Successful Graduate Job Hunting By Gemma Kenyon Director of Careers & Employability, City St George’s, University of London Director, Graduate Futures Institute
I f you’re able to begin thinking about your future at the beginning of your degree, then you’re doing absolutely the right thing. The graduate job market is undoubtedly highly competitive at the moment. And with many of the best-known employers now getting hundreds of applicants per vacancy, job hunting has become more and more time-consuming and
Every university has its own careers service, to help its students make the most of their time at university and build the skills and experiences that employers look for. And then as you come to the end of your studies, they’ll give you a good sense of what your options are in terms of graduate employment, how to stand out when you’re making your applications to employers, and be successful in getting a graduate job o"er.
an increasingly di!cult process for students and graduates to go through. Being proactive and starting early, while you’ve still got plenty of time at
Each careers service has a team of careers advisers who are expert professionals who will coach you and guide you through your options for the future.
university to be able to gather new experiences and develop yourself, is exactly the right thing to do. The UK labour market is quite unique. The fact we have so many graduate employers that are open-minded about which degree subject you’ve studied
“ If you’re relying on AI, then the applications you’re creating are likely to be very mediocre and average. ”
Don’t worry if you’ve no idea what you might want to do after university. Indeed, most students don’t know what they want to do, so this is normal. Talking to a careers adviser will help you identify the breadth of options open to you and make you feel more confident about your graduate job hunting. In your first year, it’s all about being curious, open-minded and not closing-o" any options at this point. Your university careers service will put on lots of networking events where you can explore the kinds of career opportunities which may be linked to the subject you’re studying. You’ll meet people who work in di"erent walks of life, di"erent industry sectors, and with di"erent job titles.
is a fantastic opportunity. But it’s also very challenging, because there are few linear conveyor belts that lead from a specific course into an individual profession or occupation. So you’ll need to think creatively about the di"erent opportunities that you’ll have across the three or four years of your degree. How can you make the most of them and how do you get a good spread of experiences? Be strategic about the di"erent skills that you might need for the type of jobs you’re interested in.
TOP 100 GRADUATE EMPLOYERS 35
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