Graduates’ job service passes key milestones

A recruitment service which aims to help university leavers stay in Yorkshire to find work is celebrating getting more than 20,000 people into graduate-level jobs.

Graduates Yorkshire has also passed two other milestones as it now has more than 50,000 people registered on its website and is celebrating its fifth anniversary – on Yorkshire Day.

The service is available to any university graduates who live in the region and works to ensure that people leaving Yorkshire universities are matched up to the best job opportunities locally.

Yorkshire’s higher education sector produces about 40,000 new graduates every year but has the lowest level of graduate retention in the North of England.

Almost half the region’s university leavers find work elsewhere with one in 12 going to London.

Graduates Yorkshire has about 5,800 employers registered on its site but wants to work with more small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Chief executive Martin Edmondson said building up links with SMEs was key to retaining more of the region’s talent.

He said: “We work hard to raise awareness about ourselves through bodies like chambers of commerce and the Institute of Directors.

“It is always a challenge to reach more small and medium-sized businesses but they are really the life-blood of this site. This is where a lot of the jobs go to.

“I have been invited to take part in a panel for the Government looking at the issue of graduate recruitment at SMEs. The reason this panel exists is that there can sometimes be a disconnect between the two.”

Mr Edmondson said graduates were often drawn to large internship or graduate schemes run by larger employers, but in some parts of the country such as Yorkshire the majority of graduate 
level work could be found at SMEs.

He said: “If you work at a smaller company although you will have your job title you are likely to be expected to do a lot more and will see a lot more of the business and how it operates. You will also have more access to senior management at a company which will give you an insight into the decisions the business makes.”

Over the past five years, Graduates Yorkshire has seen the number of registered users accessing its site increase by about 10,000 a year. It now has more than 50,000 people, 90 per cent of whom are said to have some work experience.

Its database includes graduates who have studied elsewhere but now live in the region.

Mr Edmondson said: “We now have among our registered users a graduate from every university in the country.

“We decided not to set an age limit on who the site was open to. Some people will be those who have already had jobs through Graduates Yorkshire while others will be recent graduates or students who are already looking at what is available.”

About 70 per cent of the vacancies placed on the site are filled by Graduates Yorkshire candidates meaning it has helped more than 20,000 people into work.

Graduates Yorkshire has also run its own internship programme which placed 130 people into posts across the region between 2009 and last year of whom 85 per cent went on to secure full-time work.

This programme has stopped as it was being funded by the now defunct regional development agency Yorkshire Forward.

However, Graduates Yorkshire is now helping individual universities such as Sheffield Hallam to run their own internship programmes.

It has also branched out beyond Yorkshire by creating a company called Gradcore which has so far worked with 30 universities across the country to help them ensure they are equipping graduates with employability skills.

Gradcore has also just carried out a recruitment exercise for the British Council helping to appoint 19 young people into education and diplomatic posts in locations such as New York, Mumbai and Nairobi. It received more than 20,000 applicants for these positions.

Graduates Yorkshire can also run internship programmes for smaller companies which do not have the infrastructure to be able to do it themselves.

It is working with four universities in the region – Bradford, Huddersfield, Leeds Metropolitan and York St John – to create internal internship programmes which will see students working on campus to boost their employability skills.

Mr Edmondson said universities now had an increased focus on improving people’s prospects in the job market.

He also believes that running internship programmes can benefit both an employer and a graduate who is more likely to be directly employed or move into another job as a result.

Graduates Yorkshire also runs an annual employment conference which has grown from a small event to attracting more than 100 people this year. The event in May focused on job opportunities outside London amid fears that graduates have unrealistic salary expectations which puts off smaller companies in places like Yorkshire from looking to recruit university leavers.

Source: Yorkshirepost.co.uk, Wednesday 1st August 2012