Any IT recruiters/hiring managers around

[RecruitEnquiry]

Looking for info on current graduate situation for entry level roles.
DS graduated 3 years ago and has struggled to get work in his industry. Lot of redundancies and entry level roles being affected by AI.

In his 1st year at uni he took a couple of computing subjects and enjoyed them. So he’s now considering doing a Conversion Masters in either computing or cyber security. He thinks this will the panacea as he has school friends who studied in these areas and are now onto their second jobs and climbing the ladder. But they graduated in 2023 I’m just concerned the job market is a very different place in 2026. He’s become vey despondent and I don’t think his mental health would take it if the same thing happened again.

So my question is are you still having vacancies at graduate entry level and if so are you inundated with suitable applicants for every post?

We had over 4,000 applicants for our grad scheme this year (admittedly in a different sector). Applications opened in September 2025 and closed Feb 2026 for our Autumn intake. It's massively difficult to get a place , I do feel for him. If he did an MSc we would still be looking at what industry experience he had.

Thanks for replying.
He met with his university careers advisor recently who was saying likewise about graduate schemes. Obviously it’s very industry dependent so I’d just like him to have as much up to date info as possible about IT to help his decision making

What has he been doing since graduation? Is he engaging with any sector organisations- like imeche for mechanical engineering? Grad schemes are increasingly competitive as like your ds previous years grads are competing against the current year. One I know of who was on a reserve list last year as a new grad has been successful this year- partly because he could demonstrate extra experience and skills he had gained in non grad work, and because he could better prepare for the interview/ assessment.

He has had some work in his field but they’re all short term contracts for specific projects and the money has not been renewed. Not an area that traditionally has grad schemes. He’s been unemployed since Christmas now and there’s less and less jobs to apply for so he feels this will be a very unstable future for getting permanent work, a mortgage etc. Hence the reason he’s considering pivoting into a different industry by doing a conversion masters

IMO the IT jobs market is pretty awful right now, especially outside of the big cities. Generally seeing bigger firms closing down projects and laying off staff and SMEs making use of interim/contract resources to bring up the skill level in existing teams.
There are a lot of very qualified people coming out of university with no meaningful work experience who expect way too much in terms of salary, career progression and responsibility after only 12 months into a career.
If he’s genuinely interested in a career in tech I’d advise him to take a 1st line support role in a small company where he’ll get to see and work on everything IT related due to the size of the business. He can then do further qualifications to specialise if needed, plus he’ll have a boatload of relevant experience that will put him ahead of those who ‘just’ have the education.

Also he needs to actually be interested in tech! It’s an incredibly frustrating and boring space to work in otherwise 😂 If he’s not curious and doesn’t enjoy problem solving it’ll be a dead end really quickly.

Thanks @Ineedanewsofa
I know what you mean, I’d be frustrated and bored in 5 minutes!
Yes he’s genuinely interested and we are in major city. A couple of subjects he took in 1st year at uni were from the school of computing and would be seen as traditional computing subjects.
He applied for a first line Help desk job recently but apparently there’s a helpdesk course at our local college now which you have to have done!

I think it’s a lot of money to invest (and time) to get into a role. The IT job market is really difficult at the moment.

There are loads of free on line courses available which will teach him very current skills and practice. Some uni courses. Are not as up to date. Are there tech industry events locally he could attend? Could he build an online skills portfolio to prove his ability? Is he active on LinkedIn?

We are still struggling to recruit people with skills, so there are jobs out there.

When recruiting I prefer a compsci degree or experience rather than a few modules so personally I'd say yes to the conversion masters, and keep looking while doing that. This is because we don't have time in smaller companies to support someone without any coding.

Apprenticeship is a possibility - even if someone already has a degree.

Get networking - go to all the free meetups and be open about looking for work - people there will want to help as we are all facing skills shortages.

Look for hackathons to gain experience

Look for jobs in adjacent roles as a way in - DevOps, product owner, tester, etc.

Look at the BCS (British Computer Society)for ideas and advice

I think AI will help entry level people because it is an accelerator. I've seen it myself. It will lead to us needing more jobs in cyber security

Finally, team dynamics and collaboration are crucial so anything to show he will be great to work with is a must. Technical skills can be taught but it's very hard to teach someone to run along well with others.

I took on a graduate who had worked at a supermarket known for customer service and he was brilliant.

Thanks @excouncil
Good to know hackathons are useful as he recently took part in one at his friend’s uni and spoke to all the sponsors. He said they were very approachable but really they wanted people from that uni with the integrated masters degree! I’ll suggest to him to keep going to other hackathons and networking if that is helpful.
He seems quite keen on the cybersecurity conversion masters, would you say that’s worthwhile? He has several coding languages from modules he did at uni but it’s a few years ago now

Cybersecurity has never been more important than now. It’s a pragmatic and sensible route to take, especially if they already find it interesting.

Agree RE help desk roles, they can be a gateway role in the right organisations. If interested in coding / development (these roles will exist moving forwards once the AI hype calms) I would also encourage them to create their own projects and do some self directed learning and showcase that on their CV.

I would say the cyber security masters sounds like it could be good, yes, but I'm not an expert, so definitely ask other opinions, too. Every company needs someone looking after their cyber security.

Compare various masters conversion courses - are they up to date, teaching modern coding technologies and software development practices?

He needs to ask the universities about their graduate employment statistics and links with local employers.

He might be able to get in for this Autumn but some of them fill up sooner.

I'm a little ambivalent given how much it costs but he has the potential to earn a lot over his career, and it could get him over the first barrier to entry.

Forgot to add, he could also do free learning and low cost certifications on the various public cloud providers (AWS,GCP) and use that to get an entry level job in platform engineering or DevOps.

Just think about it. Anything that only British nationals can do is going to stand him in good stead. Any other type of software development etc just gets shipped out to counties like India where it’s cheaper.

Definitely move into cyber security

I would also go cybersecurity, lots of demand for it in the world we live in now. I work in a government agency and we can't keep hold of cyber staff, they all get snapped up by better paying companies as soon as they've got some experience.

Yes he’s hearing about the demand being there and that’s why he’s keen to move into this area. The bit I’m worried about is the entry level roles to get the first job. In the area related to his current degree he’s competing against people with 5-10 years experience who’ve ben made redundant and they’re the ones being hired. I’m keen to manage his expectations as it would be a disaster if the same thing happened again!

Thanks everyone for your insight and advice. All very useful

I think it’s the same and he will still find huge numbers competing for every job.

I work for a medium sized plc company and don’t have a formal grad program but we do recruit at grad level periodically thoroughout the year and we advertise on LinkedIn.

Ask your son to setup a search for analyst or apprentice positions and see if he has any luck that way. We recruited an analyst under the government apprentice scheme.

We hired someone a few months ago and got 400 cvs through LinkedIn. Most were rubbish and didn’t note the key points we asked for in the ad eg grade a in maths gcse so we managed to whittle down the 400 to 6 interviews purely based on cv quality so please help him ensure his cv is good quality layout!

Every cv was looking at by at by a human, no AI and we made the offer to the only person who showed he had researched the career path and the company and seemed keen to start a career in that field.