The study recently released by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU) of 2009 graduates’ career destinations made for dismal reading with employment reportedly falling to only 59%.
It is too early to tell how this year’s graduates will fare, but a report released this week by gradcracker.com paints a more optimistic picture for engineering students at least.
Gradcracker, the careers website for engineering students, is mainly used by the larger engineering employers - names like BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, BP and Siemens are advertisers. Companies take an annual advertising package allowing them to open and close recruitment intakes as their business needs require.
Gradcracker has carried out a spot analysis of their current activity. At the start of November, Gradcracker had 101 employers advertising on the site. Of these, 79 were actively recruiting and 22 had temporarily halted recruitment.
Students can search Gradcracker by specific engineering discipline and the report reveals that Electronic & Electrical students could find 67 employers with open graduate programmes and 38 employers with work placements.
Other disciplines show a similar pattern, Mechanical Engineers will find 88 employers, 69 with open graduate programmes and 36 with placement opportunities. Computer & Systems Engineers will find 54 employers, 47 with graduate programmes and 23 with placements.
The Gradcracker report shows that opportunities do exist for this year’s engineering graduates but it is a very competitive market – recently, gradcracker.com received it’s one millionth visitor.
