TARGETjobs News Roundup

It’s that time of the week again where we tell you the latest news and career advice posted on targetjobs.co.uk.

First up…  if you are a law student applying for pupillages, your time is nearly up. To give you a helping hand with your application we’ve spent five minutes with Rosemary Budden, barrister and pupillages committee member at Queen Elizabeth Building (QEB). She reveals what can make you stand out on an application, what work experience is most impressive and other golden nuggets of information. 

Our second big news…  if you haven’t followed us on Twitter you won’t know that we announced the winners of the Undergraduate of the Year awards last Friday. The winners and the finalists are inspirational, high achieving students. We look forward to keeping in touch and hearing about their adventures on the internships they've won. They will also be posting blogs telling us about their personal experience with the awards. So watch this space. 

Next on the agenda we are asking you how well you know the Big 4 accountancy firms. Do you think you know all there is to know about Ernst & Young, Deloitte, PwC and KPMG? It’s probably best to double check by reading our article on them. The more prepared you are the better. 

We also focus this week on getting a graduate job with a 2.2 – contrary to popular opinion, getting below a 2.1 does not mean you are out of the job hunt game completely. Here is how to job hunt if you are set to get a 2.2 when you graduate. 

And finally we give you the latest roundup of upcoming job deadlines – with a special mention that Tuesday 30 April is the last day to apply for pupillages. 

Hope you enjoy your weekend. 

Undergraduate of the Year

This blog follows a different format to our usual round up as today is the Undergraduate of the Year Award ceremony where 120 finalists become 12 award winners.

What are the awards?

The TARGETjobs Undergraduate of the Year Awards were launched four years ago to identify and celebrate the UK’s best undergraduate in specific areas.  The awards categories are:

The Undergraduate of the Year Award for Commercial Excellence – sponsored by Nestle

The IT and Computer Science Undergraduate of the Year Award – sponsored by Marks and Spencer

The Engineering Undergraduate of the Year Award – sponsored by e-on

The Law Undergraduate of the Year Award – sponsored by Mayer Brown

The Management Undergraduate of the Year Award – sponsored by Enterprise Rent-A-Car 

The Construction Engineering and Design Undergraduate of the Year Award – sponsored by Laing O’Rourke

The Arts and Humanities Undergraduate of the Year Award – Sponsored by Barclays Wealth and Investment Management

The Low Carbon Undergraduate of the Year Award – sponsored by EDF Energy 

The Mathematics Economics and Finance Undergraduate of the Year Award – sponsored by Gazprom

The Female Undergraduate of the Year Award – sponsored by Rolls Royce

The First Year Undergraduate of the Year Award – sponsored by Ernst & Young

The Future Business Leader of the Year Award – sponsored by Mars

Every year thousands of undergraduates are tested through a series of online assessments, which are then followed by assessments centres run by the sponsoring organisations. Only ten people make the shortlist for each category and are invited to a glitzy awards ceremony held in London where the winners are announced.

And this is where we are today at The East Wintergarden in Canary Wharf, feeling the tension. Here we will be live tweeting @ugradoftheyear letting everyone know who the shortlists are and who Sir Trevor McDonald announces as the winners – if you are interested in finding out, stay tuned on Twitter.

Hope you all join us in congratulating the shortlists for making it this far and the winners for making it to the top J

To keep our usual structure, we round up this week’s blog with the latest graduate job deadlines next week. 

Lots are coming up on Sunday 21 April. 

TARGETjobs News Roundup

Hello and welcome to our weekly news roundup. We have some exciting news for you. If you are a keen photographer, whether that is the subject you are studying or it’s your hobby, then we would like to see your photos. 

More details: We publish career advice both offline and online through our publications and website. Within these we use plenty of photography to illustrate our content. If you feel that you can take or have photographs that will complement our career advice and news related to our sector, why not send them to us? 


You can send them to me at jackie.balchin2@targetjobs.co.uk or you can email for more information.

If we do use your photo we will reference you on site and/or in the publications and will send you a letter with your publication date for your resume.

In the news: We had quite a retail focus this week in terms of our career advice. We told you:

·         How to write a great graduate retail CV 

·         The top skills retail recruiters look for in graduates: communication, leadership and teamwork. 

·         What questions to expect at your retail graduate interviews. 

·         And what types of retail work experience there are.

But if retail is not your thing we also have something for those of you interested in IT:

·         How to decide what type of IT company and job is the best fit for you.

On another note, it’s the Undergraduate of the Year awards ceremony next week on Thursday 19 April. If you want to find out who the winners and listen to the action as it happens, tune in on Twitter using #Ugradoftheyear2013

As always, we conclude our blog with the next week’s graduatejob deadlines. 

TARGETjobs News Roundup

Hello and welcome to our news roundup. It’s been a very exciting start to the week at TARGETjobs HQ as we got ready for our awards ceremony, which took place on Wednesday 3 April at the Grosvenor House Hotel. The event was followed by a quieter ending to the week as we all nurse our sore heads!

What are our awards? We like to think they are like the BAFTAs of the graduate recruitment industry. They celebrate employers’ hard work throughout the year to grab your attention with their recruitment campaigns and to win the ‘Most popular graduate employer in their sector’ or the ‘Best Marketing campaign on campus’ award, amongst others.



How do we know who to crown the winners? We wouldn’t be able to do this if it wasn’t for you. Every year we distribute the trendence graduate barometer survey. Through this you (students) let us know who you preferred employer is, the runners up and other important information. This is how we can establish the winner of the ‘Most popular graduate employer’ in a particular sector.

These are really special awards to win and, after a year of battling it out to get your attention, employers can finally let their hair down for one night and celebrate. And celebrate they do... have a look at these tweets:

RT @anjirose: Woo hoo! We won the award for best undergraduate internship programme! #targetjobsawards @ey_studentsuk @sas_creative
— EY Students UK (@EY_StudentsUK) April 4, 2013

Thanks 2 everyone who voted us best graduate recruiter - it never fails to amaze the talent we c every year#TARGETjobsawards #nhsgrad2013
— NHS Graduate Scheme (@NHSGradScheme) April 3, 2013

Find out the full list of winners here and, if you want to know more about the actual awards, please visit the website http://targetjobsawards.co.uk

In the midst of the awards we had a very law heavy week, as Julia, our law editor, was busy interviewing industry professional to find out what it is they look for in applications, in future candidates and what it’s like to do their job. Here for you are the bite size versions of these interviews:

- Five minutes with Amy Rogers, barrister and pupillage panel member at 11KBW 

- Five minutes with Charlotte Hannan, recruitment officer, Shearman & Sterling 

As always, we conclude this week’s roundup by letting you know which graduate job deadline are closing next week. 

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Jackie