Our talented graduates need some support. Photo: iStock
Much has been written about rising middle-management job losses. Less considered is the deteriorating outlook for graduate employment and the long-term economic damage from having thousands of under-utilised university students taking low-paid service jobs to pay the bills.
About 76 per cent of new bachelor degree graduates available for full-time work found a job within four months of completing their studies last year, Graduate Careers Australia data shows. Put another way, one in four students had not found full-time work within four months of finishing their degree.
Those statistics will surely deteriorate in 2012. Some professional services firms have reportedly reduced or deferred graduate student intakes in response to difficult business conditions. Others will follow. Some banks say graduate recruitment intake remains unchanged, but who can believe them?
My hunch is more companies will slow graduate recruitment this year and next: one in three graduates unable to find work would not surprise if the global economy deteriorates.
Two friends were offered full-time jobs in banks late last year. Both verbal offers were withdrawn or replaced last month with contract work, because of head-office job cuts. It is hard to see many companies aggressively hiring graduates (outside of mining) when job cuts are the order of the day.
What’s your view?
- Is the market for graduate recruitment tougher than official statistics suggest?
- Have you struggled to find a full-time professional job after university?
- Was your university degree worth the time and cost?
Maybe this trend is just a cyclical response to the GFC. Maybe it’s part structural, with companies realising they do not need as many graduates, or that they will outsource some graduate tasks overseas, perhaps to emerging-market PhD students for a fraction of the cost.
My point is: more than ever, we need a culture where outstanding people are encouraged to create, rather than apply, for their job after university or school. And we need stronger mechanisms to link fast-growth start-up entrepreneurial ventures with a surplus pool of business students.
It’s such an opportunity. Higher rates of start-up entrepreneurship are vital if Australia wants to be more innovative. We need to help talented young people start a venture, create, innovate and hire others as the business grows. And provide support if they fail, plus the encouragement to try again.
We also need to help fast-growth entrepreneurial ventures access subsidised young talent. Many small ventures cannot afford graduate-type salaries, at least at the start, even though they desperately need extra resources. More government assistance to help these ventures employ people is badly needed.
Consider the benefits of a program that helps entrepreneurial start-up ventures employ business university students. The student gets the best possible form of entrepreneurial training there is: learning from another entrepreneur on the job. A formal, entrepreneurial ‘apprenticeship’ program, for school or university students, is not as crazy as it sounds.
It has got to be better than having students who, after years of business study and tens of thousands of dollars of student debt, end up working in menial casual jobs that do not require university training. These are talented, hungry young people who are capable of so much more with a bit of help. Sometimes, the students most suited to entrepreneurship do not get the best marks or stand out among corporate hirers.
After working in a fast-growth venture, these students may decide entrepreneurship is not for them and seek a corporate job. Fair enough. At least they take a year of real business experience with them to a big company, rather than a year of waiting on tables or playing Xbox.
The start-up venture gets to hire university graduates, from business or other disciplines, at much lower cost because of government subsidies that recognise entrepreneurship is a discipline in its own right, and best taught on the job. It works in other trades, so why not entrepreneurship (which is arguably less suited to university and not considered a “profession”, even though it should be).
Australia benefits from young people learning about entrepreneurship in real-time, from real entrepreneurs, and developing skills that will help them grow the venture, or start one.
Of course, any program that helps entrepreneurial ventures to hire surplus university graduates would need to differentiate between entrepreneurship and small business, be targeted to the right industries, and might involve part-time post-graduate business study, for example. This idea is not about helping small businesses employ and train young people. Subsidies would only apply to graduates who had not found work four months after finishing their studies.
I’m sure critics will find fault with this idea. If you have a better idea, say so by replying to this blog.
Help solve a big problem: more university students who cannot find jobs at the end of their studies; and start-up ventures that need talented young people but cannot afford them in a difficult market. Linking the two is the opportunity.
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