As jobs have become harder to find, graduates have begun to panic.

While students flung mortar boards in the air after receiving their degrees, not everyone had cause to celebrate. Graduation was supposed to be the golden ticket to a dream career: get a good degree at a good university, and jobs at professional service firms, banks and consultancies would be there for the taking.

For many years, that was the promise, but the reality for many graduates is proving altogether different, with many confronting rejection after rejection in a moribund labour market.

The anxieties of young jobseekers were succinctly summed up by the recruitment expert James Reed last week when he warned of a “severe jobs drought” which could drag the UK back to the depths of unemployment last seen in the 1980

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