Money: have graduates finally grown up?

Following on from my post dated Oct 24th which suggested that graduates were being too fussy about the basic salaries of jobs to which they were applying and therefore turning down opportunities, a report was very recently published declaring that graduates are now actually less selective about salaries compared to last year’s cohort. They seem to be finally happy with what they can get!

The recruitment consultant Hay Group ran a survey of 600 graduates and found that only 8% of them saw money as being a top 3 consideration when choosing a job, compared to 45% of graduates last year. Moreover, the importance of the potential to earn a bonus has become less crucial. This year only 7% of graduates saw the bonus potential of a future job as very important down from 37% in 2011.

Instead the most importance factors that graduates were considering, were 1) potential career progression, 2) the ability to make a difference, 3) the chance to use technical knowledge. The survey also revealed that employers had more jobs than graduates that they had.

I feel this is surely a win, win situation. Finally graduates have become more realistic and less demanding (for some this will never change) in their needs and wants when it comes to jobs. With lower graduate expectation and allegedly more jobs available than many believe there to be, the UK may actually begin to employ the glut of graduate that floating despairing around the job market. Lets hope this continues! For more relevant graduate news please follow this blog.