graduate

According to Keith Dugdale, global recruiter for the professional services giant KPMG, global recruitment markets are recovering. Dugdale went on to explain that recruiters face a recurring challenge: to make sure the correct talent is in the right place at the right time.

"The signs are that in a number of countries market conditions are picking up, so recruitment is accelerating as well," he said. "We have moved from a point when recruitment had fallen off the agenda as a key strategic issue to it being central again."

Dugdale highlighted emerging economies like India, which have come out of the recession rapidly but now face different challenges. India has recently experienced a period of massive growth, with markets growing by 30%. This has resulted in the Indian economy needing a constant supply of fresh talent. However, due to the rapid nature of India's growth, companies are looking for skilled experienced workers as well as graduates, who are in short supply.

This is in polar opposite to China, another booming economy. Rather than having too many graduates, China struggles to recruit graduate talent. Part of the problem is that graduates from other countries are reluctant to up sticks and move due to the recession and are much more cautious when considering international assignments.

A pair of enterprising graduates have come up with a novel way of paying off their university debt- selling advertising space on their faces. Ross Harper and Ed Moyse are offering companies the chance to have their logos scrawled across their faces in face paint. 

After graduating from Cambridge last year, the two 22-year-olds were faced with tens of thousands of pounds of student debt, and the toughest graduate jobs market in decades. Rather than go the conventional route of trying to find a job, they came up with the idea of transforming themselves in to walking billboards. After starting the website BuyMyFace.com in October, they planned  to sell their faces for 366 days (one year) in the hope of raising enough to pay off the £50,000 of student debt they have.

Since then, they have managed to 'sell their faces' every single day. On the first few days, they charged just £1, but since their success has grown, their faces can now command up to £400 a day. Indeed, 178 days in, they are well on track of meeting their target, having made an amazing £32,282 so far.  

The Daily Telegraph reported last week that businesses in the UK are beginning to look towards school leavers as an alternative to recruiting graduates straight from University. The research survey carried out found that one in five recruiters prefer school leavers, believing that ‘university graduates had unrealistic expectations of working life'.

Interpersonal skills and, surprisingly, computer skills, were cited as the most common skill lacking from new graduates, along with basic numeracy and literacy skills. Instead, younger recruits coming straight from school and college were described as having a better attitude to work, timekeeping and productivity.

This is reinforced by a survey carried out by the Young Foundation; the social innovation research organisation. A study in October 2011 of big businesses in the UK including HSBC, Proctor and Gamble, Santander and KPMG found that there was common concern about the quality of graduates. Again, the skills lacking were listed as commercial awareness, written and spoken English to a high enough level, technical skills...and interpersonal skills.

The UK job market is one of the most competitive in the world, and is particularly difficult at the moment with hundreds of candidates applying for every job. You only have to look at the list of graduate jobs UK -wide presented by experts like reed.co.uk to know that there aren't enough jobs for all the applicants. However, that's not to say that you can't get ahead of the competition if you write a clever application and present yourself well at interview.

Here are a few tips:

1. Play Up Your Language Skills
Many British students only ever learn to speak English and do not have the advantage of learning another language. Having an extra language is a great benefit - if you do speak more than one, make sure that you draw attention to it

2. Have a Reason
Why do you want to live and work in the UK? Simply because it's a good place to live and most jobs pay quite well will not be enough. Make sure that you think hard about why in particular you've decided to come to the UK. One idea might be to try to tie it to your future plans. Do you always want to stay in the UK, or one day will you want to move back home and apply the skills you've learned in your country of origin? Signs of ambition and long term thinking can only help.