IBM Increasing Graduate Recruitment into 2010

Students graduating from university in 2009 have had a rough time looking for jobs. Thanks to the weak world economy, laid off workers with industry experience have been taking many of the jobs that newly graduated adults rely on. Luckily, there is hope for the thousands of technology students who have recently graduated from university.

IBM constantly looks towards graduates for new talent to add to its company, however they recently announced that an additional 100 graduate jobs are being made available for its recruitment program. IBM plans to offer 150 graduate jobs to recent graduates in 2010 making it one of the largest graduate employers in the technology sector.

IBM is a computer, consulting, and technology company founded in the USA. It is the largest IT company and technology employer in the world since its formation in 1896. The graduate programs target those in the US and UK but with nearly 400,000 employees around the world, there are plenty of opportunities for students globally.

Jonathan Ferrar is the director of Human Resources at IBM. He said to Personnel Today that they are looking for graduates to recruit because the company “can give them the training to develop new skills that [they] require. There are new technologies that we are putting in place and they require different skills, so we want to have people who can start from scratch and learn those”.

IBM continues to grow as the world’s economy works to recover. They recently unveiled plans for a new analytics center, this will create around 400 job openings. While the bulk of these are likely to be sourced internally, many will go to new graduates.

The director of human resources also said that there is a “crying need for talent” in the computer sector. The company is looking to hire software specialists, consultants, and mathematicians soon, so there is a good variety of roles for new graduates.

IBM continues to work to strengthen its company through its employees. IBM is launching a management leadership program. Around 80% of the managers in IBM will be going through this program. Ferrar mentioned that they are focusing on their managers because they “Rely on them so much for doing a lot of the communications and helping our employees through difficult times”.

The graduate scheme is well regarded in industry, they were voted the “Target Graduate Employer of the Year” for the last two years. It has also been voted the Times “IT Graduate Employer of Choice” for the last 4 years.

IBM is looking to find the best talent of all new graduates. The company fully realizes the importance of finding new talent before other companies manage to do so. Ferrar noted that “where you get specialist skills there is definitely a war for that talent. There definitely is a crying need for that talent”.