Career prospects of the university graduates and companies` approaches to their recruitment: the case of Azerbaijan

Abstract

This research explores career prospects of the university graduates and companiesʼ approach to their recruitment. It firstly examines graduatesʼ approach in finding highly-rewarded and prospects job and their attempts on the way of possessing such employment. For this purpose 102 respondents from Azerbaijan were inquired and data were analyzed on SPSS Software. Following this, representatives of Azerbaijani companies were interviewed with the intention to disclose their corporate strategies, tools and techniques to attract highly qualified graduates. This research has contributed to reveal how companies define their strategies in recruiting graduates, which factors impact on their strategy, how they communicate and cooperate with universities and graduates, which policy influence on recruitment methods. The study disclosed that the most important priorities of graduates is getting an opportunity to attain work experience, work placement and a variety of soft skills in order to be rewarded prospects career. In turn, employers expect from graduates to be able to communicate in native and foreign languages, will have technological skills, will be able to work with clients, to possess business and entrepreneurship skills with the intention to pick up the brightest candidates for the advertised position. According to graduates one of the biggest challenges in getting employment is to meet the employersʼ work experience requirements, whereas company representatives stress that the work experience is not the most important requirement, because graduates are recruited through scholarship and internship programs.