Another caution for complacent Tiger cubs

Students' insouciance about the health of the job market is leading them to be sloppy in their preparation for the recruitment season, according to the careers and appointments officer at NUI Maynooth.

Loretta Jennings was speaking at the AIESEC Careers Fair in UCD, which was attended by some 90 exhibitors and visited by thousands of students. The fair was organised by the international students society, with the assistance of The Irish Times and AIB.

Jennings said she has had reports from employers that "too many students were a bit blase about the employment scene, particularly in the information-technology sector.

"Students are coming into interviews unprepared - employers want the message to get back that students should be more clear about what they want from their career and what the company they're applying to does. "Some employers have told me they took on graduates last year in desperation because of the skills shortage, but they just weren't the right people. As a result, they're being more selective this year. "Recruiters in the IT sector are finding that some students did a course in that area solely because they regarded it as a ticket to a job. When such students end up getting the job, they have little enthusiasm for it and as a result they don't do very well."

Human resources specialist Helen Corry, who also attended the fair, struck a similar note of caution. "Students should bear in mind that while there are more employers for them to choose from, there are also more graduates on the market than there were just a few years ago. "Academic results are still very important - the jobs that will be offered to students in the next few months are conditional on good final results, so there's no scope to relax in the final year, even during a boom. "A few years ago, if you got your 2:1 degree that was enough, but when jobs are being offered to students before they graduate, their first and second year results are also being taken into account."

However, David Browne, a managing director with Chase Manhattan Bank in London, said students should have a life outside of academia.

"We want people who have a wider experience of life than just being behind the walls of some educational establishment. We're not looking for rocket scientists - just people of above-average intelligence who are resilient, flexible, prepared to work and courageous enough to tell us their opinions.

"Essentially we look for people who will be interesting to work with. I want to see the man who's climbed Kilimanjaro on my interview panel much more than the person who has done nothing of any particular interest over the last 20 years."

Browne says Irish graduates' reputation as being "good crack" serves them well in the job market.

"It's a strength of Irish people in general that they're sociable. If you're trying to build a team of people in a company, you want graduates who are gregarious and outward looking. Also, Irish students don't specialise here at a young age to quite the same extent as they do in the UK, so Irish graduates tend to have a slightly broader educational experience, and that's interesting for us."