The news for graduates leaving university this summer has been unrelentingly gloomy: a depressing combination of record numbers of university leavers, fewer job vacancies and sky-high debts.

But a survey of careers services at many of the UK’s leading universities, carried out exclusively for The Times by High Fliers Research this week, reveals that there are at least 10,000 entry-level jobs still available for graduates this summer.

The study of the latest vacancies listed at 26 careers services at universities including Manchester, Cardiff, Bristol, Warwick, Oxford and Edinburgh shows more than 3,200 organisations still advertising jobs for graduates this year.

A further 800 employers are offering short-term placements or voluntary work experience.

On average, there were 235 organisations at each university — numbers ranged from 40 to 680 — advertising graduate vacancies with September start dates. If this pattern is repeated across all of the UK’s universities, there are an estimated 40,000 graduate jobs still being advertised.

“Despite the prevailing bad news from the economy, we are getting vacancies from employers on a daily basis,” Paul Redmond, head of the Careers and Employability Service at the University of Liverpool, said.

He added: “Our concern is that many graduates don’t appear to realise that their careers services are still receiving and promoting vacancies. The message is: even if recruitment markets are quieter than in previous years, employers definitely do want graduates.”

Many of the best-known employers have received record numbers of applications for their graduate programmes this year and 90 of the organisations featured in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers have completed their recruitment for 2009. Not surprisingly, therefore, two thirds of vacancies listed by university careers services are with small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Carey Widdows, director of the Careers Advisory Service at the University of Reading, said: “Graduates need to be flexible in their approach to job hunting and in the type of employer they apply to.

“We recently produced a booklet that listed SMEs that wanted to recruit graduates and this is now whizzing off our shelves as people realise this is a legitimate sector for graduates to work in.”

Almost half of employers promoting vacancies through university careers services are offering jobs based either locally or within the wider region in which the university is situated.

Ross Huffen, of the University of Leeds Careers Centre, said: “It is important that graduates and students know that there are still opportunities out there. Few employers have completely cancelled their graduate schemes — they have learnt the lessons from the last recession. The graduate jobs market is simply more competitive these days.”

Many careers services expect that, even with vacancies still being advertised, a significant proportion of this summer’s graduates will be job hunting well into the autumn — although not all will be fired with enthusiasm.

Gordon Chesterman, director of the Cambridge University Careers Service, said: “The recession was a useful wake-up call for many students, who engaged fast and hard with the recruitment market.

“But a smaller minority have switched off completely with a ‘why bother?’ attitude. We expect these to return after the summer, when parents’ patience and generosity run out. Our careers service is gearing up for this reluctant visitor.”

Getting your foot in the door

Case study: Oliver Malin-Hyams

An internship is a great way to get a full-time job. Just ask Oliver Malin-Hyams, 22, who has landed a full-time role as a marketing co-ordinator at Glo Worldwide, an LED lighting supplier, in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London. He was offered the role after working as an intern, with only his expenses paid, for three months.

“I’m definitely happy. I’m learning so much. Because it is a small company you really get involved in all areas of the business,” he said.

Mr Malin-Hyams, a graduate of Oxford Brookes University, found his internship via Recruitment Squared, a company set up by Andy Shovel, 22, who graduated from Warwick University last summer. Mr Shovel matches graduates looking for internships with SMEs. “We offer companies and graduates the chance to try before they buy,” Mr Shovel said.

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