Graduates need to look outside traditional opportunities to find jobs, says Bristol recruitment specialist

Redrock Consulting says graduates need to think outside the box

15 April 2011 – Despite graduate unemployment hitting a 15 year high, with 20% of recent graduates unemployed and 45 students for every graduate job, graduates are still failing to examine options other than traditional professions which offer formal graduate training schemes, says a Bristol based recruiter.

Redrock Consulting, an independent specialist IT recruitment consultancy, says that while accountancy, legal and management consultancy graduate jobs are all hugely oversubscribed, many graduates are failing to examine the opportunities offered by sales consultancy roles.

The company launched its own graduate recruitment programme two years ago as part of its high growth strategy.  It aims to take on 24 graduates annually, offering each a tailored induction and training programme with the aim of giving each the recruitment and business skills necessary to run their own Redrock recruitment business either in the South West or elsewhere in the UK.

“We’re looking for well motivated people with an entrepreneurial streak to help us realise our expansion plans,” says head of graduate recruitment Jimmy Lloyd.  “We’re happy to give recruits the support and training they’ll need to run a company subsidiary on their own account eventually.  We have graduates here who will pay off their student debt within 12 months if they play their cards right. 

”Many graduates simply don’t realise that the rewards and opportunities in sales consultancy are huge, and for the right candidate, will provide a much more stimulating and exciting environment than a more stuffy and traditional first job in one of the professions.  We start candidates on a very respectable £17,500, which goes up steeply once they qualify,” adds Lloyd.

Redrock featured on the Sunday Times’ list of Fast Track 100 companies last year, having achieved sales growth of 131 per cent over three years.  Its client list features blue chip clients including Orange, Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent, as well as numerous SMEs in the South West and elsewhere in the UK, and it has formed strategic alliances with some of the most innovative software consultancies in the world to ensure that its candidate pool is the best qualified in the UK. 

The company was founded five years ago by a group of experienced recruitment professionals, and weathered the downturn by recording its best trading year ever in 2010.