A new report by the Association for Graduate Recruiters (AGR) has revealed some 32 per cent of commercial property businesses struggled to find enough graduates to meet recruitment targets last year after complaining that graduate skill levels often “did not meet their requirements”.
Figures show the number of commercial property organisations failing to hire enough students increased by almost a quarter in just 12 months, despite record numbers of graduates finishing.
Some employers said the quality of applications was “not always good enough” and others did not have the time and resources to re-train graduates who joined lacking skills.
One company said that the panic for jobs meant graduates were not diligent enough when applying for jobs and making too many mistakes on the applications. The disclosure was made despite the fact that rising numbers of university leavers are being left jobless or forced to accept low-skilled positions as shelf stackers, cleaners and bar staff to make ends meet.
The report also went onto highlight that they expect the total number of graduate jobs is expected to drop in 2012 down 2.1 per cent on the previous year, with most public and private sector employers citing concerns over the economic environment.
However, Chief Executive of the AGR, Carl Gilleard, said the off-set by two years of rising vacancy levels should be seen as: “Good news against an uncertain national, European and global economy.”
He said: “With the job market intrinsically linked to business confidence, I am cautiously optimistic for graduate recruitment in 2012 and it is encouraging to see that only a slight drop is predicted.”
The AGR report was compiled after a survey of 214 major UK employers including Barclays, IBM, BAE systems, BP, McDonalds, Tesco, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Unilever. Collectively, the commercial property businesses advertised a total of 21,325 new positions during 2010/11 recruitment year-up by 1.7 per cent compared with 12 months earlier.
Despite the rise, some 32.3 per cent of employers said they were unable to meet their recruitment targets, with numbers increasing by almost a quarter in a year. One employer from the public sector said the quality of applications was “not always good”.
The employer said: “When we’ve got a starting point of around 1,000 applications, I’d be really surprised if I couldn’t fill six vacancies, whereas if I was looking for 30 I might struggle a bit.”
The largest recruitment gap came from the transport and logistics and engineering industries saying they had missed recruitment targets by an amazing 80 per cent. One employer said they frequently received good applications from international engineers but not British students.
A representative from an accountancy firm warned of inaccuracies on application forms, adding: “There’s a bit of panic out there so graduates are perhaps spending less time on their applications.” The report also said that the average starting salary remained at £25,000 last year-the third year of stagnation in a row.
However, there was some good news for graduates as the average wage for graduates is expected to rise by four per cent over the next year.
In a further conclusion, the AGR suggested that growing numbers of students would be attracted by two-year university degree courses in coming years. But the report said employers: “Expressed some concern that students will be prevented from developing skills due to heavy workloads” imposed by the shorter course.
Mr Gilleard said: “Employers do value graduates that have work experience and those students that have undertaken a year in industry as part of a four-year degree.”
He further added: “Consequently, there are genuine concerns surrounding students undertaking two year degrees as they do not have as much time to gain workplace experience.”
