“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.”
“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.
“And there will always be sales and marketing roles, although they may require language skills and native speakers may be preferred here.”“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. “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.“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.
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.
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.
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Source: IrishTimes - 🏆 3. / 98 Read more »