Stick with me kid: we found the retailers with a right to be optimistic when we went to the Careers Forum and our pals at Mothercare have stuck to their word and doubled their profits on this time last year to £9.5m. Sales outside of the UK were up 9% so the brands expansion and internet sales plans seem to be on course. As boss Ben Gordon reminds us “Only 0.5% of the world’s babies are born in the UK” that leaves them 99.5% to clothe and entertain! The Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia were among the company’s best-performing markets. Mothercare currently has 24 stores in and around Moscow and plans to open another 40 stores in the next three years. People (with low self-esteem) will always have babies, recession on not, so get your passport and CV ready comrade!

Tags: Career in retail, graduate jobs at mothercare, Growth in retail, job opportunities at mothercare

Headlines abound that Rolls Royce is to cut 1,500 – 2,000 jobs around the world. Don’t shoot yourself just yet – there will be 140 jobs likely to be cut at Derby and the firm has been cutting jobs since January. The cuts do not affect Rolls’ graduate scheme – an increasingly desireable venture as detailed in this vid. Worth remembering that the job cuts ammount to just 4% of the overall workforce. Rocknroller.

Tags: Graduate scheme at Rolls Royce, Planes, student placements at Rolls Royce, Trains and Automobiles

Heaven knows I’ve got my work cut out finding the good news out there right now. That said, my old pal and head of the AGR Carl Gilliard keeps going on record to say that the majority of graduate recruiters are not cutting their graduate intake, and a significant percentage are actually increasing the number of grads they take on. That might include the world’s largest PC maker, HP whose profits have come in higher than expected, giving its shares a 10% bounce and sales up nearly 20%. Last year the company overtook Dell as the biggest PC maker, and that position looks like holding thanks to global reach, a broad customer base and…er…ongoing cost cuts.

Tags: graduate opportunities at HP, growth at HP, IT careers for graduates and students

Out pals at InBev have completed a £35bn (gulp) takeover of USA brewer Anheuser-Busch to create the world’s largest brewer. And the new catchy name? Anheuser-Busch InBev, which sounds like an Austrian football team, or toilet disease. They’ll sell 46 billion litres of beer a year, putting the following brands under one roof: Stella, Budweiser, Beck’s, Hoegaarden, Leffe, Brahma, Staropramen, Michelob, Rolling Rock. It has upset patriotic American politicians that their appalling beers should be owned by a Belgium firm, but they’ll get over it. Few job losses are expected, growth is on the cards, particularly for brand Budweiser, whose performance in Europe compared to the rest of the Western world has been relatively weak. Like the piss-awful beer itself.

Tags: Food and Drink, graduate careers at Inbev, leisure and hospitality, the graduate programme at Inbev

They’re back: last time we reported online clothes monger Asos’ bumper sales it was a bit weird in the current climate. Now it’s the stuff of the X-fliles. While everyone else is firing and crying, Asos has seen sales more than double by 107%, with close to a million customers. Strong sales of cheap threads for the Christmas party season showing no end to the good times.  My favourites, high-shine leggings are also very popular: Asos sold 4,000 over the last four weeks. It recently launched ASOSRed, a discounted designer clearance page, and a maternity range. Half of those million customers are under 25 and, so don’t face mortgages and utility bills, so are more resilient to economic downturns. Asos plans to push into childrenswear in February, as well as offering more premium designer brands alongside Karen Millen, Warehouse and Whistles. It is also looking to expand overseas. We caught up with them at a retail fair recently – everything you need to know about landing a graduate job with them is in this video. I’ll help you catch him, Clarice.

Tags: asos jobs for students and graduates, clothing retail, fashion, graduate opportunities in fashion and retail, Growth in retail, Retail