Some things have changed though; recruitment is about managing risk, and companies are more risk averse than they were, meaning that they are even more likely to leave a vacancy unfilled than take a chance on a ‘marginal’ candidate. Graduate programmes are expensive, so intakes are becoming smaller, and they will seek to minimize risk by offering places to previous employees (e.g. interns) first.

One of the costs that companies are looking to avoid is using paid advertising and recruitment agencies. This is being replaced with a greater reliance on free advertising (e.g. University Careers websites), cheaper advertising (job boards) and making the most of CV pools generated via speculative applications/networking. This impacts on where graduates need to look and what they need to do, which in turn means that careers offices need to alter their messages.

There is a definite trend towards employers advertising fixed term contracts (up to 11 months) for recent graduates to apply for, and labeling these (confusingly) ‘internships’. This is seen as a low cost/low risk for companies to take on graduates, safe in the knowledge that if individual performance and/or business outlook is not positive then the contract can be pulled, or if  successful, lead to contract extensions or permanent job offers.

So given that there are jobs out there, albeit in different forms and promoted differently, what can graduates do to beat the competition? 

From one point of view this is difficult to answer as employers all want slightly different things from graduates, but it’s relatively safe to say that there are a number of core qualities that almost all employers are looking for, those who:

- can communicate, persuade, and negotiate, verbally and in writing, with a wide variety of people

- can work positively in a team, and are able and keen to take responsibility

- have the ability to analyse data, spot the crux of an issue and solve problems; and most importantly

- are driven, motivated and resilient; it is those who are able to take knocks and bounce back stronger and more determined who are going to have the most successful long-term careers.

Of course it’s easy to quote transferable skills and buzz words, but what that boils down to is that graduates and students firstly need to understand themselves as much as possible – what they are good at, have the potential to be good at, what motivates them and, just as importantly, what they can’t stand, even in the short-term. 

Some people are naturally self-aware and reflective, but the majority of us need help with this, which is where careers advisers, life coaches and annual appraisals come in.

Once the graduate understands themselves they can move onto understanding the career options in front of them, such as the differences between career paths, industries, companies, etc. This requires research – primary research, such as talking to as many people as possible about their jobs, and secondary research, such as reading relevant industry or sector journals. 

This can be a hard slog on top of the work that is already needed for their degree but it is a lack of awareness of these two things (self and career options) that leads to people being in the wrong job no matter what the economic climate. 

The next thing a graduate must do is understand the recruitment game. When I was a graduate recruiter the majority of students I met were bad at playing this game, and that was because they hadn’t engaged with the services of their Careers Office, chatted to employers, and read the plethora of books and websites devoted to self-marketing, interview skills and the like. 

And with any game, once you know the rules and the tactics you only get good at it after you’ve honed your skills through practice.

It remains vital to have an action packed CV, both to compete with the other applicants and because competency based recruitment is based on the premise that if a competency has been demonstrated in the past it is more likely to be demonstrated in the future.

This means a CV that encompasses all, or at least most of, the following:

- part-time work (of whatever kind)
- responsibility in clubs/societies/sport teams
- voluntary work/fundraising/independent travel
- short-term work experience (e.g. internships) linked to career interest; and
- active membership in the relevant professional body.

All this communicates drive, motivation, and resilience, aids self-awareness and gives them evidence to use in interviews, so makes it much more likely that they will get to at least the first interview.

Over the last few years there has been a tendency for students to concentrate on achieving a 2:1 and minimizing their debt levels, leaving job applications until after they have graduated. For those who find themselves graduated and unemployed it’s vital that they keep themselves busy, otherwise their CV will start to suffer and they are likely to become despondent. They should:

- do any kind of work (e.g. temping, which will help them experience different company cultures), not forgetting to leave time to undertake their job search

- keep up-to-date with their chosen career area (for city finance they could manage shadow investment portfolios and read the FT, if HR they can track and understand the impact of the latest employment trends and legislation, and so on)

- self-finance professional qualifications, as long as it’s affordable and relevant; and

- build and manage their network through attending events, talking to their acquaintances, joining and using business networking sites such as linkedin.com; most jobs don’t get advertised, so without doing this they will miss many opportunities.

To conclude, it is worthwhile reflecting that there may be (real or perceived) advantages in being a recent graduate:

- cheap (compared to redundant professionals)
- less tired and cynical than those employees with survivor guilt
- flexible with respect to duties, location, and hours of work; and
- a relatively blank canvas, moldable to the new realities of working in a recession hit economy.

And of course they are able to take the long term view; with a typical recent graduate in their early 20s they will have careers of at least 40 years ahead of them, so a slow start is not the end of the world.