Graduate recruitment has increased substantially this year following 24 months of swingeing cuts, but competition remains fierce with an average of 45 candidates applying for each position.
 

According to a poll undertaken among 100 top employers by High Fliers Research, organisations plan to take on 17.9% more graduates this year than they did last, restoring more than half of the vacancies cut during 2008 and 2009. Graduate positions fell by 17.8% in 2009 and by 6.7% in 2008.
 
But because of unprecedented numbers of applications this year, many of the UK’s leading graduate employers have already completed their 2010 recruitment programmes or closed them early.
 
Applications have jumped by 7% on last year and are 15% higher than in 2008, partly because of the large number of graduates from previous years who failed to find work on completing their studies and so are now competing with this year’s intake. There were an average of 52 applications per graduate vacancy last year and 35% in 2008.
 
Martin Birchall, High Fliers’ managing director, said: “With a record number of students graduating from UK universities over the next few weeks, it’s great news that Britain’s best-known and most sought-after employers have stepped up their graduate recruitment substantially for 2010.”
 
But this year’s university leavers were still facing “huge competition” to land a good job and employers had received an “unprecedented” number of applications as a result, he added.
 
Nonetheless, employers in 11 of 14 key industries have increased their hiring activity, with only law seeing declines of 4.5% and public sector organisations experiencing drops of 11.2%. But the City’s top investment banks as well as the big high street banks have hired a third more graduates than last year, while accountancy and professional services firm have boosted their intake by 30.9%.
 
The sectors taking on the most university leavers are accountancy (more than 3,950 posts), investment banks (over 2,200) and the public sector (more than 2,180), while those taking on the fewest are chemicals and pharmaceuticals (0.4% of the total) and consumer goods manufacturers (1.1% of the total).
 
Competition is toughest among consumer goods manufacturers, media firms, banking and finance employers and oil and energy companies, where employers received at least 70 applications per graduate training position.
 
But graduate salaries have increased substantially over the last six months as organisations compete to recruit the best. The average starting salary is now £29,000, up 7.4% on last year, although this figure jumps to a huge £42,000 at investment banks, up 10% on 2009.
 
Looking forward to 2011, half of the employers questioned expect to hire a similar number of graduates to this year, a fifth expect their intake to increase, while a quarter expect to make further reductions.