Internet vital for attracting graduate recruits

Employers wanting to attract the best graduates need to advertise on the internet, have a great corporate website, and a good recruitment brand image, a new survey has found.

They should also offer competitive pay and benefits, excellent promotional and training opportunities and job stability.

ìThe survey showed very clearly that graduates prefer to use the internet to find jobs, apply for them, and to research employers,î said Peter Gibbons, Director of one of the surveying companies, recruitment advertising and communications agency RAA Sprague Gibbons.

ìIt also proved that companies really need to promote themselves as employers of choice ñ 87% of respondents agreed that they would favour companies which had raised their profile through employer advertising, recruitment PR or job fairs.î

The survey was carried out by RAA Sprague Gibbons and its sister company, website developers JobPositive, in conjunction with internet recruitment website Totaljobs.com.

It was carried out online, via the graduate section of the Total Jobs site, and received almost 800 responses from graduates aged 17-63 ñ just over half fell into the 21-25 age bracket.

94% of respondents felt that internet job sites were either useful or very useful when job-hunting, with 76% saying the same of corporate websites. The least useful media was felt to be local newspapers, with 19% of respondents finding them useless or very useless, although 49% still found them of merit. The jury was out on the efficacy of trade magazines, with 42% unable to decide whether they were worthwhile.

When deciding whether to apply for a job, 66% of respondents researched companies via their corporate websites, and particularly favour those with a careers section. 57% look at company information on job websites, and other popular research methods include monitoring press and web media and simply asking friends.

In terms of what the employer had to offer to candidates, 91% felt pay and benefits plus promotional and training opportunities to be important or very important. This was closely followed by the stability of the company and the diversity of the role. The least important factor was the size of the company, although those who expressed a preference favoured companies with 500-1000 employees.