Employment options for graduates do exist
Neal Lucas, Managing Director of the leading executive search and selection company Neal Lucas Recruitment, says while graduate trainee positions are scarce, students should consider all options available to them.
Mr Lucas, who is also a member of the CBI Northern Ireland’s Employment Affairs Committee, said:
“Graduate recruitment prospects in Northern Ireland continue to suffer from a recruitment freeze further up the executive chain.
“While recruitment continues for “critical” positions, many executives are still remaining in their current roles until the gloom recedes. This has a knock-on effect for graduates with many companies freezing graduate recruitment schemes, including our largest employer the Civil Service.
“A good barometer of the job market is the Belfast Telegraph’s Job Finder which last night advertised only one graduate position at a time when you would expect many companies to be recruiting.
“With fewer jobs advertised there is much greater competition for positions.
“A UK-wide graduate recruitment survey released this week by High Fliers Research, highlighted that the top graduate employers were receiving 45 applications for every position advertised.
“Graduates that base themselves in Northern Ireland have a smaller employer pool to choose from compared to the rest of the UK. Here graduate positions are scarce as the vast majority of companies are SMEs, which tend to lack formal graduate schemes.
“Many of the executive positions that I would be tasked with filling tend to be graduates that wish to return home after spending some years gaining experience in larger commerce centres such as London, where better salaries and opportunities exist for graduates.
“In Northern Ireland many postgrads tend to start in junior positions with SME companies and then progress up the company ladder.
“There has always been a healthy supply of graduates in Northern Ireland and as they tend to join the workforce at entry level, I would therefore not envisage a significant reduction in salaries offered.”
“An excellent in road to graduate employment is the work-based learning initiatives such as DEL’s INTRO Programme, Invest NI’s E2 Programme, the Graduate Acceleration Programme for unemployed graduates, or scholarships from the CBI/IBEC. These provide graduates with valuable work experience that in a high percentage of case leads to employment.”