Amid fierce competition for graduates in the current marketplace, employers are increasingly going directly to the source and promoting themselves on university campuses.
Amid fierce competition for graduates in the current marketplace, employers are increasingly going directly to the source and promoting themselves on university campuses.
The number of graduate employers targeting Western Australian universities has almost doubled at three of the state’s universities since last year, according to the Australian Association of Graduate Employers.
The AAGE 2007 survey also found employers prefer to target a handful of universities with their own recruitment literature above all other forms of promotion.
The University of Western Australia leads the pack, with 40 per cent of graduate employers choosing to actively target students at the university.
Graduate employers then favour Curtin University of Technology (34 per cent), Murdoch University (27 per cent) and Edith Cowan University (22 per cent) for their promotional activity.
These figures are up almost 100 per cent since last year, with the exception of UWA, where employer activity increased by 44 per cent.
Employer activity increased at Curtin University by 95 per cent, at ECU by 93 per cent and at Murdoch by 83 per cent.
Curtin University employer liaison officer Christy Scrimgeour said the increase in employer activity on campus had been driven by improved services on the university’s behalf and growing interest from employers.
This year, the university created a full-time role for an employer liaison officer to provide for the increasing interest from businesses in direct campus activity.
“The state of the economy has changed and employers are having to come in and get students’ attention,” Ms Scrimgeour said.
“The majority of companies coming in have been engineering and business companies. A lot of them feel they have to come in to sell themselves to students.”
The median spend on recruitment marketing by graduate employers was $31,900, with 58 per cent of employers spending upwards of $25,000.
Most employers targeted 10 or fewer universities (63 per cent), with 33 per cent of employers focusing on between one and five universities.
Nearly one fifth of employers’ combined spending on promotional activities this year went towards their own recruitment literature, followed closely by advertising in national newspapers and university career fairs.
