The annual graduate recruitment drive in Ireland is "a totally different ballgame" now than it was just a few years ago, according to the human resources manager of a leading software firm.

"It's the companies, not the graduates, who have to sell themselves now," according to Ms Clare Buckley, human resource manager at Sun Microsystems.

"Three years ago we just sent our brochures out to the colleges and everybody applied. Now there's a lot more effort required - you really have to make a concerted effort to sell the jobs."

Ms Buckley was speaking at AISEC Graduate Careers Fair in University College Dublin.

The fair is organised by the international students' society in co-operation with The Irish Times, AIB and the Association of Careers Guidance Counsellors in Ireland.

Employers in the IT sector no longer just advertise that they are interested in recruiting graduates, they also have to make intensive efforts to sell "the culture, the work environment, the fringe benefits, the travel opportunities and the training available," according to Ms Buckley. However, she warns that things may not always be so rosy for IT graduates in Dublin, particularly when students who have availed of the extra places in third-level computer science courses come on the job market.

"Certainly next year or the year after I think we'll see a greater variety of graduates available in the IT industry. It will be more of an employer's market.

"Dublin has become a saturated market in terms of the number of jobs that are available in the IT industry versus the supply of engineering talent. "Given that in Ireland the cost of employing people has risen dramatically, you might see that less companies are putting their software engineering investment in Dublin, so there might be fewer jobs here."