Graduates jostle in an overcrowded jobs market

Laura Renshaw graduated last year with a degree in politics from London’s Brunel University. But financial constraints and a lack of graduate opportunities meant she had to move back home to the Wirral, near Liverpool.

Since September she has been working in a shop, which, she says, felt like a “step back”. “I was really, really low after uni, having to leave three months early, going back home I felt like I was trapped . . . All my friends were down south but I could not get a graduate job so I did not have the money to stay.”

Renshaw’s experience is not unusual. A year after the UK’s first lockdown, recent graduates are paying a heavy price. Many employers suspended their 2020 graduate programmes because they felt unable to offer sufficient training remotely.

The knock-on effect is that graduates from both 2020 and 2021 are competing for this year’s sought-after entry level roles, and they may also be applying alongside those who have been in work for a few years, but have turned back to graduate recruitment after being made redundant.

Employers recognise the problem. Hywel Ball, UK chairman and managing partner of EY, the professional services firm, echoed graduates’ fears: “Many students are facing a really tough jobs market.”

“We’re seeing really high levels of interest in our graduate trainee programmes, with applications up by 50 per cent compared to February 2020. This is on top of an increase in applications of around 40 per cent between our 2019 and 2020 intakes.”

Hillary Gyebi-Ababio, vice-president for higher education at the UK’s National Union of Students, stresses that more needs to be done to support those entering the workplace amid the pandemic. “Past recessions have shown that the most severe impacts are always felt by those who have recently left full-time education, and we know that students are very concerned about their future job prospects,” she says.

“The government must not repeat the same mistakes as last year. We need a comprehensive support package for all students, including those graduating this year to help them to gain employment.”

Teach First, which offers a graduate teacher-training programme, has seen applications rise during the pandemic and says applications tend to increase during periods of economic uncertainty, such as after the 2008 financial crash.

“This is quite possibly down to people seeing public sector jobs as having more stability in the long term and therefore becoming more popular professions,” it says.

Final year students’ and graduates’ desire for stability is understandable. Some who had secured places on graduate schemes in 2020 then had them cancelled.

Fleur Jenkins left Swansea University last year with a mathematics degree and managed to get a place on BT’s graduate finance scheme, where she is in her seventh month. But “around me, I saw my friends who had secured places on schemes only to have them cancelled at the last minute,” she says.

“It was a really stressful time. I was always thinking in the back of my head is mine going to be cancelled too? BT kept reassuring us that it was going ahead but until it started I didn’t believe it.”

Similarly, Imogen Sheppard, who is in her final year studying engineering at Durham University, says: “I have never experienced pressure like this before. A lot of students have really struggled with their mental health over the pandemic and the increased competition for places on graduate schemes has made it so much worse.”

Competition with older recruits was increasing even before the pandemic threw the graduate jobs market into disarray last year.

Many companies do not impose an exact upper age limit on their graduate schemes, which means there are potentially many thousands of extra applicants for the limited number of places aimed at graduates in 2021.

Career changers have made up almost a third (31 per cent) of Teach First’s cohort for the last two years. “While we don’t have this year’s figures yet — we’re sure they’ll continue to play a leading role in our cohort,” it says.

Last year, consumer goods group Unilever filled 27 per cent of their graduate roles with candidates not entering the workplace straight from university. Morgan Stanley had a 46 per cent increase year-over-year in applications from candidates applying to their graduate schemes who were not final year students.

And many of those who have been lucky enough to secure jobs still face the difficult prospect of starting their careers remotely. Laurence Hunter, a fourth-year engineering student from Durham University, is due to start at KPMG, the professional services firm, upon graduating, but he doesn’t relish working from home. “This time last year I thought I’d be graduating with my dream job to look forward to, but in reality will probably be working from home on my laptop from the end of my bed,” he says.

Many graduates have extended their time at university by applying for Masters degrees. Although it is still early in the 2021 applications cycle, the number of candidates applying for postgraduate programmes is higher than this time last year. Now known colloquially as a “panic masters”, staying in education for an extra year allows graduates to delay entering the jobs market and gain a qualification that may help to distinguish them from other candidates in the crowded market.

Despite the oversubscribed jobs market, Renshaw remains optimistic that she will secure a graduate-level position soon. She has been proactive, setting up an Instagram account, The Grad Girl Project, offering inspiration, support and careers advice.

“We will get through this if we help each other out. There is light at the end we just need to hold out until then,” she says.