Top universities launch national recruitment service
Posted on 15 May 2001
Some of the most prestigious universities in the UK and Ireland are launching a new online recruitment service to rival the dot.com headhunters.
TargetedGRAD will involve more than 20 universities with a potential market of 250,000 students and graduates.
TargetedGRAD will add value to the extensive careers support available through university careers services, helping interested students identify vacancies with a wide range of blue chip companies. Its top-flight system will email vacancies to targeted groups of students and graduates and make sure vacancies satisfy all employment legislation.
The service will also give employers the opportunity to find the right students and graduates quickly and easily.
In addition, it provides a timely response to the recently published Harris Review of Higher Education Careers Services which called on universities work together and to use the latest technology to better meet the needs of students and employers.
TargetedGRAD will be run at each campus by that university's careers service. Students and graduates will register their details with targetedGRAD and be authenticated by their own careers service before being entered onto the central database.
A Central Office based at the University of Manchester and UMIST Careers Service will host the database and provide other services under the management of an Executive Board comprising representatives of all targetedGRAD universities.
Claire Rees, Director of the Careers Service at the University of York explained that targetedGRAD would be a unique product in the recruitment market: "Unlike other dot.coms, targetedGRAD will draw on the support of hundreds of careers and academic staff across the country. These staff will actively promote targetedGRAD to those students interested in careers with blue chip companies. Combined with the credibility of being owned and delivered by those universities most targeted by employers, we believe targetedGRAD will have an incredibly strong presence on campus. Best of all, targetedGRAD will not be driven by profit, but by the commitment of universities to offer the best possible service to their students and to employers."
The universities involved are: Aston, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Durham, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Imperial, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton, Trinity College Dublin, UMIST and York.
For more information visit www.targetedGRAD.co.uk.
Employers can get more information from:
- Stevan Rolls, Director of Recruiting, Andersen, 020 7304 1150
- Sue Polley, Recruitment Adviser, Exxonmobil, 01372 222 000
- Michael Hunting, National Director of Graduate Recruitment, Eversheds, 0121 232 1000