Graduate recruitment and sponsorship 1999: a degree of optimism for the millennium - Our ninth annual survey of graduate recruitment practice finds some strong indications that the process is being radically re-evaluated by employers. Gone is the cosy tradition of letting new graduate entrant programmes operate independently of the mainstream business. Instead, we conclude that "businesses now place graduate recruitment alongside general recruitment, and no longer protect it from the trials and pressures of commercial life This shift is most evident in organisations' increasing readiness to abandon or drastically curtail their new graduate intakes when economic conditions are uncertain - as they have been in 1998-99. But it can also be detected in other ways - in the more varied types of vacancies for which graduates are recruited, and in the modest increases in starting salaries and sponsorship monies, for instance. In common with our previous surveys, the findings are "hot off the press", with the information from employers being analysed and prepared for publication within four weeks of our questionnaire's closing date for responses.