Written by - Han Chan Lyung

Welcome to the third installment of our fresh graduate hiring series! You can check out the first and second installments here. 

How do students start job hunting?
The topic for today is simpler, When do fresh graduates who are leaving their education start searching for a job? Speaking from experience, as someone who graduated in 2021, I can attest that most university graduates start their search during the midterm break of their final semester, from late February to early March. This is also when most universities in Singapore hold their career fair, inviting recruiters from various companies in Singapore to set up their booths and collect resumes of students who might be interested in joining their company after graduation.

By collecting data from google trends on keywords that entry-level job seekers might search, we saw a clear trend of the peak in search terms between late March to early April. Provided that the data for the past couple of years might have more variance in them due to the pandemic situation, the trend that we can see in the collated data set shows that this has been the peak period of job search by fresh graduates through google. This period also coincides with the lull period for final year students between submitting their final year project/Thesis and their semester exams (if they have any). 

When do they receive an offer?
Many institutions often highlight the number of students and industrial attendees to their career fair and the number of students who successfully got a job through their career fair. Thus, it would be a safe assumption to say that many students prioritize attending the career fair first as the initial mode of searching for a job, spending February to march refining their resume, and selecting the industry partners to approach during the career fair. Then, after the career fair, if they are not confident in landing a job, they begin searching for jobs through job postings online. 

"...in Singapore, our youth unemployment rate is low. Once you graduate, whether from ITE, polytechnics or universities, you can find a job within not a very long time." (Lee Hsien Loong 2017 mayday rally)

However, many would begin their interview process between February to April and can often secure a job before their final exam in May or soon after; according to the graduate employment survey, the employment rate for university graduates was 94.4% for the 2021 cohort. This shows that most graduating cohorts secure a job after they graduate compared to other countries. 

When do they start?
Looking at the past few years, we can see many articles and promotions targeted at "Graduation trips" between March and May. Many take this as a break between their years of academic pursuit and the beginning of their career. Others, meanwhile, will decide to start their career as soon as possible after their final exams. The starting period can stretch from mid-May to July and is heavily dependent on the desire of the fresh graduate and the flexibility of the company. 

Conclusion
This installment aims to identify the year cycle of when and how fresh University graduates in Singapore begin searching for their jobs. Provided the graduation trip segment may not have been as relevant in the past two years due to the pandemic border closure, it is safe to say that such practices will come back as the borders open up and the graduation period nears. With this information, we hope that organizations would know when to concentrate their search for hiring students about to graduate, thus minimizing the resource used in the search process. We recommend that attending career fairs is still the best method of attracting quality candidates from this population. If this is not feasible, begin job posting/enquiring recruitment agencies around the late March/early April period to attract the most candidates. 

Provided that it is mid-April when this article goes up, it is still a viable option to contact us to aid you in your search process for students who may be eagerly looking for their first step in their career!