Finally, we asked Oxbridge students to highlight a) which resources they use when searching for graduate jobs and b) which resource would be their first port of call.

Out of all the resources on offer to students, word of mouth is by far the most influential. Although it might not be the first port of call, it is quite clearly the most decisive.

Word of mouth was the most cited graduate resource among Oxbridge students.

Careers guides were the second most popular graduate resource. Company presentations, recruitment brochures and posters are all much less widely used.

The careers fairs, careers service and career guides account for the lion's share of first places to compare aggregated jobs.

The 22% of students who listed company websites as their first port of call is a potentially misleading response. It is unlikely a student will first hear about a job via a company website, given that they would need to know the company before they could find the company website. However, most students will check a company's website before applying and may have listed it for this reason. It is possible that some students thought of "recruitment websites" when they read "company websites".

A significant 15% of student replies indicated that the careers fair would be the first place to look for a graduate job. This is consistent with the 15% of students which haven't decided upon career sectors until their third year. This suggests that a significant number of students at the fair have not decided upon their future careers sector.

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