Generation Y 2.0

With job cut backs and hiring freezes, graduates may be wondering what’s in store for them this year.
The Graduate Market in 2009 report by High Fliers and the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) own report, there will be less opportunities for graduates in this years’ hiring round despite reported increases predicted earlier in 2008. Cuts are of course being firmly blamed on the credit crunch/recession.

Last year there were approximately 2.8 graduates for every place in the leading companies and with more graduates coming onto the market this year competing for potentially less jobs this ratio is likely to be at least 3.5 to 1. Competition is likely to increase again in 2010. Yet stories continue that employers are looking to overseas candidates in order to find the skills they are looking for, as found by the AGR. Focus on university league tables showing the employability of their graduates is likely to increase and employers may be thinking of targeting their rounds very carefully.

Most of the vacancies continue to be based in London and the South. According to the AGR, banks are likely to cut graduate vacancies by at least 28%, together with cuts in graduate starting pay. Engineering sectors may see an increase in graduate vacancies but continue to have a shortfall in the right calibre of candidates. So perhaps engineering graduates will be less inclined to head to the City for banking jobs this year, but the shortfall in this field continues. And there appear to be reports of pay freezes for graduates elsewhere.

Through a variety of articles and events, organisations are being cautioned to consider their future talent pipelines, as when we start to pull out of the recession there could be severe gaps. Companies also lose out on the networking, teamwork, media and creative talents that graduates bring. In addition, there are still top end highly talented and motivated graduates who will continue to be selective about where, who and what they are looking for. Cutting back on the package offering will only perpetuate attraction and retention issues, no matter the economic climate. So there is a race for the best graduates but let’s not forget that this may not be enough to keep a balanced talent pool.

David Blanchflower, a policy maker from the Bank of England, told the Sunday Times, that such cut backs in graduate investment in the 1980’s led to a lost generation of now less than satisfied middle age employees. Similar mistakes were made in the early 90’s in the last recession. More than that there have been gaps in the talent pools from this kind of approach time and time again.

There are already plenty of suggestions of cutting or dropping executive bonuses (particularly in certain sectors we have all heard plenty about in the press), and using this to fund graduate and generation Y programmes.

Graduates from the last round still talk of preferring to take a pay cut to gain more interesting work and valuable experience.

There continue to be differing views about whether the average GenY employee, and graduates in particular, will settle for job security rather than to ‘job hop’ during the recession. Many believe they will merely be more selective in their employment choices. Their helicopter parents may be guiding them to work for larger or more secure organisations including the public sector where there are likely to be a good number of vacancies, but care needs to be taken when making assumptions about the perceived brand image and scale of an organisation as these may not correlate with opportunity. , especially those who are agile and able to achieve faster success in the ‘upturn’.Smaller and medium sized businesses could also prove to be more stimulating, especially those who are agile and able to achieve faster success in the ‘upturn’.

Last year US college career advisors Experience Inc outlined their top tips for managing graduates: balancing compensation with training and job satisfaction, providing appropriate training and frequent reviews, communicating with humour, passion and truth, plenty of two-way feedback, allowing lifestyle benefits including sabbaticals, community volunteering projects and distributed work environments. All the things we have been saying. CEO Jenny Floren added “GenY has created a need for a cultural overhaul that has not been this dramatic since women entered the workforce en masse… we need the talent and creativity this generation brings, especially when you take into account the looming employment gap occurring from the outflux of retiring boomers”.

Aspects such as company attitudes to Corporate Social Responsibility and the Environment still continue to be a strong factor in graduate decision making, perhaps not as high amongst British graduates as in some other countries such as China for example, although reports vary as to how significantly these will feature when this years’ graduates actually come on to the market. Importantly, graduates tend look for real evidence of commitment in these areas rather than just the annual report and website statements.

The potential for international assignments also continues to be high on graduates’ wish lists.

Aside from the all this, organisations may need to reconsider career structures and organisation models again going forward in order to embrace the new ways of working and a different kind of workforce of the future.

Second jobs and other forms of entrepreneurial activity may be on the increase too, particularly among the graduate population where debts have never been higher, and employers will need to be more accepting and accommodating towards this if they cannot provide what employees are looking for.

There are also those advising graduates to continue into postgraduate study for a while or to take lower-skilled jobs and try new avenues just to get some work experience. Universities are creating new grant opportunities to support further study, investing in much needed improvements in career advisory services and job shops. The government are also reportedly considering putting in a new internship scheme to give graduates better opportunities of some work experience, although details are yet to be released. It is unclear whether enough is happening about the longer term rise in young people who are ‘not in education, employment or training’ (known as Neets), school leavers who have lost out to graduates taking lower skilled jobs. There is some push for more apprenticeships however.

The National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship is trying to encourage and support graduates who may be considering setting up their own small business as many have already done. Although it will be a tough market, coalitions of small businesses may well be beneficial in getting us through the upturn.

It may also be time for graduates to think more about selling their competences and other attributes in addition to academic, work and community experience. Already there are stories of employers more open minded about the benefits of skills learnt from online gaming, other web2.0 tools, extra curricular activities and of course social networks. It may be time to change the way we are looking at assessing candidate potential beyond that of the standard competence frameworks. This is something we have been saying for some time. For those of you following our French speaking site (see 7th Feb 09), portals like whyers.com may also become increasingly popular.

Whatever their decision, graduates will do well to do as much homework as possible on their target jobs, companies and opportunities, that much is clear.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Genera(lisa)tion Y, Recruitment, Research & Statistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.