TARGETjobs News Roundup

Hello and welcome to our weekly graduate recruitment news roundup blog. Here you will find the latest career advice we published on our site this week as well as announcements, reminders and other useful information.

Let’s start by reminding the LAW STUDENTS who are applying for training contracts starting in 2015 that the deadlines for most of these are coming up at the end of next month. Find all training contract vacancies we have live on our site here. (You need to apply for training contracts two years in advance to accommodate the time to complete your third year and your LPC).

If you are in need of a little help with training contract applications, why not have a read of our latest tips , especially our interviews with graduate recruitment managers at top law firms?

Back on neutral ground, this week we also continued our advice series on answering tricky interview questions. This time: tackling how you would give an example of your lateral thinking. 

If you are interested in a career in retail, we have some advice for you on how best to write applications and ace your interviews for Aldi’s area management graduate scheme 

And now it’s time for an announcement.

I am not sure if you’ve noticed but we’ve been publishing a weekly poll on our site. If you want to share your thoughts, do take part. This week we asked you:

If you don’t get a job this year, what are your feelings about doing a masters?

-          I would seriously consider it

-          It could be a good way to improve my CV, but I’m not sure

-          I’d rather keep applying for jobs, thanks

Please scroll down on our homepage to find the poll.

Going hand-in-hand with our poll, if you are considering, or have applied for a postgrad course, this is the perfect time to apply for one of our £2,000 bursaries. There are five up for grabs. But hurry applications close on Sunday. (30 June). 

As always, we end the blog with next week’s graduate jobs and schemes deadlines. Apply now before they close. 

Applying for a job for the sake of it.

Our intern Hollie, shares her experience of why applying for a job in an industry you are actually interested in is essential 

When my final year at Glasgow Uni was drawing to a close it suddenly hit me that in a few weeks I would suddenly be a real person: a tax-paying, student-loan-free real-life person. When friends and family asked me what I was doing when I graduated I could no longer brush them aside with ‘but that’s aaaages away’ because it wasn’t – it was very, very soon. I panicked. I’d always found the prospect of applying for a graduate job quite intimidating, but suddenly when I found an e-mail circulated around my course advertising a scheme at HSBC my adrenaline kicked in.

My first mistake was the time at which I applied. My dissertation was due in two weeks and I had a maths report to do even before that - but I rationalised it by saying to myself that ‘I was at university so that I could get a job, and so job applications were just as important as my uni work’. Wrong. I spent an afternoon writing a covering letter, filling in the application questions and sprucing up my CV. Then, I spent another long session practising for the psychometric test they asked me to do. When I passed that I then had to spend an entire day learning about banking for the phone interview I was due to have - because that was my second mistake: I’d put no thought into what I wanted to apply to and realised that not only did I have no knowledge whatsoever about the finance industry, I also had absolutely no interest in it. It took me a full 12 hours and copious cups of coffee to force myself to read through tedious statistics, news stories and lengthy press releases about banking and the economy.

When it came to the day of my phone interview I felt so sick with nerves I kept forgetting to breathe, and when my phone rang I almost threw it under the bed. It all went downhill from there. The first question the woman asked me was merely to re-iterate the name of the exact graduate programme I’d applied for – I was so wound up I couldn’t remember. I had to fumble with the paperwork on my desk frantically until I found a copy of the application form. The second thing she asked me was to select a recent news story that involved HSBC and talk her through it - I’d only briefly scanned a few. I had to fish in my brain for the one I remembered best and find a creative way to expand what was effectively one sentence’s worth of information into an intelligent, knowledgeable-sounding answer. This prompted the first of many instances when I was left with nothing much to say after about 20 seconds. Question after question I was forced to tail off into silence and wait until the interviewer realised that no, the phone hadn’t cut out; I just genuinely had nothing to say.

The interview was supposed to be 40 minutes long, and it’s safe to say mine only lasted 20. Amongst the plethora of awkward, grimace-inducing silences I’d been faced with many questions that I didn’t know how to answer and many more questions that I really didn’t care about knowing how to answer. In short, I realised I wouldn’t have wanted the job even if i’d (miraculously) gotten it.

So, if blogs were the Aesop’s fables of the modern world, the moral of this story would be this: make sure you know what you want to do, before you do it. Sounds simple enough right?  If you can’t bear a 40 minute conversation about the subject matter, then you certainly won’t want to be immersed in it every single weekday for the foreseeable future. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to start thinking about what I wanted to do while I was still in my second or third year instead of leaving it until the last minute (mine was a four-year course). I would have saved myself all that post-interview hyperventilating if I’d just given some consideration to what I actually wanted to use my degree for. I assumed that with maths I’d probably end up working with numbers; what I didn’t realise was that I could also go into IT, marketing, law – in fact I know now that there are bucket loads of graduate schemes on offer that don’t require a specific degree discipline. Also, a lot of graduate schemes have application deadlines earlier in the year and if I knew I could have applied at a much more convenient time.

When I finally did do an interview for a job that I actually wanted, well, it wasn’t intimidating at all – I really quite enjoyed it! So, readers, go forth and research what’s out there - otherwise you’ll end up knowing far more than you’d ever care to about equity capital markets…

Cheers,

Hollie 

What part of your CV matters most to employers

What part of your CV matters most to employers

Last week we ran a poll asking you ‘what part of your CV matters most to employers.’ We knew you would think work experience was important, but it’s very striking how much you believe recruiters care about it. It trumped all other elements by a substantial amount of votes. Next in line are your academic performance and your personal statement. And judging by the number of votes, these two criteria are pretty equal in importance in your opinion.

Let’s investigate this further.

The graduate recruitment market, although improving, is still highly competitive. Once you would have been well placed to land yourself job and a high-flying career simply because you had been to university. Now more is needed to even get your foot through the door.

It is no longer the case that getting a good degree is enough in itself. Work experience is vital and judging by these results many of you feel it is more important than your degree result. Research by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit into the employment of 2009 graduates highlighted work experience as key to maximising chances of getting a graduate level job after university.

-          79% of graduates who had done work experience said their job was appropriate for someone with their skills and qualifications, compared to 61% of the overall sample.

Find more details on the survey here. 

Employers also use internships as part of their recruitment process.

The 2012 AGR (Association of Graduate Recruiters) summer survey showed how internships are an important recruitment tool for its members. Just under four-fifths (78.5%) of employers used the same selection process for their internships as for their graduate programmes, and on average 30.4% of all placement or internship students went on to become graduate recruits.

If you missed out on doing an internship as an undergraduate, you may still be in with a chance. The survey revealed that over half (52.0%) of employers accepted applications from graduates for their internship programmes, rather than limiting placements to those who are still university students.

It is no wonder then that at the end of May we reported on another TARGETjobs poll finding that the majority of respondents would work for free if the benefits outweighed being paid. (insert link) It is all about employability: your ability to find and keep employment. This requires both good academic results and work experience. And judging by these results, you would go to great lengths to boost your employability.

The good news is that universities are full of opportunities for you to get work experience. The earlier you start the better. Joining a student society for example can provide you with great employability skills such as team working, time management and so on. Your careers service will have an extensive list of resources for you to search for work experience, and more employers than ever are offering internships and placements. In more good news, as university holidays are particularly long, especially in the summer, there is plenty of time to get some substantial work experience.

If you are searching for a particular employer to see if they offer work experience, why not check out our A-Z of employers that provide this? 

Volunteering gives similar benefits to work experience, as you will still be picking up employability skills. Volunteering also shows initiative and self-motivation, two key soft skills that boost your employability.

A part-time job, even if unrelated to the career you are interested in can also provide you with valuable employability skills. Why not find out what great CV skills you can pick up from a retail part-time job, for example?

The pressure to get work experience is growing for students and recent graduates. Employers’ expectations vary depending on the career you are trying to get into. So make sure you have done your research. Remember that what really counts is boosting your employability skills, and a traditional work experience placement or internship is not the only way to do this. Extracurricular activities, volunteering and part-time jobs are all great ways to get the skills employers want. The key to strengthening your CV is knowing where to find all available opportunities and how to identify and sell your newly acquired skills.

-          Search for work experience, internships and placement here.

-          And identify your skills and how to sell them here. 

-          Find out more about a range of top graduate careers. 

TARGETjobs news roundup

Welcome to the weekly graduate recruitment roundup. This is where you find the roundup of all the latest graduate career advice we have written this past week.

This week we’ve focused on tricky interview questions and have given you the inside track on how to answer the following:

-         Have you ever had a bad experience with an employer?

-          Give an example of a time when you showed nitiative? 

When it comes to interviews it’s always best to have examples set aside for these types of tricky questions. Have a look at the possible responses we have come up so you pass with flying colours.

As well as general interview advice, we talked to financial services employers. They told us they look for client skills as well as numeracy in their actuaries. Have a look at how to show recruiters you have the necessary people skills. 

For those interested in hospitality, we shared the top ten tools (skills and knowledge) you need to getting a graduate job in this industry 

If retail management is more your career of choice, you may find our latest application and interview advice for Aldi’s area management scheme helpful.

But if none of these take your fancy why not browse next week’s graduate job deadlines. Although it’s traditionally a quieter time for graduate recruiters, there are still quite a few going. 

Hope you have a lovely weekend,

Jackie 

The Editorial: Part 1

Our intern Craig is the first to take the plunge and write his first blog. A really interesting piece. Hope you all enjoy it. 

Hi, as well as interning this summer I am the editor of The Saint, St Andrews’ independent student newspaper. Whilst in this position I got to thinking that although most people consider student newspapers for experience when interested in journalism there is so much more a newspaper can offer, even to those looking for work experience in IT, design/production, sales, and finance. If you have any questions about what is mentioned below, or maybe something which isn’t, feel free to contact me at editor@thesaint-online.com

Let me explain this:

IT jobs: Since news has become a multi-media, multi-platform business, with the majority of people getting their daily news through their phones, tablets, and computers, student papers have had to adapt to survive. The transition from print to online news, however, can be very complicated if done well, and this is where I think newspapers need IT specialists. If you have experience coding websites, either for a computer science degree or as a hobby, I think you could easily find a job there. Why not develop an app for the paper, or create a version of the site for mobiles? This kind of extra-curricular project is fantastic for a CV. One person can make a huge impact in this area – be that guy.

Sales and marketing: Although some newspapers are subsidised, there are plenty of others that rely on revenue gathered from the sale of adverts to allow them to print.

Student newspapers can be a brilliant way to get experience in sales, dealing with clients ranging from local takeaways to international banks. This work often goes on behind-the-scenes, but is definitely a crucial part of the process. Most offer on-the-job training and shadowing, allowing you to build up your confidence before hitting the streets on your own. I think that the experience this section can offer can be invaluable to someone looking to go into the profession – why not give it a shot?

Design/Production: I can’t speak for other student newspapers here, but The Saint is designed and laid out on professional software called Adobe InDesign, part of the Adobe Creative Suite, which also includes products such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver. From my experience, this software, among other programs, is used by newspapers and publishing houses throughout the country to lay out content before it goes to the presses. If you are serious about going into journalism or publishing, a working knowledge of this software can be a major plus point on your CV. Get in touch with your student newspaper to see what opportunities they can offer you to familiarise yourself with this software. Or, if you are unsuccessful there, you can take matters into your own hands. If you can prove you are a UK student, there is a fantastic website called software4students.co.uk which offers the latest software for reduced prices. Adobe Creative Suite 6 (CS6) is, at time of writing, available there at a significant reduction. It is a lot of money, but consider it an investment in your future. There are plenty of manuals and Youtube training videos available.

Finance: Someone is always needed to keep an accurate record of the income and expenditure of any business. There are usually fewer positions available for this kind of job with student papers, but it can’t hurt to ask – drop the editors an email and see what they say.

If you have any questions about what is mentioned above, or maybe something which isn’t, feel free to contact me at editor@thesaint-online.com

This month’s interesting journalism law fact: My copy of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists is in the post. Sorry to disappoint, I know you were looking forward to this paragraph so much!