GCCA | Graduate Careers Council of Australia

Graduate Careers Australia

The Graduate Grapevine – Number 3, March 2006

How do Recruiters use University Careers Services?

Careers Services have always offered a direct link to the student population for those recruiters with the resources to develop relationships on specific campuses. As with all channels for reaching students, however, the way in which recruiters use Careers Services can be as important as the decision to partner with them in the first instance.

An audit was conducted to find out more about how recruiters currently use university Careers Services, exploring, among other things, why some are rated more highly than others. The audit also compared those media channels available through the Careers Service with those independent of them, in order to find out exactly where Careers Services have been adding value.

Overwhelmingly, recruiters showed support for the effectiveness of Careers Services’ online vacancy listings. This mirrors earlier results from a previous Barkers’ report (End of Term report) which showed that while 53 per cent of high-achieving students will now use their Careers Service in person,79 per cent reported using the online vacancy listings on Careers Services websites and 77 per cent used the online employer information.

Another remote service, email, is used both through the Careers Service and independently with almost identical effectiveness – showing that, regardless of sender, students are not saturated by email marketing but actually more sophisticated than ever before in managing their mail.

But perhaps of most interest [in 2005 was] the use of skills workshops as a recruitment tool.

End of Term report showed that, at the top 20 universities in the UK, 80 per cent of students did not attend a skills event in the first term of 2004-05. Coupled with the fact that the AGR Summer Review 2004 showed 11.5 per cent of all AGR member vacancies remaining unfilled due to inappropriate skill levels among candidates, a clear need has been identified to up-skill students in basics such as communication, leadership and commercial awareness.

And, encouragingly, recruiters have responded by offering skills workshops through the Careers Service as well as independent of them. In total, just under half of respondents had offered some kind of skills event. And, although this year 44 per cent of unfilled vacancies were still attributed to a paucity of skills, this does represent an improvement over last year. Clearly, the message is that if you can get students to understand the significance of them, skills events do work.

Equal weight was afforded to skills workshops whether run by recruiters themselves or by the Careers Service. So those universities and employers who have, for many years been involved in the running of skills workshops for students, you are on the right track according to the UK research!

In summary, even though some channels may work effectively without the direct involvement of Careers Services, the most progressive Careers Services are those that already understand when they can best be employed and when to advise recruiters to go it alone. In an age where students are increasingly reticent about seeking advice, it appears that Careers Services have been able to refocus their knowledge to provide recruiters themselves with guidance and with an invaluable channel for reaching the right students.

www.agr.org.uk                                                                                      www.barkers.co.uk