Moving from college into full-time work is a big transition. Even if a student has had part-time work, the 9-to-5 workday takes some getting used to.
Even then, with 68 per cent of Irish people in their late 20s still living with their parents due to the shortage of viable housing, it’s no wonder that there’s a lot of discontent and despair among graduates.
But not everyone wants to emigrate, or is in a position to. Many graduates will be looking to start or advance their career in Ireland. And, here, there is at least some degree of silver lining, with data showing Irish graduate employment rates of 87.2 per cent for 2022, compared with an EU average of 82.4 per cent.
Of course, since this data was compiled, there have been reports of lay-offs within the tech sector and in companies that support the tech sector, such as Accenture. So, what is the real picture like?
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“The current jobs climate remains strong, with good cross-sectoral opportunities in engineering, pharmacy, medical, manufacturing and financial services,” says Ruairi Kavanagh, editor of gradireland.com.
Joan McNaboe is research manager of the skills and labour market research unit at Solas, the further education and training agency.
“Graduate employment is strong across all sectors,” she says. “That said, employment has not fully recovered to pre-Covid levels in some areas including accommodation, food, wholesale and retail, with many hotels being used for non-tourism activity. There is still huge demand for chefs and restaurant managers. It is lower-skilled roles that have not fully recovered.”
McNaboe says that there is some slight concern about the pharmaceutical sector but that her unit is not seeing any employment issues as yet.
Jobs are strong in areas such as engineering, process and quality assurance, and anything to do with the green economy.
“This includes electrical engineers for renewable technology, technicians for solar and scientists working in ecology and conservation,” says McNaboe.
“Health is another strong area of recruitment, with critical skills including occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, nurses and GPs. Social workers are in demand. There have been budget allocations for more recruitment in these areas as Sláintecare aims to reduce waiting lists, improve community care and generally improve therapies for an ageing demographic.”
In the construction sector, McNaboe says the push to build more houses is having a knock-on effect in related areas including civil engineering, quantity surveying and across the trades, with plans for more retrofitting leading to a boom for electricians and roofers, among other areas.
“Digital technology is driving demand in the financial sector, with digital transformation, blockchain, cybersecurity and distributed ledger technology driving employment,” says McNaboe.
“In law and regulation, compliance is creating jobs, especially in the financial sector, and regulation and quality assurance roles are available in the financial, IT, high-tech manufacturing, pharma and medical device sectors. There are also logistics roles in the transport sector.
“And there will always be sales and marketing roles, although they may require language skills and native speakers may be preferred here.”
What about the tech sector?
“It’s taken a real and perceived hit in terms of layoffs, and other companies that work with the sector, but it remains strong,” says Kavanagh.
“In the tech sector, some of the layoffs are in areas like sales, but we are not seeing a fall in employment for programmers and software developers, although they may need to lower wage expectations,” McNaboe says.
Overall, Kavanagh says that the outlook is a little more volatile than previous years, but the economic outlook has stabilised somewhat and inflation is down a little.
“Students are career-focused and aware of the challenges, although of course they have concerns, with data from our Ireland’s 100 survey showing half are concerned that they may not be able to get a job.”
This perception of students, however, does not tally with the reality: Ireland has one of the highest graduate employment rates in the EU. And 80 per cent plan to work or find work in Ireland, despite concerns about housing, Kavanagh says.
“Lots of communications graduates are working in finance, tech, comms, marketing and social media, and those firms take their transferable skills into account,” says Kavanagh.
McNaboe agrees, pointing out that employers increasingly look to skills.
“We are moving away from direct occupations like teacher/nurse/engineer. There is, for instance, no qualification for process engineers; instead, they move to the role from mechanical engineering. There are many graduates from different disciplines who, with an additional short course, could work in the green economy. Any graduate coming out of college will have to upskill and reskill throughout their career – or risk being left behind.”
Other college careers officers and recruiters, meanwhile, say that graduate recruitment remains strong, and that there are plenty of opportunities for the class of 2023. But whereas, in recent years, the power was weighted towards employees, with firms competing for the best talent, the scales have moved slightly back towards the employer.
The world of work moves fast, however, and recent graduates – who became very familiar with working and studying from home during the pandemic – will probably find that their employer expects them to spend more time in the office.
This may pose a challenge to, for instance, workers who may not be able to find anywhere to live within a reasonable commuting distance of the office, but most employers will be conscious of this difficulty facing their staff and try to make allowances.
Who are the most attractive graduate employers?
In a competitive jobs market, word gets around about who is good to work for, and which companies will have you taking a break to sob under your desk.
This journalist, for instance, quite regularly hears the same anecdotes about the same companies – many of them prestigious household names – where graduates have a miserable experience, with micro-management of toilet breaks alongside mixed messages and poor communication from middle and senior management. Word gets around.
A new survey from Universum, part of the StepStone Group (whose most familiar brand is probably IrishJobs.ie), drew on the opinions of more than 8,823 students, across 26 higher education institutions, to establish what they think of various different firms.
Students were drawn from 173 areas of study, with the majority (2,086) from humanities, social science and education, 2,053 from business and economics, 1,462 from engineering, 1,211 from health and medicine, 1,049 from natural sciences, 544 from IT and 418 from law.
Surveys were also carried out in other countries across the world, including North and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Graduates were also asked about their priorities in a workplace, and said that their main driver was high future earnings, followed by secure employment, a friendly work environment, encouraging work-life balance, a clear path for advancement, flexible working conditions, respect for its people, professional training and development opportunities, ethical standard and a competitive base salary.
When broken down by gender, however, women prioritised secure employment, a friendly work environment and high future earnings, in that order, whereas men put high future earnings as their top priority, followed by a competitive base salary and secure employment.
Education was the preferred industry of a full 20 per cent of graduates, followed by hospital and healthcare (19 per cent), health, wellness and fitness (15 per cent), pharmaceutical biotechnology (15 per cent) and advertising (15 per cent).
“According to a recent survey from Universum on the World’s Most Attractive Employers, 78 per cent of the most attractive companies see employer branding as one of the top priorities among their organisation’s HR/talent management priorities,” says Sam McIlveen, managing director of StepStone Ireland.
“Employers in Ireland, therefore, cannot afford to ignore this aspect of their organisation if they are to stand out in a more competitive hiring landscape and continue to attract and retain the best graduate talent.”
- To see the full report, go to universumglobal.com/blog/uk-students-rankings-2023/ and click on the country link for Ireland
How Irish graduate employment compares
Ireland has one of the higher rates of recent graduate employment in the EU, with 87.2 per cent in work according to statistics from EU Eurostat.
This compares with an EU average of 82.4 per cent. Male graduates were 2.2 per cent more likely to find work than females.
Data shows that the Netherlands and Luxembourg had the highest rates in 2022, with 93 per cent in work. This is followed by Germany (92 per cent) and Malta (91 per cent).
At the lower end of the scale, it’s bad news for graduates in Romania, with a graduate employment rate of 70 per cent, Greece (66 per cent) and Italy (65 per cent).
The data refers to recent graduates who are not in further studies.
