Finishing university is a stressful and exciting time! You might be starting to think about further education or life beyond studying and entering the world of work in the form of a graduate job. But when should you apply for a graduate role? September, the start of the year, just after graduation?
We’ve analysed which month gives your application the best chance of success based on the number of graduate job vacancies in comparison to the number of people searching and applying for graduate jobs.
If you want to find out the best time of the year to apply for a general job vacancy, check out our article here.
March is the best month to apply
According to Joblift, the best month to search and apply for a graduate job is March. Just before the summer exam period, March saw the highest percentage share of graduate job vacancies posted online with 10.34%. This outnumbered the amount of people searching online for graduate vacancies (7.32%) by 3.02 percentage points. This means that March has a low level of competition for graduate roles in the job market.
Well prepared students will see the best chance of success
May was also a great time to apply, ranking as the second best month to submit an application for a graduate job. Again just before the exam period, the fifth month of the year saw the lowest number of online searches for graduate jobs with 6.76%. The number of graduate job vacancies in May made up 9.17% of the total, meaning vacancies outnumbered the demand by 2.41 percentage points. Similarly, smack bang in exam time, June followed as the third best month to apply. In this month supply of vacancies outnumbered demand by 1.53 percentage points, with 9.25% of graduate job vacancies advertised and 7.72% of searches.
These results show that students who are forward thinking and start actively looking for positions before and during their exam time give themselves the best possible chance of employment.
Avoid graduation month to beat the competition
Our studies show that July is actually the worst time to apply for a graduate job vacancy. With 7.83% in the number of available graduate job vacancies but a huge 9.90% in the number of people searching online, July saw the greatest negative difference of minus 2.07 percentage points. This means that July saw the highest amount of competition for applicants for each position.
Following on closely, October was the second worst month to apply. Demand for graduate job positions was at 9.91% which outnumbered the number of available vacancies (7.89%) by 2.02 percentage points. As the third worst month to submit a graduate job application, December saw the lowest amount of available graduate job vacancies at 5.44% share. Because of this, even though the number of people searching for vacancies was also low (7.19%), the Christmas month saw a negative difference of minus 1.75 percentage points.
So there you have it, if you’re graduating this year make sure you get ahead of the competition and start searching early! In fact, why not start taking a look at what is already on offer now…