Latest news: Graduate jobs taken by interns

A third of graduate jobs are taken by interns who have had previous experience with the company, according to new research on the graduate jobs market released today. 11/01/2012

Graduates without work experience are not as attractive to employers and have ‘little to no chance’ of landing roles with top graduate recruiters, according to the Graduate Market in 2012 report released by High Fliers Research .

More than 50% of the 100 recruiters surveyed said that graduates without previous work experience were unlikely to make it through the selection process for graduate programmes.

The report also shows that the number of graduate vacancies is set to rise by 6.4% this year, an increase from the 2.8% growth seen in 2011. However, with an extra 50,000 graduates expected to enter the job market this year, competition for roles is set to intensify once again.

Martin Birchall, managing director of High Fliers Research, warned that the backlog of graduates seeking jobs had been building up for years.

‘It was made much worse by the recession, but if you look at the graduate market as a whole there are somewhere between 150,000-160,000 graduate level vacancies each year,’ said Martin. 

‘This year we’re on course for about 330,000 graduates to leave university. Inevitably, in recent years, tens of thousands of people who wanted a graduate job didn’t find work.

‘In a highly competitive graduate job market, new graduates who’ve not had any work experience at all during their time at university have little hope of landing a well-paid job with a leading employer, irrespective of the academic results they achieve or the university they’ve attended,’ he added.