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Job hunting help for students & graduates

• If you didn't take a vocational course such as Law, Dentistry, Medical Studies, Accounting or Business Studies, your next step may not be a clear-cut progression.
• If you studied a vocational course and hated it, don't be tempted to follow it further and make yourself even more miserable. You do have other options.
• Around 45% of this years graduate scheme vacancies are in the accountancy, professional services, banking, investment and financial services sectors, 7% in law, 6% in transport, 6% in consulting, 6% in retail, 5% in construction and 9% in engineering/industrial sectors (16% fall into a mysterious 'miscellaneous' category). If these aren't for you, then make sure that you research your options carefully rather than just falling into something you hate for the sake of it.
• A 2:1 is the a gold standard requirement for many graduate-level jobs and elitism is still alive and well in recruitment - the top employers still prefer to recruit from the 17 universities that belong to the Russell Group.  
• Students from these Universities - Imperial, LSE, Cambridge, King's, UCL and Oxford also command the highest average starting salaries (currently around the £25K mark).
• Many graduate employers aren't necessarily looking for a specific qualification. What interests them more are your transferable skills - problem solving, creative thinking, project management, adaptability, leadership, team working and analytical skills.
• According to research by the I-graduate barometer, the skills that employers say graduates lack (in order of importance) are: communication skills, confidence, planning and organisational skills, passion, analysis and decision-making skills, literacy, commercial awareness, relevant work experience and personal development skills. Ring any bells?
• Science and engineering graduates may very welcome in City firms because of the numerical analytical skills they will possess. History graduates may be equally favoured because of their mastery of quite different research and analytical skills.
• The growing popularity of psychometric testing, and the low cost and ease of conducting tests online, mean that many employers now use them to further discriminate beyond the class of degree you hold. These will include numeracy and literacy tests and, increasingly, personality and emotional intelligence tests. Get ahead of the game, go to the assess yourself section and try our Ocean Personality Test for free. Find out what your personal strengths are and how you might put them to good use to earn a living you'll be happy with.
• There are lots of places to register for work - check out our selection of the best graduate recruitment sites here.
• Download the latest careers research from Highfliers Ltd at the bottom of the page.

• You don't necessarily have to go straight to into career oriented work either. There are lots of post graduate qualifications that, with a year's extra study, can lead you into a completely different career direction e.g. Journalism or Marketing.
• If you didn't take a gap year before you went to University, it isn't too late. You could take a year out working overseas or at home on a variety of interesting projects. See our pages on working for a charity and volunteering.
• Having work experience on your CV whether it was during your graduate studies or after them is highly appealing to employers even if it was waitressing or bar work - they have an indication of whether you know what it's like to get your hands dirty or not!
• It is easy to be seduced by the large salaries that many of the big multi-nationals will pay to graduates with what they consider to be a good degree (a first class or an upper second class honours degree). You will work very hard for it we can assure you. If you really want to know what we mean check out 'From New Recruit to High Flyer' by Hugh Karseras and some of our other recommended top reads in our great books on career management selection. 

• You may have finished your undergraduate studies but choosing an employer who will help you with the additional skills that you will need, especially if you aspire to lead others, is critical. Make sure that you understand what they will offer you to sustain your long term employability. Redundancy and lay offs happen all the time irrespective of your age and qualifications.
• Do give your all but don't forget to keep investing in yourself too - training, networking, professional memberships, community leadership activities and so on.
• Just because you don't get on to a graduate training programme the first time around doesn't mean you have missed out completely - try out niche job boards such as Second Post that specialises in positions for graduates with work experience.

• Once you have passed all the interviews, assessment centres and other filtering devices that larger scale graduate employers will throw at you, prepare yourself carefully for your first few months at work. It may come as a big shock to you.
• You won't necessarily be surrounded by lots of very clever people like you will have been used to you - showing off and being dismissive of or arrogant with experienced co-workers, whatever their rank, will not endear you to them.
• Be good to people on the way up, as they say, because you never know who you might meet on your way down! You may have a nice shiny degree in business strategy or an MBA, few sensible employers will risk letting you run the show when you are so green. Management Consulting firms may let you practice on their clients, they won't let you decide their strategy!

• It's good to have a vision of what you want your future to turn out like. It gives you focus and that makes success more likely.
• Don't be afraid to seize unexpected opportunities as they come up, however, whole new worlds that you hadn't previously envisaged may be opened to you.
• Equally, if you have set backs, the measure of your character is in how you deal with what leadership guru Warren Bennis calls 'the crucibles' of life. Many of the most successful people we know have had plenty of hard knocks, they just get back in the saddle of life and don't let it defeat them.
• Careers are not necessarily straight lines, and we all know that there is no such thing as a job for life.
• Be prepared for change, the unexpected and learn how to turn adversity into opportunities.

• Graduate recruitment articles archive

graduate_career_choices_2007.pdf - 563kb Download this file

Associate of Graduate Recruiters Listings of University specific and National Graduate Career events.

Second Post Second Post - Great niche job board that caters for graduates with work experience looking for their next job, named employers and opportunities to join graduate trainee schemes.

The Gap Year Show The premier Gap Year event at G-Mex, Manchester and ExCel, London.

UCAS UCAS is the central organisation that processes applications for full-time undergraduate courses at UK universities and colleges. It also has information for parents and finance.