One of the most important points in a student’s life is finding their first graduate job. The prospect can be daunting, and if you don’t know what to do or where to start, it can seem impossible to find your dream graduate job. Luckily, we’re here with some helpful advice on how to find graduate jobs and kickstart your career!
What are Graduate jobs?
Graduate jobs are a great way to start your career. They typically require a degree and can be found in many different industries. Graduate jobs can be defined as occupations that usually require knowledge and skills learned and developed on a minimum three-year university degree. This is to ensure the individual can perform the associated tasks competently.
How to Find Graduate Jobs
We’ve compiled a list of actionable steps to help you find your dream graduate job.
Self-Assessment and Goal Setting
Begin by taking stock of your skills, strengths, and weaknesses. Consider the coursework, projects, and extracurricular activities you engaged in during your academic years. Reflect on what you enjoyed most and where you excelled. Are you a natural problem solver? A skilled communicator? A detail-oriented organiser? These attributes can guide you towards roles that suit your innate abilities.
Next, delve into your career aspirations. What kind of work do you see yourself doing in the next five or ten years? Is there a specific industry that ignites your curiosity? Do you have a passion for technology, healthcare, marketing, or something else entirely? Defining your career goals will help you focus your job search efforts and identify opportunities that align with your long-term vision.
Put Your CV Out There
Job sites aren’t exclusive to job seekers; employers and recruiters often use them to actively search for candidates. If your CV is uploaded to your profile, there’s a chance that a potential employer could come across it and feel that you are a perfect candidate for a vacant position they have. Creating accounts on job sites is easy; spend some time creating profiles and uploading your documents to boost your chances of a job finding you!
Bonus reading 👉 CV Writing Tips & Cover Letter Writing Tips
Use Recruitment Agencies
Graduate recruitment agencies are a great resource and one you should use in your job search after finishing university. There are thousands of recruitment agencies across the UK, and many of them specialise in graduate jobs. The agencies receive a commission every time they fill a vacant role for a company, which means they’ll do everything they can to make sure you find a suitable job. Whilst there are many benefits to using recruitment agencies, make sure you research them before you dive right in.
Use Your Connections
If you’ve finished university, you’re probably well aware of how important networking is. Now is the time to make use of that list of contacts you’ve built up. As the saying goes, “It’s not what you know but who you know“. And that couldn’t be more accurate in this instance. Thousands of jobs are filled each year by word of mouth/.So, if you know someone who works in an industry you’re interested in, ask them if they know of any vacancies you could apply for. If you know someone who already works at a company you would like to work in, then hesitate to ask them to recommend you for a role. If that feels too much, ask them to put you in touch with the right people.
Bonus reading 👉 Networking Tips
Research!
You should always do some research on the company you’re interested in before applying for a graduate job. Researching the industry, what they do, and their mission statement will allow you to write an impressive cover letter that sells your skills as being suitable for that role. This is also useful if, during an interview, the interviewer asks why you want to work for that company or what you think of the organisation.
Bonus reading 👉 How to Nail Your First Graduate Jobs Interview
Customise Applications
Make sure you tailor your applications to each role before sending them out to companies. You must customise your application documents to the role. You don’t want to sound like a robot by putting the same standard cover letter for every job. Trust us, recruiters know when a generic cover letter from a custom one. Tailoring an application will show potential employers how passionate and determined you are about getting their job.
Be Selective
It can be easy to get carried away with applying for graduate jobs. Therefore, try not to apply for every role on the market just because it has ‘graduate’ in the title. Make sure your job search is selective and targeted towards roles relevant to what you want to do in life after university. If you’re not careful, then you could end up in a job you don’t enjoy. So, make sure you only apply for roles that you could see yourself doing long-term!
Key Takeaways
Your graduate job search becomes a whole lot easier when you know how to find graduate jobs. We hope this blog has given you some sound advice so you can start your graduate career on the right foot.
For more information on writing CVs and cover letters as well as finding a graduate job, visit the Developing a Student website.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any further queries. And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter for all the latest news and graduate opportunities from Developing a Student.
