Graduates turn blind eye to small business enterprises and social channels for job seeking

Graduates and SMEs need to seek forums and channels to maximise opportunities, says Iconnyx.

UK graduates are missing obvious opportunities, with only one in five graduates proactively seeking jobs with SMEs, and only one in ten using social media to find employment.

Further research into graduate recruitment* and possibilities for why SMEs struggle to find fresh talent, has been identified by Iconnyx, UK SME and Managed Services provider.

Knowledge collated from UK SMEs and recruitment agencies, as well as campaigns polling businesses across LinkedIn and Twitter identified the following issues:

Only 25% of graduates proactively sought SME opportunities, perceiving that larger organisations offered more opportunities and stability

Only 10% of graduates have LinkedIn profiles and are using the network to find opportunities

Only 1 in 3 graduates had heard of LinkedIn or been advised by their university to research the social network

“The issues for both ‘top talent’ graduates and growing SMEs alike are frustrating in that there is no obvious forum for the two to connect and ‘sell’ to each other,” said Tim Walker, managing director. “Universities need to alert their talent to the opportunities that exist in UK small to medium businesses as well as channels for reaching them. It’s frustrating to see that high-growth companies typically lose out on the best of graduate talent for these reasons. Universities should invite SMEs and networks like LinkedIn into the student community far earlier.”

In response, Duncan Cheatle, the founder of The Supper Club - a club for Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs has launched the Rise To Challenge, a 6-week competition for students and graduates to learn practical business skills and gain valuable insight into running a business. The challenge offers unique prizes: one-off internships (for example shadowing a CEO), jobs and training. Iconnyx has already sponsored five internships for 2012, where graduates can work directly alongside the management team with visibility of sales, marketing and technical support operations.

“There is nothing more exciting or eye-opening than the chance to start out your career working alongside founders and CEOs,” said Duncan Cheatle. “UK SMEs are not reaching their fair share of top university talent. Rise To is a platform for graduates and SMEs to bring the very best to one another.”

Source: Realwire.com, Monday 19th December 2011

Graduates urged not to overlook opportunities within small firms

According to a recent survey conducted by business services provider Iconnyx, the vast majority of graduate jobseekers are overlooking job opportunities within small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), despite the clear benefits to working within these organisations.

The study was conducted across thirty recruitment consultancies in the UK and found that just 3% of these agencies believed that graduates favoured smaller organisations over larger companies.

“What a lot of graduates don’t realise is that gaining employment within an SME can often be more beneficial to their careers," FDM Group Marketing Manager, Nabila Salem, said.

In addition, a whopping 68% of the graduates questioned for the Iconnyx survey stated that they would take the first job role offered to them, rather than the right one.

Source: Marcus Leach, Freshbusinessthinking.com, Tuesday 22nd November 2011