GRADUATE RECRUITMENT:The financial crisis has hit graduate recruitment schemes hard and students can no longer be complacent about securing a position once they leave college, writes FIONA REDDAN

AFTER YEARS of students being able to walk into jobs upon graduation, the classes of 2008 and 2009 have been getting a nasty shock when it comes to finding a job as financial services companies are either reducing, or halting altogether, their graduate recruitment programmes.

Mary Sweeney, head of careers at University of Limerick (UL), says that graduates from last year's class or those due to graduate in the autumn of 2009, will "feel the pinch". He notes that the current environment is coming as a shock to many of the current crop of graduates, who, after years of the Celtic Tiger, have no experience of unemployment.

The seriousness of the situation is illustrated by the fact that Ireland's two largest banks, AIB and Bank of Ireland, have both cancelled their graduate recruitment programmes this year. Last year, AIB did not proceed with its graduate job offers and although Bank of Ireland hired almost 100 graduates in 2008, who started work in October, it did offer to defer placements until 2009. Twenty students took the bank up on this offer and they will be the only graduates hired by the bank come next autumn.

Sean Murray, director of marketing with University College Dublin's (UCD) Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, acknowledges that "things have been tighter across the board in financial services recruitment for about a year". Nevertheless, he says that recruitment is still happening.

On October 16th, UL held its graduate fair and the number of companies exhibiting remained steady on the previous year at 108. However, there was a fall-off in the number of financial services companies attending, including obvious exceptions of AIB and Lehman Brothers, while university career advisors say that other London-based banks have also been notable in their absence from Ireland's campuses.

While the absence of the major domestic banks from the annual milk round will significantly reduce the number of jobs available for graduates, many of the other major players are still actively recruiting and there has been an increase in companies launching graduate programmes for the first time.

One such institution is the Central Bank, which is currently recruiting for intake for its first graduate programme, commencing October 2009. The programme will run over two years, and offers a very attractive starting salary of about €33,000.

Moreover, troubled global insurer AIG has launched a graduate recruitment programme for the first time and it has 10 vacancies for its Irish operation.

Anglo Irish Bank is running its graduate programme as normal and is understood to be looking to recruit 20 positions, while Bank of Scotland Ireland is in the market for 30 graduates and Ulster Bank is looking for 45 graduates for its programme.

In addition, Murray notes that recruitment has been "reasonably steady" with regards to IFSC companies, with firms such as Bank of America, Northern Trust, and State Street attending career fairs in recent weeks.

Accountancy is one related sector which is showing no signs of slowing down despite the economic downturn, and Sweeney says it is very much "business as usual". This year, the "Big 4" - PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), KPMG, Deloitte and Ernst & Young - firms expect to recruit about 1,000 graduates, which is in line with figures from previous years. Given the slowdown in other areas, Sweeney expects the number of applications received by accountancy firms to be significantly higher than in previous years. Most expect the acceptance level on offers to be over 90 per cent.

However, law graduates will not fare as well as the legal sector continues to struggle from the faltering property and corporate finance markets. Although the Big 4 legal firms - Arthur Cox, Matheson Ormsby Prentice (MOP), McCann Fitzgerald and A&L Goodbody - remain committed to their trainee programmes, presenting at colleges around Ireland in the recent months, it is likely that the numbers they take on will be less than in previous years. Over the past few years, Arthur Cox has taken on an average of 35 trainees each year. This year however, the firm says it is looking to recruit "up to 30 trainees" to start in 2009.

Similarly, MOP will take on 30 trainees next autumn, down from an average of 30 to 40 over the last three years.

One newer entrant in the legal market is international player Maples and Calder. According to Ed Strickland, director of global recruitment, the law firm will take on nine trainees as part of its 2009 training programme and is committed to hiring all of them once they finish their training.

This is something which has begun to hit trainee solicitors, as declining business volumes mean that there is no job for them at the end of their training. For example, BCM Hanby Wallace, which has a large property-related practice, told its 15 trainee solicitors last month that they would not be offered permanent jobs at the practice when they finished their two-year period of training between December 2008 and April 2009. Moreover, trainee solicitors at LK Shields have had to take a pay cut in recent weeks. While the lucky ones may secure a job, Nicola Kavanagh, managing consultant, banking and finance, with Hudson Recruitment, adds that salaries have dropped off. Previously, she says a salary of about €33,000 could have been secured for a business graduate without much difficulty, but now the level has dropped back to between €25,000 and €30,000.

The major fear is that while companies may be looking to attract the next generation of talent by actively recruiting graduates, come next autumn the jobs may not actually materialise if economic circumstances, particularly those faced by the banking sector, don't improve.

This environment means that graduates need to be a lot bolder and more direct in their efforts than their recent predecessors. For example, instead of approaching recruitment firms, which may have been the norm in recent years, graduates might do better by contacting firms they are interested in directly, as in an effort to cut costs, more and more firms are not using recruitment firms.

For Ken Harbourne, country manager of Robert Half Ireland, any kind of experience a candidate can accumulate which will help distinguish them from other applicants for a job is key and he recommends students consider career relevant summer jobs rather than the typical bar/shop work - even if it is unpaid.

"It's a battle out there with a lot of quality people looking for jobs. There are still roles at entry level, but you have to fight much harder," he says, adding, "it's not about the money, it's about experience".

However, what are the options for fourth-year students who fail to secure a position over the coming year?

Further education is an obvious solution, as it enables students to enhance their future career prospects, while at the same time delaying their entry into the job market for a year or two, at which time the market may have picked up.The other option of course is immigration. While graduates continued to seek career opportunities outside of Ireland during the Celtic Tiger years, they did so in the knowledge that they could always come home - unlike their 1980s counterparts. Moreover, the proportion of graduates leaving Ireland has been consistently low over the past number of years with just 7 per cent UL graduates of 2007 moving abroad for work.

Now, however, a move abroad is likely to last longer than just a couple of years - if you are lucky enough to find a job. With the current financial crisis a global phenomenon, graduates will have difficulty finding work in almost all markets.

London was traditionally the first port of call for graduates seeking a career in financial services, but the credit crunch has knocked that employment market hard. It is estimated that from a peak of 353,000 in 2007, about 62,000 financial services jobs will be lost by 2009, setting the industry back to where it was in 1998.

Graduates looking across the ocean to the US won't find much cheer either, despite the introduction of a new work visa which under-30s can avail of for 12 months, as banks continue to lay off employees in large numbers.

But what about further afield? Jill Freshwater, a recruitment consultant with the Rubicon Group, recruits financial services professionals for mainland Europe and offshore locations. She says that at the moment, the recruitment market in Luxembourg is looking busier than Dublin and there are opportunities for graduates in the funds sector. However, for graduates looking for sunnier climes, she says that it is more difficult to find placements in the Caribbean, as generally the roles on offer require a few years of experience.

For those looking to move down under, Harbourne says that the supply of jobs in Australia is not as plentiful as it once was for inexperienced graduates. However, he notes that financial centres in the Middle East seem to be the least affected by the current crisis and there are jobs there for Irish graduates.