UK 
United States
For many recent graduates, the current UK jobs market paints a bleak picture, and many will be wondering how they can get onto the career ladder.
Data from CV-Library found that the volume of graduate jobs advertised has fallen by 60.3% year-on-year with industries such as marketing, construction and recruitment experiencing larger slumps than others. The jobs board analysed data between January 1 and July 30, 2020, and compared results with 2019 to gauge an understanding of the opportunities currently available to graduate talent.
Lee Biggins, Founder and CEO of CV-Library said that while the current climate is a challenging time for everyone, “not least the newest entrants to the job market, whose career prospects have been shattered by COVID-19”. And it seems that university leavers are starting to give up on the job hunt too, as the job boards’ research found that the number of searches for graduate roles have dropped by 8.4% year-on-year.
Despite the challenges that university leavers may face in this current climate, Euan Blair, Co-Founder and CEO of White Hat previously told HR Grapevine that for those that have recently graduated, “it shouldn’t be an attitude of despair”. Instead, Blair said that graduates may just have to be “more alive to alternative possibilities” than they may previously have been. “I think [graduates] are going to have to be very flexible in the short-term about what kind of career [they can] pursue because there will be a limited number of options and there has been a fall-off in available vacancies,” he explained.
