The Government’s much commented on Graduate Talent Pool (GTP) website was launched yesterday, boasting a pretty impressive number of graduate internships (2600 including 1300 which are paid). The GTP follows a Government initiative that was launched by John Denham, the then Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills designed to help the large number of graduates who faced unemployment due to the recession.

The Graduate Talent Pool is designed to offer short term paid, and sometimes unpaid, work experience that can help boost the graduate CV, improve their work place skills and help them get into full time graduate jobs. It is not only the students who stand to benefit from this, companies will be given access to quality, educated students who will be able to do real work for a low wage.

As predicted, many of the job vacancies on the GTP are for small companies, and it appears the majority of big employers have decided not to offer any extra graduate internships on top of what they already offer.

The RateMyPlacement Opinion

So what does this all mean, is it a good thing for graduates? Is it a good thing for undergraduates? Is it a short term fix or a PR stunt? Well the first thing we have been impressed with is that the GTP has actually managed to get off the ground with what looks like a significant number of internship opportunities, there was plenty of chat that it may never even be launched and would simply fall off the radar; a brownie point goes to the Government for that.

Secondly, I don’t think anyone could argue that the 2600 opportunities that have been created (or are at least are now accessible) for graduates is a bad thing because as we always say, you can’t beat work experience. The website may be a bit thin in terms of advice etc but it does what it should do, list jobs, very well.

However, at RateMyPlacement.co.uk, our interests don’t lie with Graduate Internships. We have always said that work experience after you graduate is too late and the Government should be making more of an effort to encourage undergraduate students to do internships. We have heard on campus that undergraduates are struggling to find internships and these opportunities listed on the GTP website would have been perfect for undergraduates, instead companies may now only take graduates, or undergraduates may have to compete with graduates for the job. This may lead to a more longer term problem where next year there will be more students leaving university with no work experience and they too will have to look for a Graduate Internship rather than find the full time graduate job they should be securing.

With the Milburn report (talked about in previous blogs) it seems internships are higher up the government’s agenda, and there have been several recommendations which it seems (from a conversation with some-one from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) are actually being acted upon. We have said it once, and we will make no apology for saying it again, the future of making the graduate population more employable is to increase opportunities for work experience whilst a student is still at university so the ultimately leave more employable, and with a greater chance of walking into a more suitable job.

If you want to read some of the RateMyPlacement advice, click here.

As always, really keen to hear your comments on the GTP and everything we have said above.