Graduate Recruitment Blog

The AAGE being their usual helpful selves released the 2011 Careers Fair Schedule last week. This is only my 3rd year on the Grad recruitment campaign trail coming up but so far each year has brought different formats in terms of the schedule the fairs are held within.

The 2011 Careers Fair Schedule

The easiest way to list out the schedule is chronologically grouped by state so here we go:

Victoria

• Monday 7^th March – The Big Meet Melbourne
• Tuesday 8^th March – Victoria University
• Wednesday 9^th March – University of Melbourne
• Thursday 10^th March – RMIT
• Tuesday 15^th March – La Trobe University
• Wednesday 16^th March – Swinburne University
• Thursday 17^th March – Monash University
• Friday 18^th March – Ballarat
• Monday 21^st March – Deakin University

NSW

• 3^rd March Macquarie University
• Friday 11^th March – The Big Meet Sydney
• Monday 14^th March – University of Sydney
• Friday 8^th April – Unviersity of Wollongong
• Monday 11^th April – UTS
• Tuesday 12^th April – UWS (Engineering & IT)
• Wednesday 13^th April – UNSW
• Friday 15^th April – UWS
• Monday 18^th April – Newcastle

South Australia

• Tuesday 22^nd March – Uni SA
• Wednesday 23^rd March – Flinders University (Science, Engineering)
• Wednesday 23^rd March – Uni of Adelaide (Business & Arts)
• Thursday 24^th March – Flinders University (Law)
• Thursday 24^th March – Uni of Adelaide (Science & IT)

Western Australia

• Tuesday 22^nd March – The Big Meet Perth
• Wednesday 23^rd March – Curtin University
• Thursday 7^th April – Murdoch University

Queensland

• Tuesday 22^nd March – Central Queensland University
• Thursday 24^th March – Sunshine Coast
• Friday 25^th March – University of Southern Queensland
• Monday 28^th March – QUT
• Tuesday 29^th March – Griffith (Nathan Campus)
• Wednesday 30^th March – Univeristy of Queensland
• Thursday 31^st March – Griffith (Gold Coast)
• Thursday 31^st March – Bond University
• Tuesday 5^th April – James Cook University (Townsville)
• Wednesday 6^th April – James Cook University (Cairns)
• Northern Territory
• Wednesday 30^th March – Charles Darwin University

Tasmania

• Friday 11^th March – University of Tasmania

ACT

• Friday 25^th March – Tertiary to Work(ANU, UC, ACU)

Links to the downloadable PDF versions of the careers fair timetable can be found on the AAGE site here: http://www.aage.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63&Itemid=71

Major Changes

Length of the Season

The biggest change to the schedule that you can see is the length of the season which is around 2 weeks longer than it was this year in 2010 with the last careers fair finishing on the 18^th of April. This is going to mean a very long travelling period for employers who do go to the majority of these events or else the alternative which is to cut back on the numbers of fairs attended to avoid 6 – 7 weeks out of the office and on the road.

From reviewing the application close dates from a number of our client campaigns this year, many employers will have closed their application period before 5 of the larger NSW universities have even held their careers fairs. It is worth noting that all of the AAGE organised Big Meet fairs fall in March which may help to get in front of some of the graduates you may not be able to see due to the late dates of other NSW universities specifically.

NSW Fair Timeline Spread

NSW fairs start on the 3^rd of March with Macquarie University, then the next NSW fairs are held in Mid March with The Big Meet Sydney & University of Sydney. The next NSW fairs are between the 8^th and 18^th of April. This makes attending the NSW based fairs a close to 7 week exercise so it will be interesting to see how this impacts in terms of employer attendances.

Easter

Easter is a lot later on in the year for 2011 compared to 2010 which was very early in April. In 2011 it is very late in April. We have noticed that the Easter break is a major trigger of job hunting activity for graduates in Australia due to a large academic workload in the run up to the Uni Easter Break. It may be worth taking this into account if you are able to have any flexibility around your application opening dates to be able to receive applications at that time of the year.

The Verdict

All in all, this is the 3^rd schedule that I’ve seen in my 3 seasons in the industry so far and each year the schedule has been vastly different than the last. The AAGE report on careers fair attendances has recently been released and it is interesting to see that overall, more organisations are attending these fairs, however attendances as a whole were lower in 2010 compared to 2009 so this longer schedule for 2011 will change these numbers again I think and we’ll be keeping a close eye on the next report to see how this scheduling format has impacted attendances by employers.

Today is the kick off of the 2010 Careers Fair season for Australian University students and it is also the start of GradConnection’s 2010 careers fair tour. We thought we’d put up the schedule on the blog so if you’re a graduate employer, you can remind yourself where you are meant to be at any given day and if you’re a job hunting student, you can figure out when employers will be visiting you on campus.

The National Schedule

So here we go, we have 38 careers fairs happening across 7 states and territories, there are going to be some very travel weary grad recruiters out there by the end of March.

To check out when the careers fairs are you can download the full schedule here.

GradConnection on Campus 2010

We thought we’d post up which fairs that we’d be attending so that you can come and say hi to who ever from the team is representing on the day and put a face to the name and the site. We’d be keen to see what you think about our new site and if you have any suggestions about how we can do things better we’d love to hear them.

We’re starting out this year today in Perth, here is our careers fair schedule:

Perth

Murdoch University – 3rd March
The Big Meet – 4th March

NSW

The Big Meet – 12th March
University of Newcastle – 25th March

Victoria

Swinburne University – 17th March
The Big Meet – 18th March

ACT/Canberra

Tertiary to work – 26th March

Queensland

Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus – 26th March
Bond University – 26th March
QUT – 29th March
University of Queensland – 31st March

As I write this, Dave and Mike are on the plane from Sydney to Perth to attend Murdoch and The Big Meet (Perth edition). We unfortunately can’t make it to the Curtin fair that we attended last year as it is in the following week and we have to be back in Sydney for the NSW version of The Big Meet.

After this we are down in Melbourne next to go to Swinburne and then the inaugural Victorian Big Meet which will be an interesting experience.

The following week is the beginning of the home stretch with a trip up to Newcastle University followed by a trek down to Canberra the following day. Mike and Gwilym have unfortunately drawn the short straw and while we’re down in Canberra will be forced to travel up to the Gold Coast to attend the Griffith Gold Coast and Bond University careers fairs. We’re looking forward to checking out the Gold Coast fairs as they were two that we didn’t manage to get to last year and have heard good things about the students who study in the GC.

The last two that we’ll be attending are QUT and the University of Queensland careers fairs. We were at QUT last year which was a good experience. We had an unlimited supply of Easter Eggs from the guys on the Aldi Graduate Program Stand and got some awesome video game posters from the team at THQ. We haven’t been to the University of Queensland fair before so will be looking forward to experiencing this as it was the 2^nd largest careers fair in Australia last year with 137 exhibitors.

Why come and talk to us????

If you’re at any of the careers fairs we are at, come and say hi and tell us about what you’ve studied and what career paths you’re interested in. We’ve actively surveyed over 45 major Australian Graduate Employers over the past 6 months so we’d be more than happy to provide you with some guidance on who the best employer for you might be and can even let you know if they’re at the career fair on the day so you can go speak to them in the flesh.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants Employment Evenings

If you are a soon to be accounting graduate, The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia is holding a number of accounting focussed careers evenings in all of the major state capitals in Australia. All of the employers will be members of The Institute, and this is a very worthwhile use of your time as every employer at the event will have accounting opportunities for you.

Check out the schedule of events here to find the one that is easiest for you to attend.

If you are attending the NSW Chartered Accountants event, we will be covering this for a follow up blog post so stay tuned.

You can also follow the Institute on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date.

The Big Meet

I thought the Big Meet careers fairs were also worth a specific mention, as they are slightly different to your usual university organised careers fair. These fairs are open to all students from all universities to attend which means if for whatever reason you can’t make it to your own careers fair at your university, you have a backup plan where you can attend one of the Big Meets in either Perth (March 4^th), Sydney (March 12^th) or Melbourne (March 18^th). To find out more about these events and to pre-register your attendance, click here.

You can also follow The Big Meet on Twitter and Facebook which will keep you updated.

Good Luck

Good luck out there everyone whether you’re a grad recruiter or a job hunting graduate, we will catch you out on campus.

Well lately I read another story published here in the Australian press (The Age) that outlines that around one third of recent graduates are struggling to find work in China. The article quotes a representative of the Ministry of Education saying this is the highest rate of unemployment among new graduates since the start of recording statistics in 1996.

So why are these graduates having a tough time finding jobs?

One of the main reasons that graduates are finding it hard to secure graduate jobs in china is the huge growth in the number of graduates completing degrees at Chinese Universities, growing from around 1 million per year in 1998 through to the present 6 million per year in 2009 making competition fierce (check out the picture of a Chinese careers fair on our previous article here).

Some extra insights into this can be found from a chat I had a few weeks ago with a contact, Yvon, who works at an employer branding agency based in the Netherlands who works closely with multi-national graduate employers based in China.

She told me that even though there are so many graduate job hunters out in the market, multi-national companies are still battling to attract the right graduates to their organisations. Yvon mentioned that only around 10% of Chinese graduates have the right skills and academic background to obtain graduate positions in a multi-national organisation and this is backed up by findings from Mckinsey.

The cause seems to largely be from a mis-match between what universities are teaching students and what Chinese employers need from their graduate level employees.

The return of the Sea Turtles

Trends to watch out for are the return of the sea turtles to asia. A sea turtle is a slang name for a Chinese university student studying overseas. The reverse brain drain, the return of the sea turtles to china. Turtle in chinese has the same meaning or is pronounced the same as ‘coming home’.

Poaching graduates from Hong Kong and Singapore where university curriculums are more in tune with what multi-national organisations are looking for. Chinese employers are often facing a vacuum of talent for key positions. Yvon outlined that she has head of fast promotion of through to senior management level for professionals based in Singapore and Hong Kong when they relocate back to China far above where they were operating in their previous roles.

There is also the potential for the focus to turn to Chinese university students completing degrees in countries like Australia and New Zealand and try to lure them back to China.

Well it has come to my attention in the last fortnight that the careers fair schedule for 2010 has been released so I thought that it would be worth a small blog post to outline the schedule for next year to start people thinking about the planning process. We went to our first careers fairs this year attending 15 careers fairs in March and it was an interesting experience. I think it took me personally about a month to catch up on sleep afterwards so we may try to put together a careers fair survival guide later in the year so stay tuned.

The 2010 Australian Careers Fair Schedule

You can have a look at the schedule, set by NAGCAS and listed here by the AAGE (who actually have a new look site, check it out) here.

If you compare the 2010 schedule to the 2009 schedule you can see that the 2010 schedule is much more condensed. 2009 had 34 careers fairs spread across 25 business days but with Easter being a week earlier in 2010, the 35 careers fairs have been fit into a 20 business day period meaning there are some days with careers fairs occurring in 3 different states in a single day.

GradConnection on Campus in 2010

We’ve had a look at the schedule and have had to make some tough choices about where we are going to go next year and have pencilled in the following 12 careers fairs:

Date	Careers Fair
Wednesday, 3 March 2010	Murdoch – Perth
Thursday, 4 March 2010	The Big Meet – Perth
Friday, 5 March 2010	UTAS – Tasmania
Tuesday, 9 March 2010	RMIT – Melbourne
Thursday, 11 March 2010	Monash (VIC)
Friday, 12 March 2010	The Big Meet – Sydney
Wednesday, 17 March 2010	Swinburne – Melbourne
Thursday, 18 March 2010	The Big Meet – Melbourne
Thursday, 25 March 2010	Newcastle – NSW
Friday, 26 March 2010	ACT Careers Fair
Monday, 29 March 2010	QUT – Brisbane
Wednesday, 31 March 2010	University of Queensland – Brisbane

These fairs are a mix of the fairs we really enjoyed attending this year in 2009, and some new fairs we missed out on attending last year that we’re keen to check out. The first week is going to be tough with a big commute from Sydney to Perth to attend Murdoch and the Perth Big Meet and then a flight back cross country over to Tasmania over night to attend the UTAS fair.

We’re also going to be researching the careers fairs being held in the regional campuses and we’ll keep you updated if we lock down some locations and dates.