Using Social Media In Graduate Job Hunting

Here's a great article from one of our student journalists, Charles that's worth sharing!

Something to bear in mind when using these different media platforms is that it might be a good idea to keep your image varied in each one. You can adapt them to better suit their particular function and also to help create a diversified online presence of yourself. For now let’s stick with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. 

If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile yet, get one. Make sure your profile is tailored, professional and accurate. Comic profile images are forbidden. Also, don’t have your headline as ‘Looking for Graduate Jobs in Marketing’ if you really want to go into Bio-mechanics. It has been known to happen. Start building up your contact base immediately and try to add previous employers into your network. Don’t add people you don’t know. Perhaps sit down and build up a list of go-to people, the kind of people you want to have within your network who might be able to help you professionally or personally somewhere down the line. It could end up being sooner than you think. Think about getting recommendations on your profile, it will give it that extra edge. 

People often think of Facebook as a strictly social site, it doesn’t need to be. If used correctly, it could also be another useful job searching avenue, especially as like most students, you probably already have hundreds of friends in your contact list, most of whom you don’t speak to but that’s beside the point. Clean up your profile, this means don’t have anything on there that someone could use as a reason to not hire you. Then consider posting a job focused status, it’s possible one of your friends might be able to help you out, even if it’s just by giving you some good advice. Also think about following your favourite companies to make sure you’re in the know. 

Speaking of following, let’s move on to Twitter. Twitter could be the place where you let your creativity run free. Have an interesting but respectable Avatar, have links to your CV, blog or other interesting tidbits you may have. If you have no interesting tidbits, it might seem like you’re not a very interesting person, so you may want to change that. Follow your favourite companies and try and build up a rapport with them before you dive in and bombard them with application documents. Take note though, spamming is not cool. Alternatively or additionally, be original, insightful and develop your very own following. Imagine having 8,000 people following you simply because you always post interesting tweets, then when you mention that you’ve got a book coming out, it’s no surprise that quite a few of those 8,000 people got mighty curious right? That’s a true story.

Above all, be patient. These things take time.

Charles, GRB Journalist

Standing Out In The Online Arena

In this ever evolving digital world, it is important to keep in tune with developments with the internet, not only for your lifestyle but also for careers. This medium differs from the traditional written cover letter and CV, so you need to consider the most effective approach to make a good first impression.

A recent online employment report revealed that there has been a 55% increase in the hiring of web freelancers by UK businesses since July 2011. This rise has been due to more companies recruiting specialists to deal with processing the vast amount of online applications that are received. Despite the different methods of application, some basic principles remain the same. For example, you need to use good spelling and grammar, as well as have a clear layout and presentation. It is worthwhile highlighting your key achievements (perhaps in bold or by underlining) to make them stand out, but be selective. Also, a professional tone needs to be used, and the language should be tailored to the specific job.

Most online applications include basic information such as contact details and academic qualifications. However, the more important section focuses on competency based questions. These have maximum word limits, which are important to follow. The form tests your ability to convey answers in a concise manner and these responses usually form the basis for questions at interviews. You will have the opportunity to describe why you are interested in the firm and the particular line of business, the types of skills you have gained, such as during work experience and extra-curricular activities.

Some companies will not have application forms, but will ask you to apply by email. Firstly, you should use an email address, which has a suitable name, rather than one, which uses a nickname. Also, you need to address the person in a formal manner and put an appropriate subject in the email so that it is not misplaced by the company. Make sure you write short paragraphs, which are clearly spaced out and answer the key points in the job description. The email is effectively the covering letter and so you can also attach your CV, which should ideally be in a format, which cannot be edited, such as a PDF. If after some time you do not get a response, it is always worthwhile ringing to confirm whether the email has been received.

Overall, you need to put some more thought into online applications but the basic principles of using professional language, good spelling and grammar, as well as addressing the key job requirements remain most important. After you have completed a few applications, you will understand the most appropriate style to use, but ask for guidance from careers services or friends before you send the final emails or submit the forms online.

By Arnab Datta

Wandering In The Wrong Direction?

Here's another excellent article by our guest blogger, Arnab Datta. Preparation is the key to success when it comes to choosing and applying for careers. You need to carry out considerable research about the company to understand its main service lines and also see what it is like to work there. Usually students are given careers advice by others who have specialised in that area or those who have worked in the positions themselves.

A recent study by a company has shown that graduates are not receiving enough careers advice or information about the options available. This lack of advice stems from when they were at school and university. Difficulties for graduates will arise if they have not been informed about the various careers on offer earlier on in their lifetime. For example, choosing a certain degree means that it is not always so easy to change your mind later on and embark on a different career path, although this is still possible.

It is important that you look for relevant careers advice from a range of sources. The best place to start is probably specialist graduate recruitment agencies such as GRB, which will help with your CV and improve your performance at interviews. Universities have careers services and they have the latest information available, especially for the careers that are most popular among graduates, like those in the financial sector. Also, when visiting the agencies and careers services you will meet other people with whom you can share information about careers and thus increase your pool of knowledge.

Alternatively, you can gain a more informal view from your family and friends who currently work in that particular industry or profession. In a way there is nobody better than someone who actually does the job, to tell you more about the skills required. From that, you will be able to decide whether you will enjoy doing the job. It is important to gather different types of views from a variety of sources, since this will give you enough information from which to make an appropriate career choice.

Overall, you don’t want to be going in the wrong direction when thinking about which career path to follow. Therefore, you need to be pro-active in your search for information and consult a wide range of sources, as early as possible. If you do, then there is no reason why you won’t choose a career that you will find interesting and enjoy for many years to come.

Guest Blogger - Arnab Datta

Arnab has been writing excellent articles for the GRB News Feed so I'd like to give him some exposure on my blog as a guest blogger. Hope you like...

DISCOVERING THE TRUE VALUE OF TRAINING

There are many types of graduate jobs available in the market place and so choosing a career path is inevitably difficult. Still, you need to consider whether you want to join a graduate training programme or if you just want to go straight into the world of work.

A recent survey by an international accountancy firm discovered that graduates value training and development over remuneration. This suggests that people want to join a company where they will get the opportunity to improve their overall skill set, so they can do higher quality work in the future. This may still mean that the salary is an important factor but a long-term career path based on a solid training programme appeals to a considerable amount of graduates.

Many accountancy firms offer three year graduate training schemes to become a Chartered Accountant. These programmes are quite challenging since you need to carefully balance studying for exams with the commitment and responsibility required at work. However, there are real benefits upon qualification since you can work in industry or progress through the ranks at accountancy firms. Other careers that have postgraduate training schemes include Law and Engineering, so if you want to become a professional, this is definitely the best route to take.

Some careers may have a Graduate Training Scheme, but no professional exams are required. These are still beneficial, since you will gradually understand more about how the business works and then see if it is the right career for you. In most careers, you will have a buddy or mentor who can offer guidance since they have had similar experiences. Also, you might have an Appraisal Manager with whom you can discuss your long-term career plans at a more formal level.

However, in this difficult climate you may need to have a better paid job, at least for a few years. If so, then you should probably take a job even if there is no clearly defined training scheme. This is because all companies will train you and offer guidance so that you can do your job as effectively as possible. Indeed, training does not stop in the first few years, as you will have to keep attending courses throughout your career, to stay in tune with the latest developments in your field.

Overall, it is worth valuing training more than your salary to an extent, depending on your personal circumstances. Some key advantages with training schemes are that they are well regarded in the market place and can act as a springboard for further achievement in your career. Still, if you think that a starting salary will make your life more comfortable, then take that job initially and perhaps consider pursuing some sort of training scheme further down the line.

GRB x Bath Finance & Investment Society

GRBs 6th CV Clinic this year was held at Bath University when we were invited in by the Finance and Investment Society to help its members with the ins and outs of writing good CVs. Rather than me tell the story I'll let the comments we got on Facebook do it.

"This was the most efficient feedback I have been given on my CV for the little time we had. Straight to the point. I would recommend having a copy of a good CV to show to the students. This would make the session even better :)"

"This was a really professional and thoroughly useful session, covered a lot in the time we had. Thanks!"

"Dan was very helpful and made me think about specific examples for my CV, thank you very much!"

"Honest and focused advice, a great service. Thank you for your time"

"Really put me on the right track - loads of useful tips. thanks a lot!"

"Professional and focused CV advise. It was really helpful. Thank you very much."

"The session has given me clarity in my approach to my cv and helped with tailoring for each firm. Thanks a lot."

GRB x UCL EFS

Yesterday GRB were invited to help the UCL Finance Society members with their CVs. It proved to be very popular as when the President emailed out this event to its members 2 days before to book appointments he was inundated with 130 emails!

In the end over a 5 hour session we were able to help sixteen students with their CVs. Each 20 minute  session went through each person's CV content and layout answering questions along the way. Here's what the President had to say yesterday;

" We invited you expecting someone coming in to help some of our society members to check and improve their CV. What you did on the day was the most professional and sustainable careers advice I have ever seen: Not only did you dedicate 20 minutes per attendant on average and answered also any other questions relating to applications besides a CV, but you also promised to follow up with each 'patient' of the CV Clinic to post-check their corrected CVs again. Those being lucky enough to have received your service gave outstanding feedback and all strongly advised me to invite you and the Graduate Recruitment Bureau again to campus!
 -Hannes Ansorg, UCLEFS President.

  

GRB Guest Blogger - Bianca Pellet

When I applied for university study in 2003, the situation facing graduates was very different to how it is today, and it is alarming in many respects that so much should have changed so starkly in only eight years. One thing probably hasn’t changed, though, and that is that careers advice given to me – as in, I suspect, many comprehensive schools – was vague at best. I dimly recall mentioning journalism as a potential career choice and being told something along the lines of “go to university, study English, and you’ll be fine”.

I therefore duly went to the University of Exeter to study English (and Classics), having also applied to Oxford, Bristol, Sussex, Manchester and Nottingham. My highest offer (from Manchester and Nottingham) was ABB; Exeter and Sussex each only required BBB. I'm well aware that the average offer from these places has shot up since then. I also had a rather cavalier attitude to the admissions process, only putting thought into my first four choices and just picking the remaining two because they were good universities and I needed two more choices. Such a devil-may-care approach would, understandably, not cut the mustard now, and would probably come through more clearly in a candidate's application.

My attitude -perhaps due to this, combined with being among the top 5% in my year group –could have been taken as a bad omen, although I did not see it as such at the time. I did well in my studies at university, all the while getting involved with about ten societies every year, volunteering, and...doing any job that would make me a quick buck. Campus and accommodation tours, nude modelling, data entry, waitressing, hotel receptionist, till monkey...you name it, I did it. (I spent all of the money on having fun, mind you, but that's another story.) The general impression I had was that employers would value the transferable skills I had gained from doing these jobs, and I stuck to that. Nobody except potential doctors, lawyers and teachers ever talked about internships or work experience.

During my master's year at Oxford, this head-in-the-sand approach arguably got worse -again, only lawyers, medics and teachers ever said a word about interning, and most other students were, in any case, planning on continuing their studies and becoming academics, and so work experience was not a concern for them. I continued to work at odd jobs as a waitress and till monkey, and only considered unpaid work experience during my second semester, when I volunteered in an Oxford school, and then again at the end of my time in Oxford, when I spent two months interning at IPC Media on expenses only. I had also been blogging and working with an American company since 2007, but I was mainly paid in products, not in money. I never once consulted the university careers service, having been put off by the woolly advice given by my secondary school now four or five years earlier.

Looking back at the sorry catalogue of affairs now, it seems even more absurd that I had got to this point feeling that my transferable skills would be enough for employers on their own. I read the papers; how did I not realise that there was a crisis on and I needed to act faster? Whilst I still feel bitter about the bad advice I received in the early 2000s, and more than a little indignant that employers have apparently never valued all of the skills I acquired from the jobs that I did, I now also feel that I was to blame and should have known better.

It therefore shouldn’t have been a shock or surprise to me when upon graduation I could not find a graduate job – but it was. Other friends took up menial, non-graduate jobs while looking for graduate work; I felt I had spent enough years doing that already and would not settle for anything less than a graduate job, but the reality was that I lacked relevant experience. I arguably made matters worse by casting my net too wide, literally applying for anything that appealed in what I knew was a competitive market, when what I should have done was made a decision about a sector and stuck to it. I am still feeling the effects of my lack of decisiveness today.

After job-hunting from March to August of 2008 and finding nothing, I began to feel really rather depressed by the whole thing. Even with two good degrees and plenty of (albeit largely irrelevant) work experience on my side, nobody even wanted to talk to me. My long-term boyfriend was in France and I had planned to work in the UK for a year to save money and plan the move properly before joining him there. This seemed increasingly unlikely to come to fruition, so I figured that I would be best off just beginning to search for work in France. I was amazed when within two weeks of beginning my search, I was flooded with offers to come for interview. I booked a one-way Eurostar ticket, thinking that even if I didn’t get these jobs, if I wanted to work in France then the best way to hunt for jobs was to actually be there.

I was offered, and accepted, a job as a teacher in an international school to begin the following week. While it was surreal to move out of home and to a new country to start a new life so quickly, I was excited and buoyed by finally being able to put an end to the long-distance aspect of my relationship and by having landed a graduate job. The problem now was different: after a time I came to realise that the little bits of journalism and translation that I had been doing on the side were, after all, what I had really wanted to do.

This was what I meant earlier by still feeling the effects of my indecision. If I had stuck to my guns and decided at eighteen that I really wanted to be a journalist after all, and not a teacher (don’t get me wrong, there are good bits - but it was always only one of several possible career paths for me), I could have trained to be that straight away, either by taking an NCTJ instead of going to university, or by doing it afterwards, and by placing more emphasis on relevant work experience (paid or unpaid). While it is not impossible to break into journalism later on if you change your mind (my credits this year include publication in expat paper Connexion France, which is published all over the country, and Metropolitan,–the magazine you get on the Eurostar), it is much more difficult, especially when trying to start out as a freelancer rather than having a staff job first.

I would therefore recommend to those considering or graduating from university today –particularly now that the competition and financial stakes are arguably even higher – that you make a decision quickly, and stick to it. Get the work experience in relevant fields, and don’t waste time kidding yourself that employers will prize transferable skills from irrelevant work. And above all, stick it out - you could also say that I gave up too quickly on my search, when in reality (especially if your parents are willing to put a roof over your head in the meantime) a year or two years to wait or train for the perfect career is not a long time in the context of an entire working life.

Bio:

Bianca Pellet has been an English teacher of students aged 11-18 in an international school in Paris's 15th arrondissement since 2008, and a freelance journalist and translator since 2007. After studying Classics and English at the University of Exeter, followed by a master's degree in Linguistics at the University of Oxford, she moved to France to forge a freelance career in writing and translation. During her time at university she worked in a variety of sectors - including administration, hospitality, and education - before interning at IPC Media and in schools in 2008, as well as undertaking some private tutoring work. Her publication credits include Connexion France and Metropolitan, and her translation credits include the translation of contracts for Orange and Bouyges Telecom. She has written three novels (that are as yet unpublished) and also writes poetry. In 2004 she became the youngest ever contributor to the academic journal "The Use of English", published by the University of Leicester; she has also contributed to journals published by the Universities of Derby and Exeter, but decided not to pursue a career as an academic. While Bianca finds that teaching provides a welcome compromise of a stable income, good holidays, and the chance to use knowledge gained in her degree studies, long-term she would like to write and translate full-time, having studied French formally and informally since the mid-1990s. She sees her professional and personal future as being firmly located in France, but owes her success so far to her education in the UK.