Graduates turn away from a workaholic life

JUDITH JUDD

Education Editor

Graduates are challenging the workaholic lifestyle of their predecessors as their job prospects improve rapidly, according to a survey published yesterday.

Graduate unemployment fell by two percentage points to 9.7 per cent in 1994, despite a 13 per cent increase in graduate numbers.

The result, say employers, is that the nervous and earnest workaholics of a few years ago are disappearing.

They have been superseded by more confident interviewees who are telling interviewers that they want jobs compatible with family life.

A survey by the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services, which examines what happened to graduates six months after they left college, showed that more were securing permanent employment and fewer are having to take temporary jobs.

Nigel Llewellyn, national recruitment partner for the accountants Touche Ross, which sponsored the survey, said: "For the last few years, students felt they could not raise issues of lifestyle or workstyle. Accountancy applicants felt they had to seem boring and shy. We had to winkle signs of personality out of them. Now lifestyle issues are being talked about quite openly."

According to the survey, graduates in most subjects were finding it easier to get jobs with computing and information technology notching up record employment rates of around 60 per cent.

Employment in both mechanical and civil engineering also increased - and for non- vocational subjects such as English and history.

The improvement took place despite a 22,000 increase in the numbers graduating. In business studies, numbers were up by more than 60 per cent, and in English by 25 per cent. Since 1992, graduate numbers have risen overall by 42.5 per cent.

The rise in business studies graduates was caused by the Eighties boom and is unlikely to be repeated.

Jenny Jones, editor of the report, said: "The first tentative signs of a recovery in the job market for graduates, which we began to identify in the 1993 figures, have become more confident indicators of a general improvement in graduates' prospects."

However, competition for the top jobs is as fierce as ever and students need to spend time preparing their applications. Mr Llewellyn said students who had done no research into their chosen firm and career stood little chance.

A further survey carried out in 40 old and 28 new universities this autumn by the association confirms more vacancies for graduates, but it found that the pattern was uneven throughout the country. Getting a job remains hard work.

The survey found that employers were increasingly looking for students on target for upper second class degrees and with good A-levels, or at least a lower second class degree in a vocational course and an impressive personality. For others, the prospect is bleak.

Though the annual "milk round", with employers visiting campuses to interview candidates, is in decline, the number of employers making presentations at universities is growing.

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