Graduate recruitment may be a long-term investment

Businesses should look at graduate recruitment as a long-term investment for their operations, one sector commentator has claimed.

Chris Morrall, recruitment management specialist at Talent Transitions, said that because of this, he would never halt the recruitment of graduates, even though the recession may be forcing many firms to look towards cutting their budgets.

He was commenting after BT announced it is set to be closing its graduate recruitment scheme, amid growing concern for the graduate jobs market.

"There are benefits to hiring a graduate and if people are seeing and realising those benefits then it shouldn’t be the start of other things to come," Mr Morrall said of the news.

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BT has claimed that it will continue to review the status of its graduate recruitment programme and that it is committed to helping its 2009 entrants throughout their careers.

The Office for National Statistics recently revealed that the employment rate was 72.7 per cent in the three months to June 2009, down 0.9 percentage points on the previous three months.