Aim high and you might surprise yourself - Tips from a first-class graduate and published author

Today we have a really inspiring blog from Michael Tefula, successful author with his first published book 'How to get a first' 

I started my accounting and finance degree at the University of Birmingham with a wild goal: to graduate with a first-class degree. Some of my friends sneered at the thought - “a first? Impossible!”. After all, I had the memory of a fish, went out a lot, and rarely came across as someone who could spend up to 12 hours in a library revising. But after three years of hard work, I surprised some of my friends and myself by graduating with not only a first, but also with the highest marks in some modules.

It is intimidating and perhaps even somewhat embarrassing to aim high, but if you aim for something average and common, that is exactly what you will get - average and common.

If, on the other hand, you aim for something grander, then you could end up working harder and doing much better than anyone ever expected.

Here is another example that reiterates this lesson. In my second year at university, I applied to lots of internships so I could get work experience. I had a few interviews with a number of large and highly competitive firms but failed to land a job with any of them.

Luckily, my application to a particular mid-tier firm was much more successful and I happily took on the role for a summer placement. While I found the experience immensely valuable, I soon discovered that I was better suited to a different career. One I had read of, and spoken to other interns about. So at the end of my internship I took a big risk and turned down a guaranteed job in pursuit of a more lucrative but even more competitive position within the same organisation.

Unfortunately, my pursuit ended with a failed final interview. It was then that I decided to aim even higher by applying at a larger, more prestigious and competitive firm. Having been through numerous application processes and interviews, I was much better prepared for this round of assessment. With a bit of luck and competence, I landed an even better job, surprising friends who thought me mad for having turned down a previously guaranteed job offer while the UK was in a recession.

Kanye West once remarked, “reach for the stars so if you fall you land on a cloud”. In my journey from a student to a graduate, then to a young professional, and most recently to a published author, I have learnt that living by such a statement can propel you to achieve a number of highly sought after aspirations.

What I’m I driving at? Here are some practical scenarios for you to ponder:

Found a dream job but afraid to apply because of the competition? Apply anyway and worst comes to worst, you will get experience from it to use in your next attempts.

Want to take a year out to travel around the world but can’t afford it? Make it a goal. Find temporary employment. Start saving and you will eventually earn your way to it.

Do you have dreams and aspirations which you are too embarrassed to declare? Share them with a mate and consider ways you could achieve them before writing them off.

Ps. Feel free to share your dreams in the comments below.
Find Michael on twitter @getafirst and his book on Amazon here.

Hope you find this blog inspiration. If however, you haven't got a clear idea of what you want as a career. Don't panic, here is something that will help you answer the dreaded question: I have a degree, now what? 
and if your marks have unfortunately not been the highest, again don't worry, We can advice you on how to job hunt if you get a 2.2 

Best luck to you all soon to be graduates from the TARGETjobs team.

TARGETjobs news roundup

Hello, good afternoon and welcome to the TARGETjobs news roundup. It’s a glorious day today and the sun is very tempting. Nevertheless, we’ve got a job to do and damn it, we’re going to do it.

Once again it has been a fairly quiet week at TJ HQ, with little in the way of change in the world of graduate recruitment. That said, a lot of finalists are now coming to the end of their exams and competition for graduate jobs is heating up. Now is the time to take stock of some solid graduate careers advice and give yourself an edge.

• KPMG is changing its ACA training programme provider from Kaplan Financial to BPP Professional Education. KPMG has an ACA pass rate of over 90%, and will be hoping to build on that with this new move.
• TARGETjobs found out that the majority of engineering graduates are very happy with their careers. Even when they knew they could get better salaries elsewhere, 86% were either satisfied or more than satisfied with their jobs.
• Meanwhile in the results from our IT survey we found that many graduate job hunters are not considering the wider industry when looking for jobs. On the positive side, we found that they are using the ‘slow and steady’ approach to their job hunt – a route which is more likely to be successful.

But, as usual, there is also a bit of general advice for those of you who aren’t interested in those sectors:

• For starters, we’re giving you the lowdown on how gap years can mess your graduate job hunt up, and how to turn them to your advantage.
• And finally, there’s the list of next week’s deadlines. It’s a particularly busy week if you’re looking for IT or engineering vacancies, and there are treats for other sectors too. Check out the latest jobs here.

To get graduate careers news as it happens, check out the TARGETjobs news feed. Alternatively, check out the roundup this time next week!

TARGETjobs offers the largest choice of graduate jobs, internships and placements. Independent reviews on top graduate employers and career planning tools and expert guidance. Become a TARGETjobs blogger by getting in touch with jackie.balchin2@targetjobs.co.uk.

Zen your mind before your final year

Emma Williams is back with yet another great blog. If you will be a finalist next year make sure you read this before you jet off for your summer holidays. 

I’m sure prospective third year students reading this either in the manic stress of revision or  ignorant bliss of summer holidays will agree that the looming inevitability of third year is something that brings on thoughts of immense pressure, incessant hours of work and a load of grey hairs and eye bags.

And on top of the prescribed stresses that our degree brings, the dreaded idea of work experience and internships just adds to the worry of what we should be doing or achieving by a certain time in our ‘university career’. The main thing to be remembering is that measuring your accomplishments against others is the worst thing to do, and unlike school where competition is normal and comparison is how you determine how much effort you put into homework or modular test, life in university has to be all about yourself—which is most definitely scary if you do not have a CLUE what you want to do. At all.

As naff and spiritual as this may sound, this panic has to be refuted so that you can clarify what it is you want to do, and have to do in the last few months of your degree. So in order to do this the most important thing to do is clear your mind and basically, calm yourself  from any stress that’s looming.

Taking one step at a time in planning is crucial to de-stressing. Thinking about your dissertation topic in the midst of revising for second year exams is not the healthiest thing to do, and obviously will bring on the anticipation of internship deadlines, dissertation research, and you’ll even start stressing over organizing your summer, which is supposed to be fun!

Another thing that is important to do is really take into account the length of a year: you have plenty of time to either get your act together in terms of grades if that’s what’s worrying you, you have months of musing over what to write 7,000 words on before summer and what exactly you want to do with your life. It’s comforting to know that some graduates leave university trying to explore what their ‘calling’ is: and in this climate you have nothing to lose in exploring what you want to do before leaping into a job.

Remembering that you have a lot of time before the end of your degree is a relief when everything feels as if it’s on top of you, and the best thing to make use of too is your course or house mates during this time. You have more in common than the types of nights out you like and how you all love a lie in; its this confusion and frustration of not knowing what to do that unites us all as students, and is something that’s worth discussing and talking through with people going through the same thing.

All in all, calming your mind and de-stressing is the easiest way to clarify what you want to do, or at least what you don’t, and the best way to go into your final year where you want to be pro-active and efficient. But by logically thinking about how much time you have, your options, and the support networks of university mates, your family and career support, you will be able to offload and zen your mind of any anticipations and stress before your final year—where everything falls into place.

And finally a tip from us, TARGETjobs: If you really want to make your final year count make the most of your resources near you, such as your career services. 

Hope you find this post useful. 

TARGETjobs news roundup

Hello and welcome to this weeks’ news roundup. After the relative calm of last week there are quite a few interesting things going on. If you want to have the best chance of getting a graduate job, this is where to look.

It’s accountancy that is hitting the headlines this week, with a couple of interesting stories. Put both of them together and you could get a big boost for your career chances.

• First up, we’ve got some shocking news from Freshfields. While many graduate recruiters are receiving hundreds of applications per vacancy, their numbers are of a different order.
• Following on from last week’s feature on the top skills you need to get a graduate job in accountancy, we asked a bunch of graduate accountants for their tips. They came back with some interesting advice.

Accountancy isn’t the only sector with interesting developments right now. There’s also plenty going on in management consulting, law and IT.

• The Management Consultancies Association is announcing a 10% boost in employment across the sector. In addition there was a 5% increase in fee income. This is good news for an industry which suffered from the knock-on affects of the financial crisis.
• If you’re looking to get a career in law then you can get essential work experience by volunteering with the Free Representation Unit (FRU). Focussing mainly on tribunals, but with some compensation cases, it could be very useful on your CV.
• According to the TARGETjobs IT Recent Graduate Survey, the majority of recent graduates in IT careers are happy with their working lives. Good news if you’re looking into jobs in this area.

It isn’t all about the sectors either; there are other things going on in the world of graduate recruitment. Last week we dropped some pretty heavy hints that there was stuff going on behind the scenes. This is what we’ve got to show you:

• We’re bringing you a brand new series looking at common mistakes made by graduate job hunters. First up: work experience. Get some schadenfreude and protect yourself from making the same mistakes at the same time. Neat.
• We’ve also put together our weekly roundup of all the job vacancies with deadlines in the next week. It’s a big week for engineers, but whatever background you’re from, there is potential for you. Check out the latest jobs here.

To get graduate careers news as it happens, check out the TARGETjobs news feed. Alternatively, check out the roundup this time next week!

TARGETjobs offers the largest choice of graduate jobs, internships and placements. Independent reviews on top graduate employers and career planning tools and expert guidance. Become a TARGETjobs blogger by getting in touch with jackie.balchin2@targetjobs.co.uk.

Graduate Schemes: beware of the Buyers Exercise!

Nichola Chapman is back and this time with a big warning of what to expect when your assessors give you a buyers exercise. Really great post! 

Before the real pressure of final year at university had kicked in, I found the time to apply for a graduate scheme. If you have applied for one yourself then you’ll know just how long filling in application forms can take - admittedly, it doesn’t help if you over-write the work you had done so far on the application form, as I not-so-cleverly did – but without taking that mishap into account it took me a solid two days to complete it to the best of my ability.

The scheme I applied for was a graduate buyer’s job at an exclusive London department store. The two days spent filling in the application form paid off as I got through to the next stage of the application process; a half-day interview. A week before the day of the interview I was sent an information pack explaining what would be happening on the day. This included: creating and presenting a ten minute presentation on one of four topics provided, a one-hour group interview and a forty-five minute buyers exercise.

By the day of the interview and despite the usual ‘this is an important day’ nerves, I was feeling quietly confident with the presentation I had prepared, not exactly dreading the group interview as I’m a pretty good talker (so I’ve been told!) and a little unsure what to expect from the ‘buyers exercise’. With it being a department store I had envisaged some sort of ‘best sellers’ identifying tasks or a discussion of the company’s product ranges.

The presentation went well and I felt I had given my best during the group interview. Then came the buyers exercise. This was not a ‘spot the best-sellers’ task as I had hoped. It was a maths test. A heavily percentage-based maths test. We were each given a booklet and asked to independently complete the task in 45 minutes – panic quickly set in! I was NOT prepared for this – all knowledge of GCSE maths on percentages was absent from my mind, stored somewhere in the ‘I’m 15, when am I ever going to need to know this?’ part of my brain. Even with the calculator provided, vague guesswork was the best I could offer.

As expected, I did not get through to the final stage of the application process. It’s just as well because the dealing with numbers aspect of a buyer’s job had sunk in since the interview and I was pretty sure that this was not my dream job after all. Still, I think going through the application process was massively worthwhile and beneficial - it taught me that things aren’t always what you expect them to be, even if you think you’re prepared.

Regardless of the type graduate scheme or job you are applying for, this would be my advice when applying…

1) Background Research – know as much as you can about the company you are applying to work at, specifically for retail. They will expect you to know who their target audience is, what products and brands they sell, which products or brands are selling well at the moment and who are their major competitors.

2) Revise your weakness – this is what caught me out! Most business related scheme will require some mathematical knowledge, so if you know your no good with numbers spend a few hours going over some of the basics you think the job might involve. That extra effort might make the difference between getting through to the next stage or not.

3) Don’t be over-confident – if there is a group-interview involved in the application, make sure you contribute but don’t be over-bearing. Almost all businesses require you to work as a team at some stage. Employees want to see that you have both the qualities of a leader and the ability to work with a team. Group interviews are naturally competitive because you are all up against each other so the balance can be difficult, be aware of how long you are talking for and allow others to say their piece without interrupting.

4) Go Local – international and national graduate schemes are naturally the most popular, meaning your chances of getting onto one are limited. The scheme that I applied for received 120 applications and 84 got through to the next stage, the competition was obviously still tough but not as tough as facing 1,000 other applicants! Speak to a careers advisor at you university and ask for advice about smaller, local companies that run graduate schemes. You’ll also have the advantage of knowing the local area better than some of the competition.

5) Leave ‘The Big One’ till last – if you have your sights set on a dream graduate scheme I would advise you apply for a similar scheme that’s less popular first. It’s likely that their application process will be similar and it’s great practice towards getting the one you really want.

If you enjoyed this article find out more about how to get a career in the retail here.