 graduates (48.2 per cent in 2006, down from 53.8 per cent in 2005), and this percentage is again expected to be lower in 2007 (42.5 per cent).
  • The proportion of employers recruiting more than 20 graduates is correspondingly increasing steadily, from 38.5 per cent in 2005 to 45.9 per cent in 2006, and expected to be 55.4 per cent in 2007.

Of the participating employers, 42.5 per cent stated they would have employed more graduates in 2006 if a higher number of appropriate graduates had been available. This is an increase of 9.2 percentage points from 2005 (33.3 per cent).

  • When broken down by industry, we see that at least 40 per cent of the employers from the Construction/Mining/Engineering, Government and Defence and Communication/Technology industries would have employed more graduates if more were available
  • This is a change from 2005 where 40.0 per cent of employers from the Construction/Mining/Engineering industry (up to 55.0 per cent in 2006), and 42.1 per cent of employers from the Accounting/Finance industry (37.5 per cent in 2006) would have employed more graduates if more had been available.
  • The biggest shift is from Communication/Technology graduates where 43.8 per cent of employers would have employed more graduates in 2006 had more been available (up from 20.0 per cent in 2005).

Overall, 56.5 per cent of all organisations stated that they had had some trouble sourcing candidates from particular disciplines in their 2006 graduate recruitment campaign. This is an increase from 49.3 per cent in 2005.

  • Of these organisations, when examined by broad education disciplines, 37.1 per cent of these employers had had problems sourcing graduates from Engineering/Surveying disciplines (an increase from 36.4 per cent in 2005)
  • The proportion of employers with problems sourcing IT graduates increased from 9.1 per cent in 2005 to 22.9 per cent in 2006, with Mathematics/Statistics/Science graduates increasing from 6.1 per cent in 2005 to 18.6 per cent in 2006.
  • The proportion of employers not able to source enough Accounting/Economics graduates decreased from 33.3 per cent in 2005 to 24.3 per cent in 2006.

Regarding their graduate recruitment prospects for 2007, 40.9 per cent of employers felt that it would be more difficult to meet their recruitment targets in 2007 than in 2006, an increase of 5.2 per cent from the 35.7 per cent in the 2005 survey.

  • Just over half (54.3 per cent) felt that it would be about the same (58.6 per cent for 2005).
  • 4.7 per cent thought it would be easier in 2007 to meet their recruitment targets than in 2006 (down from 5.7 per cent in 2005).

When examined by organisational size, we see that the smaller employers (with less than 500 staff members) are slightly more concerned about meeting their recruitment targets in the following year than they were last year (38.9 per cent think it will be more difficult to meet their targets next year, versus 31.8 per cent who felt the same last year). Overall, larger organisations are still more concerned about future recruitment (41.8 per cent) than smaller organisations (38.9 per cent) in 2006.

Graduate Attributes

Participating graduate employers were asked to record what, other than relevant qualifications, they considered to be the key selection criteria they used when recruiting graduates.

  • Interpersonal and Communication Skills were recorded by 57.5 per cent of participating graduate employers as key selection criteria when recruiting graduates, followed by Academic Qualifications (35.4 per cent) and Work Experience (27.6 per cent).

Employers were also asked to record what they felt to be the least desirable characteristics they would like to see in their pool of candidates.

  • Lack of interpersonal and communication skills was deemed by 40.2 per cent of graduate employers to be the least desirable characteristic in a graduate candidate, followed by lack of drive and motivation (25.2 per cent) and arrogance and selfishness (18.1 per cent).

Graduate recruiters were also asked to rank applicants (poor through to excellent) on a variety of characteristics.

  • ‘Academic results’ were rated as good or excellent by 92.2 per cent of graduate employers.
  • 80.6 per cent rated the ‘level of extracurricular activities’, and 75.7 per cent rating ‘communication skills’ as good or excellent. Applicants ‘knowledge of organisation’ was rated as fair, or poor by over half (55.8 per cent) of the participating organisations.

Issues for Graduate Recruiters

Employers were asked to rate what they believed to be the most crucial issues in graduate recruitment, both today, and in the future.

  • Nearly three-quarters of graduate employers (72.1 per cent) felt that ‘recruitment of the “right” graduates in a competitive market’ was a crucial issue in graduate recruitment at present, with 65.4 per cent thinking this is also a crucial issue for the future.
  • ‘Branding your organisation to campuses’ was also ranked highly (68.3 per cent of employers felt this was an issue today, with 53.8 per cent in the future).
  • ‘Retention of the “right” graduates in a competitive market’ ranked highly for both today, and the future (63.5 per cent and 68.3 per cent respectively).

Retention of graduates was identified in the 2005 and 2006 Graduate Outlook Surveys by many employers as one of the major issues in graduate employment. In the 2006 survey, employers were asked to rate a number of factors on their importance to a graduate's decision to change employer.

  • ‘Organisational culture’ and a graduate’s ‘relationship with their direct manager/supervisor’ (98.1 per cent and 97.1 per cent respectively) were deemed by employers to be the most important factors impacting on a graduate’s decision to change employers.
  • ‘Lack of loyalty and commitment’, and ‘seeking experience in a different sector’ were deemed to be the least important, with 63.0 per cent and 59.2 per cent respectively of recruiters ranking these issues ‘Not important’.

When asked to rate the support given for graduate recruitment in their organisation, over 80 per cent of employers ranked the support received from their Human Resources department, Line Managers, Senior Management or CEO/Senior Executives as good or excellent.

  • The Human Resources department was ranked as offering the most support with 56.6 per cent of employers indicating their support as excellent.
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