Team Prosple
The Australian graduate recruitment space changed dramatically in 2021. There are signs of new trends and culminations of old ones. All of which have led to a truly unique time in the history of graduate recruitment in Australia. A summary of the session is presented below.
What are students searching for?
What are students searching for?
More IT & Computer Science students are searching for graduate jobs, increasing their share of job searches by 3%. Meanwhile, Business & Management and Engineering & Mathematics students saw a 2% drop in their share of graduate job searches.
The share of searches by industry echoes this change. With the amount of searches in the technology sector increasing by 4% as a percent of total searches. Other fields which saw an increase were management consulting, R&D and manufacturing, and health, which all rose by 2%. Meanwhile, the banking & financial, accounting & advisory, and government & public service sectors all saw decreases. The most dramatic being accounting & advisory share of searches, which fell by 5%.
Gender imbalances in study fields have normalised slightly
Gender imbalances in study fields have normalised slightly
Almost across the board, the proportion of male and female students has moved slightly closer to being even. A graph depicting the changes is presented below.
More students are choosing to work interstate
More students are choosing to work interstate
For the first time in five years, Victoria has seen a decrease in share of searches, going from 42% to 34% of searches among students looking for a graduate position by state. The Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales picked up their search share in response.
The amount of students who are searching for job opportunities outside of their home state has risen on average across Australia by 7%, going from 9% of students to 16%.
The impact of working from home has likely been substantial in influencing these trends.
Students are searching for jobs at different times of the year
Students are searching for jobs at different times of the year
Traditionally, there has been a massive spike in graduate program searches in February and March, followed by a reduction, and then a smaller peak around July, before interest peeters out in the final months of the year.
Now, far fewer students are searching for graduate programs in February and March, with more interest being shown throughout the year and in July.
In fact, 2021 March searches are down 44% compared to where they were in 2019. The graph below depicts this.
Australia may have reached its peak of university students
Australia may have reached its peak of university students
Since 2016, the amount of domestic students within Australia has hardly increased at all. Almost all the growth within universities has come from international students.
With the restrictions of covid, international student enrolments have plummeted. This has contributed to the 15% reduction in graduating students in 2020 when compared to 2019.
This is not unprecedented, within the USA, college enrolments peaked 10 years ago, they have seen a 7% reduction since then.
This could indicate that Australia has reached a saturation point of its university enrolments, possibly capping the supply for graduates.
This could also be because students are delaying their studies in light of the pandemic.
The full extent of the impact of a reduced graduate cohort will not be visible for a few years. Reading this data in consideration of the following trend though has deeply interesting implications.
More competition among top employers, less students
More competition among top employers, less students
The biggest employers are taking on more and more graduate students. The graph below shows that the largest employers are advertising an increasingly massive number of graduate opportunities, especially compared to employers who have a lower graduate intake.
This crowding out of the market by major players could make it difficult for smaller employers to stand out with the ecosystem.
Less Google search student interest in graduate programs and internships
Less Google search student interest in graduate programs and internships
Within Australia, Google search volume for “Graduate programs” is down 20% from its peak in 2017. This reduction in search is even more evident within the search volume for “Internship”, which has decreased 44% from its peak in 2013.
This pattern has been happening for a while, both graduate program searches and internship searches surged from 2004, rising rapidly until 2013, when internship searches began decreasing. For graduate programs, search volume mostly rose until 2017, where it has been declining since.
International students
International students
In 2019, international students made up 33% of the student population. In 2020, this number dropped to 23%, with 15% of this group being stuck in Australia.
This change is one of the major reasons for the reduction in total graduate students as they are a significant portion of the total student population.
Also, the large proportion of students who are unable to leave Australia are almost certainly not applying for graduate jobs, contributing to the decreased number of applications this year.
The slide deck and the webinar
The slide deck and the webinar
To watch the webinar in full, click the video below!
