More than a third of graduate employers have complained their applicants cause problems - including a lack of quality.

When XpertHR asked 133 employers about recruiting graduates, 35.5 percent said they had encountered problems, with 80 percent citing a poor knowledge, skills and attitudes as the main cause.

This suggests that despite reports employers are receiving more applications per role than ever before, those graduates who only apply for the jobs relevant to them stand the best chance of getting hired.

Nearly half of graduate recruiters questioned had an issue with graduates accepting a job offer then subsequently withdrawing it while 38 percent believes that there are too few applicants for their organisation's vacancies.

XpertHR commented on the statistics: "These findings demonstrate that hiring graduates can be a complex recruitment area - just because there are more graduates than there are graduate vacancies nationally does not mean that individual employers necessarily find it easier to identify high-quality, suitable candidates."