Graduate Recruitment Blog

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.

Merry Christmas

I’m sure a lot of you have already taken off on your Christmas and New Year’s break but hopefully a dedicated few are still around to check out this brief post. The Team at GradConnection would like to wish both graduates and graduate recruiters a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We’ve had a massive year getting really involved helping graduates and graduate employers connect in 2009 and 2010 is looking like it will be even more intense.

To the Employers

Thanks a lot to all of the employers on the GradConnection site in 2009 for your support and it’s been a pleasure working with all of you and look forward to continuing this into 2010.

We also have to say welcome on board to a number of new employers that are going to be going live on the GradConnection site in 2010 as well, we’re really excited about getting you all live.

To the Graduates

Thanks to all of you who have come to visit the GradConnection site throughout 2009. We hope it has been valuable to you as a tool to do some research on some potential employers before you have made your applications. Congratulations to all of you that have secured places on graduate programs for 2010 and good luck to all of you out there who are still on the job hunt.

We have improved the site massively in the second half of the year based on feedback from a number of you out there so a massive thanks to everyone who took the time to send us suggestions and ideas on how we could improve the site.

In 2010 we have gone out and found even more graduate employers for you to check out on our site and hope this makes it even more of a useful resource.

To our Partners

It’s been great working with a number of different organisations in partnership, we’ve learnt so much about the industry this year by working with a number of other companies that work in the graduate recruitment space. Thanks for all of your insights and knowledge.

So all the best to you all for the festive season everyone and we hope that 2010 will be a great year for you all.

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.

Richard keeps writing them so we keep posting them, this story’s been published in the Canberra Times along with the Financial Review over the past week.

Graduates Turn to Canberra for Future Graduate Careers

Canberra is showing strong potential as a career destination for Australian University graduates according to new data released by careers website GradConnection.

From a national sample of 16,000 University graduates and students, a career in Government is the third most popular job choice across Australia, attracting 10.1% of those polled. More popular than a career in Government as a choice for grads are Accountancy (no. 1) and Engineering and Mining (no. 2).

However, among graduates attending Canberra universities, the number looking for a career in Government rockets to 23.6% and is by far the most popular career choice. Following Government, the most popular careers for Canberra-educated graduates are the IT industry (10.9%), Accounting (9%) and Law (7.9%).

Also pointing to good news for Canberra are the numbers of university graduates who regard Canberra as potentially a good place to work. Of the 16,000 graduates in the GradConnection poll, just 3% are from Canberra. But among the other 97% in the poll, 18% are open to the idea of their future career being in Canberra.

“The data suggests that Canberra is a more popular option for graduates to start their careers than has been previously thought,” said GradConnection director Dan Purchas. “It makes sense that graduates looking for careers in Government would consider Canberra as a good place to work, but the City is also appearing prominently in our data among some other major professions.”

If you want to find out more about Richard check him out @ www.rmgcoms.com.au, you can also follow him on twitter @richardmcg.

GradConnection – Home of the Canberra GradMaker and Government GradMaker.

Continuing on from our video shoot is Mike Casey’s video on the IT graduate sector using information gathered in the first 6 months of 2009 from the GradConnection site & the below press release written by Richard McGowan of RMG Communications.

Graduate Employers and Grads use the internet to expand job searches

University graduates rank business analysis and project management as the two most popular jobs in the IT industry, according to new data from GradConnection, the website where companies can interact with university students and graduates about employment opportunities.

From preferences offered by 16,000 university students, the GradConnection data shows a total of 9.6% of graduates are seeking careers in IT, placing the sector as the fifth most favoured industry behind Accounting (13.6%), Engineering/Mining (11.2%), Government (10.1%) and sales/marketing (9.9%). The GradConnection data covers graduate input across 15 Australian industry sectors.

Within the IT sector, the most in demand jobs are business analysis (43%), project management (38.4%), development (35.2%), support (33.8%) and web development (32.5%). The least in-demand role from the data is software architecture at 16.6%.

“With the current economic difficulties dampening job opportunities across most industry sectors, students and graduates are using the internet to search widely for job opportunities in their chosen professions,” said GradConnection director Mike Casey. “IT is one of the most diverse industries because of the spread and reliance on technology by companies in diverse areas of business. The internet allows companies in all business sectors the opportunity to offer specialist IT opportunities, even if IT is not the company’s specific output.”

The GradConnection data also reveals the type of corporate qualities that graduates are most attracted to in potential employers. The top qualities are equal opportunity employment (86.7%), health and safety (36.8%), environmental sustainability (35.3%) and community contribution (22.7%).

In terms of the job benefits, graduates rate work/life balance the highest (37.1%), health cover (31.1%), structured training (30.2%) and overseas work opportunities (28.6%).

On the sometimes controversial question of certain “freedoms” offered by companies to their employers, IT hopefuls rate gmail as the most important (60.1%), Facebook (37.4%) and msn at 32.3%.

GradConnection – Home of the GradMaker

The GradConnection Video Shoot

Last Week we blogged about the video shoot we did at the March Digital studios, this week we’ve posting Dan’s video on the accounting industry along with an article written by Richard McGowan of RMG Communications using the GradConnection sites data.

Accountancy Ranks as the No. 1 Career for Graduates

Despite the current economic difficulties, accountancy is Australia’s most popular career choice among university students and graduates according to data from GradConnection, the website where companies can interact with university graduates about employment opportunities.

From a sample size of 16,000 students/graduates at Australian universities, 13.6% are favouring accounting as their top career choice, in front of Engineering/Mining (11.2%), Government (10.1%) and Sales/Marketing (9.9%). The GradConnection site (www.gradconnection.com.au) covers 15 industry sectors.

“With many of the big accounting firms cutting back on their graduate intakes because of the economic slowdown, graduates start looking at some of the smaller firms for opportunities and use the internet to do the bulk of their research,” said GradConnection director Dan Purchas. “Second tier and smaller firms can have the same presence on the internet as the big companies in attracting top graduate talent and graduates and companies can interact on several levels about potential positions,” he said.

In the breakdown of roles within the Accounting profession, the GradConnection data shows 36.7% of grads are interested in financial accounting, 34.6% are interested in tax, 30.2% are interested in external audit, 29.4% are interested in internal audit and 27% are interested in management roles.

Also within the large pool of students/graduates looking for careers in Accountancy, 79.3% rank equal employment opportunities as the attribute they most value in sizing up potential employers. After this, the most important employer attributes are environmental sustainability (42.7%), health and safety (37.8%) and community contribution (37.3%).

“It’s also possible that graduates using the internet to research potential accountancy careers may find attractive opportunities in firms that are outside the Accountancy profession, but are still looking for top-class junior accountants for their financial operations,” said Purchas.

In terms of employer benefits that students/graduates are most looking for in potential employers, the GradConnection data reveals that 42.5% are looking for work/life balance, 38% are looking for opportunities for study leave, 35.7% are looking for a mentoring program and 28.1% would be attracted to structured training programs.

On the sometimes controversial points of employees “freedoms” at work, the GradConnection data show students/graduates would like access to Facebook (53.9%), msn (40.4%) and yahoo mail (32.7%).

GradConnection – Home of the Accounting GradMaker

Chris Walker of March Digital runs a studio where he has all the tools to shoot, edit and deliver videos over an online client dashboard platform. Recently we were invited out to shoot some short videos on our findings over the past 6 months on what graduates have been telling us on the GradConnection website. None of us at GradConnection had any experience of being on a set (well apart from myself who once had a line in a New Zealand TV show I’d rather not reveal the name of). It’s intimidating looking directly into the camera while the teleprompter turns through the text like the opening credits of Star Wars, and far harder than most anchor men make it look. Finally after about 3 hours of shooting and 20 takes later we’d produced about 4 minutes of usable footage, not a bad effort for a few IT guys unfamiliar with being on a set.

Filming is easy right?

Before shooting our videos we were quite the critics when it came to videos on employer’s careers sites, generally thinking that we could do a far better job and how hard can it be to shoot a decent video?! Turns out very, not to say there’s not any good graduate careers videos out there, it’s just the bad really stand out and not in a good way. I’m sure you’ve come across those where the videos that are either out of sync or over hyped up to attract grads to the organisation, missing the point of getting the employer’s brand across or portray what life would be like to working as a grad. On the flip side we have seen some really good graduate videos out there and those employers that do get it right have a valuable tool for their graduate attraction and careers site.

What we learnt after the shoot

It starts with using the professionals to guide you through it, it’s the little things that make all the difference, sound, lighting but the biggest difference is a good director. You wouldn’t ask Brett Ratner (Director of the Rush hour trilogy and a list of other C grade movies) to do a Quentin Tarantino film for obvious reasons, but it would no longer be a Taratino which is what you’d go for in the first place. You also have to watch out for the Michael Bay (Pearl Harbour, Transformers) style directors, these are the ones that will make it sound so good, and will produce a sharp looking video, only problem is it’s full of explosions which look cool but leave no room for plot. It’s the same with doing your own filming for your graduate careers site, if you don’t find the right director who knows what they’re doing you could end up with a disappointing Ratner, or an over hyped Michael Bay, instead of the smooth Taratino which will always leave your audience wanting more.

GradConnection – Home of the GradMaker

We’ve been busy, very busy in fact and GradConnection 2.0 is here, alive and kicking. We know a lot of you have visited the site in its current format over the last 6 months and we’re hearing back now from some of the final year university students who have successfully obtained positions on graduate programs around Australia that they first found out about from our website.

We’ve reviewed how you’ve all been using our website and had a brain wave about 3 months ago on how we can improve the site for next year’s graduate job hunters and this is what we’ve come up with:

This replaces the old Graduate Program Wizard which we thought was a bit geeky (we’re all IT graduates) so with the rebuild came a new name for our service which helps to match the best graduate employers to you at an  individual level.

The Breakdown

We’ve organised our employers to enable you to filter through them by the industry that they offer graduate positions in, a few of the major ones are:

• Accounting
• Engineering
• Information Technology
• Government

As well as that, we know that the locations offered by organisations for their graduate jobs vary so having a filter on location has been another big move for us to streamline, you can view employers by location here:

• Sydney
• Melbourne
• Perth
• Canberra
• Adelaide
• Brisbane

You can then combine these location and industry searches together to find employers in specific locations and specific industries, for example:

• IT graduate positions in Sydney
• Accounting Graduate Jobs in Canberra

From here you are able to refine the best employers for you based on the roles they offer in each industry, the benefits they offer their employees on their graduate programs as well as finding our more about their organisational values.

What’s next?

We’re working hard to get as many employers on board to make this a valuable resource for all graduates in Australia so let us know, as a graduate, which organisations you want to learn more about and we’ll go and talk to them on your behalf to see if we can dig up some more information. Post up any organisations you’re interested in finding out more about in the comments section below.

If you’re an employer and you want to know how to get on the GradMaker system, get in touch with us through any of the channels listed here.

Hey there, well it looks like Universities around the country are starting to hold expo’s focussed at outlining potential options for graduates who are finishing their under graduate degrees and potentially moving on to look at completing honours, masters or even PHD qualifications.

This blog is usually about all things in relation to graduate recruitment and graduate jobs, however we have noticed a few upcoming events at some campuses around Australia and thought it might be interesting for some of you out there to investigate. We’ve found out about the following postgraduate expo events below:

Graduate Options Expo at the University of Sydney

Postgraduate information sessions at UTS

Postgraduate Expo at Monash University

It looks like this will be the season for these postgraduate information sessions across the country so jump on your university’s website and have a look around if a postgraduate degree is something you are interested in pursuing next year.

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.