Graduate Jobs Reserved For Student Interns: Recent figures have found that although the number of graduate jobs will rise to a seven-year high, almost forty percent (37%) of them will be reserved for graduates who have previous experience gained through an internship.

 These findings come despite fears that internships and work experience placements are being dominated by individuals with well-connected parents or families – leading to a lack of social mobility some say. The research suggests that despite employers looking to invest significantly in recruitment of graduate level staff for the first time since the economic downturn, many thousands of these newly created jobs will only be available to those students who have already completed internships at Britain’s biggest companies.

Graduate Jobs Reserved For Student Interns

 Among professions which traditionally pay the highest graduate starting salaries, the figures for reserved jobs will rise as high as three-quarters (City investment banks) and to around fifty percent at leading law firms. The research also suggested that the average graduate starting salary would be frozen at £29,000 for the fifth successive year – an ‘unprecedented’ finding.

 The survey, which was carried out with 100 leading employers, found that companies were planning to make 11,819 paid placements available in the current academic year, and were also looking to create even more positions in order to counter concerns over social mobility. Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister for the coalition government, has said that the children of senior executives should not be allowed to use their position to secure high-level internships with leading businesses as this will impact on social mobility.

 Moreover, the research suggested that more than half of the recruiters interviewed felt that graduates without any previous work experience were unlikely to be successful at the selection process, and were thus unlikely to receive a graduate job offer from their organisation. Some of the companies involved in the research were Apple, The Army, McDonald’s, BP, Centrica, Goldman Sachs, Network Rail and Tesco. PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte will offer around 2,200 roles between them, whilst the largest single employer will be the state funded Teach First charity, with 1,550 vacancies.