Thinking of applying to the 2016 Undergraduate of the Year Awards? Read our Future Business Leader winner's experience!

Secret from a Scottie…

Here’s my thinking… “Of the 350,000+ graduates throughout the UK that successfully graduate the class of 2015, how am I going to differentiate myself? How am I going to make myself more attractive to future employers and achieve my ambitious career goals?” I bet I'm not the first or last person to think this rather daunting thought.

With the highest level of competition ever in the workplace, it’s tough to carve out your career these days and if I could pass on one secret it would be this.

Enter ‘The Undergraduate of the Year Awards’...

Back in November 2014 I received an email from TARGETjobs outlining the competition. The titles were daunting but they intrigued me. How could they really decide out of all these 350,000+ people who was the winner? Well firstly, not all 350,000+ would apply ,only 3,000 would make the effort. This already greatly improves my chances of winning but that’s still not great odds. Next I questioned, ‘what is the difference between myself, Lynne Howie, right now and the winner in April 2015? What do they have that I don’t?’

I didn’t know the answer but I was going to give myself the opportunity to be that person, so I took a chance and applied. Keeping the application very quiet, I put it in a box to the back of my mind to avoid jinxing myself and tentatively awaited a reply. The day came when I received the phone call from Mars. Taken a little by surprise and without much preparation I threw myself into the call and with delighted success an invitation shortly followed to visit their London HQ. The whole process was a whirlwind of excitement and when I realised I was in the running, my attitude completely changed. I realised just how valuable the title and experience of ‘Undergraduate of the Year - Future Business Leader’ could be to my career moving forward.

With a trip to Dubai and the opportunity to intern at Mars up for grabs there was really no stopping me, I had the desire to see the process to the end. When the congratulatory email pinged into my inbox I was absolutely elated to be a finalist. Making a phone call home to my parents that evening was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had! Considering they didn’t even know I’d entered, let alone been flown London and interviewed.

The ceremony was held in April at the stunning Winter Gardens in Canary Wharf, London. There was a buzz in the room, I was so excited to be part of it and relieved to have taken the time to enter in the first place. We were so lucky to have Fiona Bruce present the award ceremony and when she called out the winner of ‘Future Business Leader’ as ‘Lynne Howie’ I honestly took a moment to realise that was me! It was such a privilege to be chosen by Mars and I am forever thankful for the journey. It was a memory I will keep with me, pushing me onwards and upwards in my business career.

So when you wonder how you could make yourself stand out when it comes your turn to enter the labour market, perhaps use the secret of a Scottie…& make a small effort which might just make a massive difference.

"Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard.”

Apply for the 2016 Undergraduate of the Year awards today! 

My love-hate relationship with law

I'm one of the interns at TARGETjobs and I'm also halfway through a law degree. This week I'm giving you my insights into the law experience so far and the importance of perseverance!

I've found that telling people that I study law tends to elicit one of two responses: either ‘Oh wow, how exciting!’ or ‘But why would you do that to yourself?’

I've been back and forth between the two sides myself. A lot. There were many, many times in my first year that I doubted whether I was cut out for law and I actually considered leaving and reapplying for a different course once or twice. However, now I'm at the end of my second year, I think that a law degree is like an annoying song you hear on the radio for the first time and vow you’ll never like – it grows on you.

Law school really throws you in at the deep end from your first week and if you’re anything like me, you spend the first year pretending you know what’s going on and pining for the familiarity of a school classroom. I'm so glad I didn't quit though. In your second year you know what you need to do and you have much more of a sense of direction (you also learn how to balance your social life and work). A year ago I would have avoided talking about the legal profession wherever possible; OK, it still scares me but now it’s hard to get me to shut up about a legal reform or case (which I find exciting regardless of everyone around me falling asleep).

It’s a lot of work but now I love my degree so much that I've extended it to four years and I'm looking forward to getting some more legal work experience before leaving uni. Of course there are still times when I can’t bear to trawl through another endless judgement or even look at my statute book, but they've become far less frequent.

Law students, persevere until you can give an extremely long and convincing answer (backed up with cases and legislation, naturally) to the question ‘Why would you do that to yourself?’ It’s definitely worth it.

- Laura

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!

GT-bye

As my internship comes to a close, I’ve been asked to think about what I’ve learnt here at TARGETjobs towers. So as I promised our blog editor Jackie, I’m going to give you a bit about the top five ‘things’ I’m taking out the door with me when I leave.

This may not sound very cool but one of the most important things I’ve learned is Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). I realise that this makes me sound like I spend far too much time at a computer and before I started at TARGETjobs I would have wondered why I would need it too, but really – it’s useful. With so much of the media making its way online, employers are emphasising more often that they want experience in online journalism. I’m not saying that I’m an expert, but having a working knowledge of HTML will hopefully mean the difference between me and another candidate.

Staying on this tangent, my next most important ‘thing’ is the content management system (CMS) that we use at work to get all that lovely content online to you guys. Again, boring as I sound, knowledge of how to use a CMS is a great soft skill that you can put on your CV. It’ll show a prospective employer that you know how to work the ‘behind the scenes’ bit of a website and that you won’t cause their website to crash on your first day, substituting stock exchange rates for a cute picture of a cat in a box and party hat.

My third ‘thing’ that I’m taking with me is confidence. No, I’m not going to strut my stuff out the door like I just don’t care – this relates to writing. Previously I would fret over who read my blog posts in case they took offence to them, or thought my comments ridiculous and inarticulate. TARGETjobs has taught me to shift this angst. Writing on a regular basis has taught me that through practice my writing has become better. I’m quite happy to write now and publish away without fear of rebuttal.

I’m also more intelligent now. Ok, not really, but I can pretend to people now that I’m more intelligent than I am. Having worked on pieces for (deep breath) finance, management consultancy, IT and technology, property, quantity surveying, law, media and a good chunk of The Guardian UK 300, my knowledge of different industries has increased beyond what I thought was possible. It means that I can hold a conversation with a colleague about the technical points of a finance graduate scheme and understand the brain-teasers asked of graduates at interviews.

At this point I must stress that the fifth ‘thing’ I was going to take with me when I left was one of the titanic apple desktop computers that our design team have, but I’ve been assured that this isn’t possible. Apparently it’s something to do with theft.

Anyway, the last ‘thing’ I’m taking with me is advice. After four months of full time work, I would be a fool not to remember at least a few of the things people have said along the way. For instance, I realise now that it’s not just about having a huge amount of work experience on my CV, it’s about being able to convince an employer on one piece of A4 that they just have to meet me. No pressure then for the next time I put pen to covering letter paper…

On a serious note, I would like to thank everyone I’ve worked with at GTI Media who have contributed to my experience over the past four months. They’ve been extremely rewarding and I will miss you when I’m back at university.

Communique' from an uncertain future

Something everyone has heard before: ‘You need to do what you enjoy. You spend the majority of your life working, so if you don’t enjoy it then you’ll not be happy.’

Something else everyone has heard before: ‘If I won the lottery…’

In life, the prominence given to money cannot be understated. People talk about it all the time. Parents complain about a lack of it. Some individuals are ruthlessly driven in the pursuit of it. The fruits of wealthy pockets are forever envied. Money must be quite important, then?

Our consumer-driven, capitalist society is propped up by self-perpetuating industries and organisations following the dangling carrot of profit, hence the credence given to commercial awareness by graduate employers. Publishing, which, broadly speaking is the sector in which I am currently employed, is not renowned for its generosity when it comes to financially rewarding employees for their hard work; yet it is still a commercial enterprise. Fiscal payback for employees is largely dependent on the amount of money that a business is able to accrue; so what of those job sectors that are more likely to supply their employees with kinder monetary gifts? Without having experienced graduate jobs in traditionally cash-soaked sectors such as banking, law or accountancy, for example, I can’t say that they are substantially more demanding than publishing. I also can’t say that they’re boring, soul destroying or grim, which is why I’m starting to wonder: should I choose to pursue a career in an area that could furnish me with sterling and hope that I might, as a bonus, even enjoy the job?

Here’s a surprise: I’m uncertain. As I discussed in a previous blog entry, the implications of pursuing a career that you haven’t experienced are many and various. If you opt for a path that you think you’ll enjoy, there’s every possibility that you may rue your choice when you find yourself struggling for money; if you follow pound signs, there’s a chance that you may curse your choice when you are battling for contentment.

There’s no way to accurately predict the future. Depending on the career choice you make and how things fall, anything could happen. So here’s a seemingly silly suggestion for skirting a mid-life crisis: get some hobbies. Colour your free time with activities that you enjoy so that in future, you can work to live instead of living to work. Play golf. Take up cycling. Buy a camera. Develop your interest in ornithology. Do whatever appeals to you and if you don’t know what you like, get thinking and try things out. This isn’t intended to be a doom-laden sentiment, merely a pragmatic means by which to exercise some control over a wild beast. At least then if things don’t go entirely to plan, you won’t be left feeling completely short changed.  

Thank you Ross. 

Maybe taking a gap year after university may also help clearing your mind, picking up hobbies and figuring out what to do with your career. If you have thought of this but worried about how employers may view it why not have a look at how you can market your gap year to employers. 

Or why not have a read of our 'Fun, prospects or money article' this may inspire you and give you some options. 

Government unpaid work experience

Alex ix back, this time with his view on things about the Government new unpaid work experience scheme

Every graduate will be familiar with the “think about your future” chat. Typically, this will involve a parent – maybe both, depending on level of seriousness – and yourself. Venue will be in a place that reflects your parents’ intention for it to be casual and yet allowing for minimal routes by which to make an escape.

This week I’ve decided to have a go at current affairs analysis, giving you my view on the government’s plan to introduce 13-week unpaid work experience for young people wanting to claim benefits.

A little context – the government is trialling a scheme whereby young people who wish to claim jobseeker’s allowance and haven’t previously completed six months paid employment must complete 13-weeks unpaid work experience in order to claim benefit. Context provided.

How do the two relate? I, like many of my friends was panicked on hearing this – I’m talking taking an interest in BBC’s newsbeat, between Family Guy episodes. Young people coming out of university wouldn’t have jobs and were destined to sit on sofas watching PPI and pay day loan adverts. However, when I calmed down and looked at the numbers, it all began to add up.

The Employer Insights area of TARGETjobs states “How to get hired by leading employers.” There are 157 of them. To use an example, Deloitte has around 1,200 graduate vacancies. Just imagine the number of vacancies available on graduate schemes in every company of the UK. Things are looking brighter already. But that isn’t the only option a graduate has open to them.

Next up are the entry-level jobs. Perhaps more popular in the media, and so something I am familiar with, these are often advertised on an ad-hoc basis. Although finding one which ticks all the boxes – both for you and the employer – can be a bit tasking, there is a plethora of companies looking to recruit and it has been a rare occasion that I haven’t been able to find a job suited to me on any of my usual haunts. Many do not require a particularly high level of training – a degree and a number of transferable/soft skills are the norm for many.

Specialising in your chosen field too makes a lot of difference – I may kick myself at some point if people start using my tips. As a student looking to develop a career in Journalism, I thought I would apply to newspapers. This may yield a mere puddle of ten job opportunities in the best case scenario. However, if I was to walk into an average-sized WHSmith and take not of all the different publishing groups on their magazine isle, this puddle becomes a pool of job opportunity. Go to a big WHSmith and this becomes a veritable reservoir.

At this point I release that I am open to a certain amount of criticism. Yes, it is probable that these jobs are out there, but what to do whilst attempting to gain said employment. From my own personal experience, I have always found that my part-time job has always been happy to up my hours, so to speak, whilst I’m available full-time. It keeps me active and the thought at the front of my mind that if I don’t get my act together quickly, I’ll be asking customers if they want whipped cream on top for many months to come (I’ll leave it to you to guess where I worked).

Graduates are ahead of the game and there is no need to feel that unemployment waits at the end of a degree. It merely requires a bit of preparation.

Thank you Alex, as always a great post. 

Why don't you also have a look at what we think about this matter and whether this Government scheme will help graduates find a job. 

Are you switched on?

Our intern Ross Brown is back with quite a introspective blog and he is asking the question:  Are you switched on?

Do we need to wait for experience to provide us with answers, or could we avoid part of the struggle by forcing ourselves to be more switched on?

When I’m told not to slouch because I’ll get back problems when I’m older, my sense of invincibility robs the advice of its urgency. In my graduate job travails, I wonder how prominent this bulletproof mentality was, or whether a large proportion of my struggles were attributable to not having been switched on.

With hindsight, I reflect in bewilderment at times when I didn’t make effort to progress. I was quite a keen tennis player when I was younger. Unfortunately, my game was blighted by unforced errors — yet I rarely made any effort to remedy this by employing tactics. As a result, I was endlessly hindered by my own mistakes and more matches were lost than won. I can now see that I firmly believed that my imaginary innate skills would ultimately triumph despite my refusal to practise. I struggled with my own expectations and my sense of perspective. Was this youthful naivety or arrogance, or was I just not that switched on?

Now, having worked at TARGETjobs for two and a half months, I can say that I’ve had a good degree of exposure to approaches to obtaining graduate jobs. The following pieces of advice seem most pertinent:

·         Land on what you think you want to do

·         Pursue work experience

·         Make well-considered, tailored applications; don’t scattergun companies with generic, Ctrl C, Ctrl V disasters

·         Don’t sell yourself short – there may often be evidence of competency in your experiences where you felt there was none.  Don’t, on the other hand, use tedious superlative clichés culled from The Apprentice.

These simple suggestions are meaningful and helpful with hindsight, but did I really need to do an internship with a graduate careers advisor to achieve this level of clarity?

Previously, I may have felt that I had other things to do when I could have been approaching my career with more thoughtfulness. I may not have reached a position of accumulated knowledge and experience where these insights would have resonated with me. However, there are many for whom the thoughtful approach appears to be a priori. Here is a blog written by a switched on young lad named Chris Rowlands, who is already doing the right things to facilitate his future success. Have Chris and other impressive career hunters been fed more assistance than I have, or are they simply more switched on and prepared to seek the advice themselves? I can’t be sure, though I’m willing to bet that the second option is not entirely irrelevant.

So how do you become more switched on? To begin with, waiting around for life to happen for you isn’t often the wisest approach. During these times of economic hardship, it’s also not a viable approach. Properly engaging with what you’re doing, no matter what the task, is a good way to inspire thoughtfulness, consideration and motivation. Unreflectively complaining about how impossible it is to get a job is not the best way of finding one. Hunting out advice and making use of others’ experience is a useful way of trying to learn lessons before you find out the hard way by yourself. It’s possible that being switched on may be natural, but it is also something that anyone can do for his or herself.

It’s hard to be immersed in something, view things from above and have foresight all at once. Fully appreciating the significance of something in advance is impossible; I will no doubt find this out once again aged 45 — crippled by lumbago.

Thanks Ross.

Why not plan ahead a see how you can avoid a graduate career crisis. 

London: the be-all and end-all of graduate careers?

Our editorial intern, Laura is back with yet another insightful blog.

I’ve recently graduated from a university that is heavily dominated by people from the south or aiming for careers in the City, and moving to London after graduation seemed to be number one thing on most people’s priority list. Partly because of the kinds of financial careers or grad schemes they were aiming for or partly just down to the fact that they came from the south anyway. Honestly though, I’ve never really wanted to move to London and I’m not sure whether that makes me weird or just normal compared to the high proportion of wannabe investment bankers at my university.

I come from the North West and until I went to university London had never really been on my radar. I’d been there a fair few times and had visited the odd family friend or cousin who’d moved there for career reasons, but I’d never desperately wanted to move there. The closer I got to my graduation, however, the more I felt like I would eventually have to move there.

Speaking to a friend from the Midlands a while ago, I discovered that I wasn’t alone and that there is a whole underground movement of graduates who feel propelled towards London purely because they feel like ‘that’s where all the jobs are’ and that they have to go there to have a successful career. I’m not going to lie, I still feel like that sometimes, but I’m beginning to realise that I’m wrong.  

Two months into my post-uni life I’ve already discovered that Oxford is a great alternative to London. For one thing, it’s a university town, which means that there are loads of young people around and what’s more, it’s not that far from London if I do ever want to go there and spend a weekend being a ‘young professional’ in the city. Like I said, I don’t hate the place, I just don’t particularly want to be there all the time.

If you do want to live somewhere in the UK that’s not the south of England, my advice is to choose your industry carefully. It’s definitely easier if you’ve chosen a career like medicine where you’ll be needed everywhere but when the rest of us are choosing our career paths it’s important to know that certain industries are based in certain places. Oxford, for example, is one of the main centres for publishing, and most investment banking takes place in London. It’s a sad fact that career success in certain industries can depend on how prepared you are to move away but what no-one ever tells you is that not all of the UK’s graduate opportunities are in London. Manchester and Birmingham, for example, are two of the largest financial centres in the UK and that plenty of grad schemes are also located in Newcastle, Leeds, Edinburgh, and all over the UK. What’s more, pretty much every company everywhere will have a finance department, an HR department and a sales or marketing department, which means that people who choose these career paths could pretty much work anywhere too.

What I’m trying to say is that London and the south of England are not our only options when it comes to careers and that no-one’s career success depends on whether they move to London. London can be a great place to spend your twenties but if the City’s not for you, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a great career and fun life as a graduate somewhere else. You just need to focus your job search on places where you know the jobs are. 

Thank you Laura. On that note why not have a a look at our city guides to see what industries and graduate careers are available in the top UK cities.

Preventing being pigeonholed

This week Alex has been thinking about what to do should your career aspirations change.

I’ve been at TARGETjobs Towers for nearly three months now and I’ve found myself to be in a dilemma. It’s not the commute, the early mornings or the routine that bother me, or the lack of ‘student mobility’. I’m wondering whether I know what it is I want to do. Call it a mid-life crisis for a 20-year old if you will.

On my first day, I had an idea that I was going to gain a valuable insight into the way magazine editorial works. This, I have come to realise, was a rather naïve assumption. Not only would I be experiencing the publishing industry from a grassroots level up, I would be thrown into a world that dipped its feet into multiple industries on a daily basis.

Being delegated tasks by editors who are responsible for fields as diverse as engineering, law and management consultancy, you can imagine that my knowledge of these different career paths increased significantly during the first few weeks of my tenure. My youthful, journalistic mind was intrigued and weirdly, I flirted with the idea that I could transfer into one of these industries.

Funnily enough, and for me it really is funny, the industry I most came to be enticed by was finance (SIGH). Up until this point in my career, I have not had the slightest inclination to pursue a life in financial services, but now I would be lying if it wasn’t a consideration I was making.

But I love writing – something that I am not prepared to give up. So on to my dilemma. How do I keep writing whilst also indulging my fancy for finance? I have lost many (one) nights’ sleep to this question. The answer, by the way, is pretty simple and, coincidently, it gets into our office every morning at about 10:00am. This came in the form of a hot off the press Financial Times. Cue an Olympic closing ceremony light bulb hat – Eureka.

It’s a pause to kick myself moment, how something so obvious could be overlooked. Why have I never thought of specialising in the way that I write? Yes, there is the traditional print media, those that get circulated every day to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of readers, but the number of specialist newspapers and publications is staggering. It didn’t take long to realise the plethora of opportunity that lay just outside my clammy reach.

I’ve realised that I shouldn’t be so rigid in my thinking. Yes, I know what career I want, but things may change depending on what you’re exposed to – in this respect TARGETjobs has been a rebirth for my career aspirations. I’ve allowed a wide variety of career paths to fall into my lap, ones that I had previously never considered or knew of. Journalistic curiosity flowing, I’m ready to go out and hunt one out.

But not now, it’s raining.

Commerical awareness: the graduate holy grail

Laura, our third editorial intern is back with her second post. Today she chose to talk about commercial awareness this is a great read. 

Dear TARGETjobs readers, I have a confession to make. I have no commercial awareness. I don’t know what overhead costs are and I would probably struggle to tell you what a profit margin is.

As you already know, I’m a recent graduate and one of the new editorial interns at TARGETjobs. The commercial side of work was something I’d never had to think about at university and at my first assessment centre in March this year made it very clear that my heart was in the right place but my head was in the clouds. ‘You can’t save the world every day’ was one particularly memorable thing my interviewer said and she was completely right. I was far too idealistic and sadly mistaken if I thought a business could survive on ideals and goodwill alone. All businesses, whether you work in an investment bank or a not-for-profit organisation, need to make money to survive. Like it or not, that’s just the way the world works.

To someone who is naturally commercially-minded this may seem obvious. For the last four years, however, I have filled my head with grammar rules and foreign literature, which was all very well at the time but did not provide me with the commercial awareness I needed to secure a graduate job.

The chance to do an internship at TARGETjobs was therefore perfect for me because it allowed me to work in a real business environment and learn things that years in Warwick’s humanities building could never have taught me. None of the jobs I’ve had before have been particularly business-orientated and after months of listening to careers advisors talking about how important commercial awareness is, I’ll be damned if I leave this job without it.

‘But how do you reach this holy grail of commercial awareness?’ I hear you say. I’m still not 100% sure but so far I’ve been going about it by asking lots of questions. For example, how does TARGETjobs make money if the content is free? What is the difference between advertorial and editorial content? Why do recruiters choose to advertise with us and not our competitors?

Publishing may seem to be a less of a corporate industry than retail or investment banking, but it is still a business and if a publishing house does not make money it will no longer be able to afford to produce its content. Editorial may seem like a safe, non-commercial bet, but don’t be fooled. Editors cost money and they must work efficiently to produce content that people will want to read. Think about the editors of free magazines that are funded by adverts. If they don’t produce a magazine that people want to read, companies will no longer want to put their adverts in it, and they will eventually be unable to fund the magazine’s production.

Whether you like it or not, every job role requires commercial awareness and the sooner you get some, the better. There is no shame in being a commercial ignoramus. I myself am one. However, it is not too late to change. You can use any job opportunity to ask questions about how a business works and in such a tough economy the applicant with a sensible, business-minded head on their shoulders is probably going to be the one who gets the job. On that note, I’ll get back to you if I ever find out what an overhead is.

Great post Laura. 

If you found this interesting, why not read up on what we have to say about commercial awareness. 

Routine

Alex Ward is back with this third guest post. Enjoy!

This week I'm taking note of the differences between university and work life.

After two months now working for TARGETjobs, I can safely say that in some ways I will consider going back to university to be more of a holiday. The prospect of reckless nights out, followed by lying in bed until I deem it necessary to crawl out from under the covers is, to me right now, a whole world away.

During my second year, a typical day would begin somewhere between 9:00am and 13:00pm. This was often subject to what I call the drunk equation, whereby units of alcohol consumed, plus hours spent partying, plus kebab topped pizza is directly proportional to the number of hours spent in bed the next day. Now however, during the holidays, the variance in the time I get up is significantly reduced – to about half an hour between quarter past seven and quarter to eight. This is dependent upon whether or not I decided to watch American Dad on BBC3 after the Family Guy double.

The thing is – I don’t mind. There were definitely times when I thought to myself late one afternoon at university ‘I could have gotten a lot more out of today’, and it’s true. Having such a routine now, my body is automatically ready to go by about eight in the morning. This means that come Saturday I’ve done all that pesky administration that us students have to occasionally tolerate, before the crack of noon when my peers emerge, dressed in joggers and shielded from the sun by large-framed sunglasses.

To this day I will not forget my friend’s confusion when he saw me up and about the morning after a particularly heavy session on the shandy.

This routine though, of working nine ‘til five (cue Dolly Parton) up until now has been more beneficial than I realised. Rising at a reasonable hour means that I get my ‘Three square meals a day young man’, meaning that my health is a lot better – I’ve had a lot less left over floor pizza to boot. I get a varied and balanced diet, something which I am positive has never occurred whilst studying.

Organisation too is something that, as soon as routine slips into place, is easier than expected. Making time to drunkenly see friends now comes on a Friday evening and at the weekend, with the more sober encounters occurring after work during those long summer afternoons. I admit, that I’m not completely organised – there is still a letter from the student loans company on my desk gathering dust. I’ve taken the attitude to it like I would a fine wine. Leave it for ages in a dark, cool spot and pretend it doesn’t exist for a few years before opening it and wondering what all the fuss was about.

TARGETjobs has opened my eyes in many ways this summer; from teaching me lessons in plain English and email etiquette, to content management and competency-based interview questions. But without a doubt, what I have woken up to the most (no pun intended) is the amount of time I have neglected when I could really have utilised it.

That said, the student union doesn’t start serving until noon anyway.

Why I don't know what I'd like to do now I'm grown up

Ross Brown is back with his fortnightly blog. Very interesting one. Why don't you let us know what you want to do now that you are 'grown up'

We are asked at the ages of 16 or 17 to make a decisive step towards answering ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ Often, the choice made by a teenager as to what interests him / her academically is based on wild speculation without solid evidence. If we are expected to make an arbitrary decision at the ages of 16 or 17, then surely the question 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' is now redundant. Yet it's not. I don't know what I'd like to do when I grow up and I am now, in society's terms, grown up. 

Work experience is useful for those who are sufficiently driven from a young age. Internships are similarly helpful in shedding at least some light on the reality of a certain career. I have very limited experience of either of these opportunities; even if I had, they wouldn't have sufficiently exposed me to the rigours of that profession. For that reason, we can only speculate as to whether a career may be what we'd like to do for the rest of our lives. This judgement can be made on the basis of some obvious justifications:

·                     pursuit of wealth

·                     feeling that you may like it

·                     you think you're good at it

·                     wanting to help people

·                     trying to make someone else happy

·                     seeking to impress people

·                     inexplicable compulsion     

·                     obligation

·                     the invisible people told you to

From what I can see, none of these motivations are terribly watertight. In a life devoid of certainty, surely the happiness of ourselves and those around us are two things to which we can attach some conviction as to their importance. Chasing money may make some aspects of life simpler, yet it doesn't guarantee contentment. Doing something on the basis that it may turn out to be good is understandable, but it's by no means secure. Basing a decision on being good at something is possibly the best indicator of uncertainty: 'I think I'm good at it, so I should probably make use of it'. Wishing to help people and trying to make someone else happy are admirable motivations, yet they’re questionable in terms of their potential future outcomes. Seeking to impress people is an incredibly vacuous if understandable reason to do anything. Inexplicable compulsion and obligation are similar in that they offer little by way of choice; they don’t actually answer the question 'what do you want to do for a living?' Finally, that the invisible people told you to do it is probably the best justification: our motivations are often shaped by what some invisible source of knowledge decided was correct and worthwhile.

I’m not terribly sure what I’d like to do now that I’m grown up. I’m not certain about anything, really. In enjoying this internship, I’m hoping my preferences will become clearer…but what if things only get murkier?

£27,000 is a lot to spend on a hangover

We've got another post from our intern Alex. Here he is going to tackle the complex issue of getting waaaaaasted.

I heard a person say that they’d fail a year of university so that they had one more year to go drinking all the time (Excuse me?). Yes, some view the university experience in a significantly different way to others. I’m not shedding light on any institution in particular, but I am commenting on the people.

With university fees now rising to an eye-watering/ soul-destroying £9,000 (yes I sound like your overbearing parent), it is more crucial than ever to graduate your course with a good class of degree. So does this mean that we should all pack away our DIY hooch (alcohol) kits replacing them with 'Writing a Dissertation for Dummies' (yes it exists, ironically)? In short, No.

It’s alright to go out and enjoy yourself, just do it in moderation (I’m really plugging the parental view this time around).

Personally, I will see myself as having wasted three, very valuable, years of my life if at the end of my degree I walk away with anything less than a 2.1. We all like to think we’re capable of achieving a first, but I would like this to being a bit like the childhood idea of being a fireman when you grow up. There comes a point when you’ve got to be realistic (and hang up those Velcro fireman’s trousers to boot). But then again, I would also consider myself wasting the university experience if I stayed locked inside my slowly decaying student house all the time.

Good ol’ time management is often the key for me. I don’t particularly venture (stumble) into town the night before a morning lecture. Instead, I would rather go out on a night where I am not required to be a functioning member of society the next day. I realise that this occasionally leads to going out at times that don’t correspond to others, but in fairness, it’s easier than getting the urge to vomit every time the lecturer mentions how ‘groups of men, circulate women among themselves, according to a rule known as the incest taboo.’

As the title of this post suggests, with all these expensive tuition fees, you are looking at investing a lot of money to stay in bed, developing an unhealthily high tolerance to paracetamol. Plus, despite popular belief, it is actually less humiliating when you socialise in and around lectures. You may think that girl was impressed last night when you opened that bottle with your teeth, but come the next day when your eyes are bloodshot she doesn’t give you a second look as you pass her on the way to the dentist for a missing molar.

I know for a fact that going out on ‘alternative’ (not the buttoned up, skinny jeans wearing type) night yields some great experiences. Where I’m at university, some of the best nights out have been on a Thursday. Tuesdays are also great. But then again maybe it’s because I can go out safe in the knowledge that I’m not going to throw up on my copy of Ulysses the next day – though I would hazard a guess that some people have.

A message from the other side… of university life

Meet Laura, our third editorial intern. 

Hi, I’m Laura, the newest editorial intern at TARGETjobs and a recent graduate who has just reluctantly entered ‘the real world.’

Two weeks into my ‘real life’ I am here to tell you undergraduates that life on the other side of university is not actually that bad. In fact, it’s actually quite good.

A few weeks ago I was pretty daunted by the prospect of leaving university and no longer having another year of education as my safety net. Yet the more I came to think of it, the more I felt ready to leave education and try something new. Don’t get me wrong, I loved every minute of university. But by the end of four years I felt more than ready for a new challenge and a life that didn’t revolve around essay deadlines and exams. On that note, a week after getting my exam results I moved to Oxford to start an internship at TARGETjobs.

I’ve been working here as an editorial intern for a week now and although the 9-5 day and hour-long commute is hard work, I am determined to make sure that the end of university is not an anti-climax. I’ve already started to learn loads of new skills, meet loads of new people and discover all that Oxford has to offer. Before I left uni I imagined graduation to be this huge, life-changing moment where everything you’ve ever known suddenly changes. But really, it’s not like that at all. Working in a fairly big company and moving to a new city means that there are other graduates around and although it’s not quite the same as freshers’ week, we graduates are once again ‘all in the same boat.’ So let’s tackle the start of our post-uni lives with the same attitude that we tackled the start of university with and we’ll all be fine. Honest. 

Meet Nikki our temp marketing assistant

It's time for Nikki to pop on board our TARGETjobs blogger. Please join me in welcoming here. I hope you enjoy her first blog.

Hey there! I’m Nikki and I’ve just graduated with a 2.1 in business and marketing from the glorious Swansea Uni. I have been working at TARGETjobs for one week now as a marketing assistant and will be here for 8 weeks. Previous to this job I have been doing what I feel the majority of my fellow unorganised and jobless graduates have been doing, which is essentially nothing. Slowly rising from bed around midday to make lunch only to accidently nap on the sofa to the distant grunts of Wimbledon on the TV. I spent the majority of my time awake sifting through job vacancies and applying for jobs which gave me some form of excitement. This lead to rejection after rejection with small snippets of hope brought on by the odd interview invitation.

Many of my job applications were centred in the place we all love and hate at the same time, London. For me, having grown up in a small farmer town in Somerset, London was a place of hell and unknown, but endless opportunities and excitement. However my ventures brought experiences which made me want to scamper back to Swansea.

The last time I went to London I was blissfully unaware to the fact that obtaining a seat on an 8am train to London Waterloo is on par with the likelihood in possessing an Olympic ticket to the Men’s 100m final. Consequently my unwise and inexperienced self spent the hour long journey forming delightfully painful blisters in my new gorgeous yet un-thought through shoes.

Toddling onto my 3rd tube change in what by this point I can only describe as agonising pain in the souls of my feet I decided the underground had matched up to my previous experiences of being unsettling, baffling and just plain smelly. However the tube itself is an absolute cupcake in comparison to a few of the passengers on it. I did not relish the fact that a stranger felt it an appropriate thing to place their arm on the seat behind me to then slowly move it down to rest on my shoulder. Combined with an interview in no more than 8 minutes time, nerves like I don’t know what and an already inappropriate amount of sweat under my full black suit, this ‘closeness’ from a complete stranger was less than appreciated. I felt my reactions were somewhat lacking and instead of doing what most normal people would do and politely asking the gentlemen to remove his arm I simply sat there quietly praying for the next tube stop to be his.

After having spent the previous day solidly in preparation for my ‘dream job’, following the instructions to be up to speed with the company’s ten websites, my next endeavour involved the interview. Having spent over £40 on travel into London, a 2 hour commute each way and a slight jog down their offices, its perhaps a slight understatement to say I felt a little dismay for it to all combinate in an interview beginning at 10am and ending at 10.03am, to which they ended the interview pretty much offering me the unpaid, futile and rather dull job. I put this down to a steep learning curve and began to realise unlike most who love and hate London, I simply hate it.  

After that I began searching for a job that involved me and my car for transport. Then came an opportunity at TARGETjobs, the job responsibilities sounded exciting and challenging, the location in south Oxfordshire was perfect and when the unexpected email arrived inviting me to join the team, needless to say I was more than excited. After only being here a few days I’ve already settled in well to the relaxed, friendly yet hardworking team here and it’s undoubtedly a safe statement to say I’m very much going to enjoy working here this summer.

Sense of Style

Ross pays his fortnightly visit, this time looking at the significance of writing style in editorial. 

My decreed blogging objective is to give readers an insight into life at TARGETjobs. Although this establishes some parameters i.e. subject matter (for example, I wouldn’t be allowed to write exclusively about my favourite bridges in Sweden), it does supply some freedom: I may mention the Øresund Bridge, but I should do so in the context of my life as an intern at TARGETjobs; I don’t need to be too specific, as my remit is pretty broad; and I have relative liberty when it comes to writing style. It is this final element that I wish to discuss.

Writing style is something that’s pretty important in editorial and has been highlighted throughout my six weeks at TARGETjobs. In my application for this position, I linked a piece from my personal blog, which turned out to be quite a successful move as despite my lack of journalism degree / experience, I showed that I could write fairly legibly. In tapping out a blog I demonstrated a degree of writing ability (surely the least anyone could hope for after years at university, unless of course the degree focus was sandcastle deconstruction) alongside a modicum of commitment to the pen.

It was emphasised however that my writing style was slightly academic and would require some adaptation for TARGETjobs purposes: the tone throughout our (yes, I am now a man - or balding boy - of the company) publications is intended to be balanced, supportive advice; an online news piece requires shorter, snappier sentences; and a blog entry can adopt a chattier, ‘informal-er’ (though perhaps not that informal)  tone, but with no outright disregard for professionalism.  

Throughout TARGETjobs publications emphasis is placed on ‘plain English’. This doesn’t mean that word choice and sentence structure are simplified in order to ‘dumb down’, merely that a message should be communicated in the clearest and most concise way possible without detracting from the meaning.

I was initially quite apprehensive when it was intimated that I’d need to consistently alter my writing style: ‘what if I end up writing in a mundane, formulaic manner instead of writing poncey nonsense?’ I thought. I discarded this notion and became quite excited to think that as an aspiring writer (well, this week) I could have a few writing hats as opposed to just a top hat. I was also reassured by the advice that, although writing styles can differ, it is possible to maintain a ‘voice’ across the board; this is quite encouraging, particularly if you love the sound of your own voice…

On that note, here is a link to my personal blog:

http://tickettothetrip.blogspot.co.uk/

Pestering People

Our editorial intern, Alex Ward is back with his first blog post. This is a great insight into how to potentially get your foot in the door in the publishing/media industry. 

As promised in the introductory blog, I’m going to give you some tips about getting work experience.

First of all, a bit about what I’ve done. As an aspiring journalist I’ve been applying all over the place to try and get that ever coveted experience at a newspaper. The hope is that my CV will be that much more impressive when it comes to employment. The thing is with no contacts and no way in, I’ve had to develop my own (rather blunt) method of getting my foot in the door. It seems to work – in the past twelve months I’ve added two local newspapers and a national one to the ol’ cv, with another national to come in September.

So what, I hear you ask, is my secret? At this point I’m being a bit self-indulgent – there is no secret, it comes down to making a general nuisance of myself.

Everybody will be familiar with the ‘contact us’ and ‘careers’ links on employer websites. I find that these are, generally, the gateway to an email inbox that is, in my opinion, a metaphorical paper shredder. My covering letter and CV are destined to sit around unread.

The solution to this is a good old fashioned chat. Fully utilizing (scrolling down) the ‘contact us’ section, my move is to call up the general switchboard of the newspaper I want and ask for somebody who manages work experience. In this manner, I have become very familiar with different companies’ hold tones. The Mail on Sunday has a particularly jazzy one.

Once through to a particular individual, I make my case. At a thousand words a minute, I’m fully aware that I’m probably wasting somebody’s time, so I make it quick. The response can be varied. I received an extremely brisk and patronizing response from one lady in particular who told me to go to my local paper. My riposte was equally as swift, noting that I had already completed two placements at local papers and was looking for something else. Her tone immediately changes. ‘Send us your CV,’ she says.

Within two days I had an offer of a placement, with the initially condescending woman, praising the commitment I had to my career.

I’ve learnt from my experiences that you cannot beat talking to somebody. It is a lot harder to decline somebody over the phone, than it is to press delete, or send back an automated email response thanking somebody for their interest.

Contacts are great. If you have them, it’s silly not to use them. If you don’t have them, it really isn’t a big issue. Start at the bottom, local newspapers a week at a time and, using my method you can move on to bigger things. If you genuinely have a passion for what you want to do, then making that call isn’t going to scare you too much.

The worst they can say is no.

Like what you've read? Why not follow Alex on Twitter for more of (hopefully insightful) tweets. 

@Alex___ward

Settling in at TARGETjobs

After their introduction post last week, Ross is back with his first individual post letting you all know what it is really like to work at TARGETjobs HQ. 

After three weeks at TARGETjobs, I’m sufficiently settled to reflect on how I’m enjoying my time with the company. I can honestly say that it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. Everyone’s awful. Mum, can I come home now?

Kidding on. I’m really happy in the office: there is wonderful flexibility when it comes to fetching a hot drink. In saying this, I don’t mean to suggest that TARGETjobs is an absolute free-for-all where employees race around choking back free tea, determined to take advantage of an abundant commodity. Instead, I hope to convey an image of freedom within a bright, shiny building in the middle of a calm yet modern business park in rural Oxfordshire. In a corporate world of stress, restrictive suits and closely-monitored workers, TARGETjobs is a relatively relaxed working environment, which must have a positive impact on staff morale.

The first week or so largely involved being trained in different aspects of editorial, such as copy writing, proof reading, commissioning and writing in plain English (which will be ‘helpful’ in this job, as opposed to ‘beneficial’ or ‘advantageous’) as well as on a content management system (something that is increasingly important in the digital age).

After that, my main priority was compiling 150 company blurbs for The Guardian UK 300 list of the most popular graduate employers. It took me quite a while to complete this task and finalising the piece on the last company was pretty satisfying. I was buoyed to think that my efforts would contribute to a widely-circulated publication and was content to be allowed to sit in my job and write things in a pleasant environment.

I must admit, though, that there was eventually a level of tedium attached to constructing these pieces, for example ‘Friend, Mate, Chum & Pal LLP is an international law firm, with offices in London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Abu Dhabi and Crowmarsh Gifford. It recruits around 15 trainees each year from both law and non-law academic backgrounds.’ This structure was used many times throughout the blurb compilation process.

Writing for this publication enhanced my knowledge of the graduate opportunities available in a number of different sectors; it also helped me to clarify which careers would possibly be slightly more difficult to launch, one such example being: barrister specialising in commercial law. My research into pupillages available in different chambers led to my perusing the academic backgrounds of the latest recruits, most of whose qualifications absolutely blew me away. Although I should perhaps refrain from supplying disincentives to aspiring barristers at top commercial sets, entry into these chambers seems as competitive as a fight between well-matched armoured bears.

When I finished writing the blurbs I wrote a news article about the results of a survey on popular solicitors’ firms. It went on the website a couple of days later and looking at it made me feel a bit lovely.

Next day, when explaining to my friend what I’d been doing at work, he said, ‘Here…that sounds really good.’ I felt that this was a fair appraisal.    

Ross will be back in two weeks time, but if you can't wait that long until your next insight into working at TARGETjobs HQ Alex will be posting next week about what he has been getting up to and what he is learning. And if you want to keep up-to-date with our latest posting why not following us on Twitter @targetjobsuk