There's nothing like new ideas, fresh perspectives and a broad range of skills for making a real difference to a company's bottom line; just some of the benefits that graduate recruits can bring to an organisation.
Figures from the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) show that graduates contribute around £1 billion of added value to the UK economy every year.
It is a "win win" recruitment scenario. While employers have the opportunity to mould relatively raw recruits to the specific needs of their business, and encourage them to adapt to their culture, graduates are eager to continue learning and keen to make an impact in their new working environment.
Those who have spent part of their degree course on an industry work placement and have experience of applying academic knowledge to real workplace situations, can bring added value.
Four years after completing her first degree, Sarah LaBrecque enrolled on a post graduate course in communications at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, before heading to the UK to join the Guardian Sustainable Business team as a content coordinator, where she has been working for the last six months.
The 28-year-old spent her time between her two forays into academia working for a Canadian not-for-profit environmental firm, carrying out energy efficiency audits in the domestic property sector.
That practical experience, combined with her academic training, she says, helped to ensure that she was well equipped for her current role.
She says: "During my post graduate training I did a lot of project work, involving digital content production and working with sound and video, so coming straight out of that creative content building and technical environment and going into a sustainable business area of media, I was really enthusiastic about being involved in creative editorial content in my current role.
"What have I brought to the organisation? In terms of coming up with ideas for content and some areas of marketing, I think I have made a valuable contribution to the team."
Graduates are quite fearless; eager to take on challenges, learning new systems and processes very quickly, and as a result, helping their employer to achieve more immediate financial returns.
As many graduate recruiters have discovered, they also bring a wealth of skills and are unfazed by the prospect of analysing data, solving problems, creating presentations, and acquiring new, industry specific skills very quickly.
Recruiting graduates can also help to promote diversity within the business.
LaBrecque adds: "There is a good mix of people within my team, including young people in their early twenties, people who work flexibly, part time and on a temporary basis, and a few older more experienced professionals who can teach you a lot. It is a good balance."
Diversity is one of the key reasons why specialist healthcare recruitment firm Your World Recruitment Group, which helps employers secure the graduate talent they need, has a growing graduate recruitment programme of its own.
Managing director Tony Moss says: "We recognise the importance of graduates as part of how we expand as a company. One of our primary recruitment goals is to ensure cognitive diversity - the different ways that people think and apply problem solving processes - of the people we employ. This can only be achieved by employing people from diverse backgrounds with equally different abilities."
Traditionally it has always been large blue-chip companies that have been associated with graduate recruitment, but that is changing and nowadays, it is employers in the SME sector that are proving attractive to graduates.
A survey of small businesses carried out last November by GTI Media
found that 45% had recruited at least one graduate to a permanent position in the last year, up 20% in three years, while 41% had offered at least one graduate a work experience opportunity in the last year, up 15% over the same period.
In a separate survey of nearly a thousand undergraduates carried out by the NUS, 87% expressed a willingness to start their career with a smaller employer.
One of the challenges for SMEs, of course, is finding the right individual for their business. They lack the resources for large recruitment campaigns, and although there are a number of specialist recruiters that work with smaller businesses to help them hire graduates, it often falls to the careers teams at their local universities to help connect them with prospective graduate candidates.
As many have discovered, the search for the right graduate recruit is worth the effort.
Your World Recruitment Group's Tony Moss adds: "When it comes to graduates in particular, we recognise the discipline, tenacity and achievement behind their degrees, and value individuals who've been through this progress and have the potential to be the employees that produce the next radical innovation in our sector.
"As employers in a recovering economy, we would encourage other SMEs to view graduates in this light and allow them the opportunity to bring their talents on board."
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