Are You A Graduate That Needs Advice?
Have you been applying for jobs with no response? Sending off loads of CV’s for graduate job positions with no reply whatsoever? Fear not, you are not alone. There are so many graduates in your shoes but there are also numerous opportunities for you to progress and carry on with your career aspirations.
I decided to create the Advice for Graduates website because I felt graduates needed a place with all the information required in order to become employable. All I ask is for you to take the time to read and understand the advice being given to you from someone who was in the very position you are in.
The Story Behind Advice For Graduates
While studying at university, I changed my degree course because I realised it was not the career path I wanted. Seeing as I did this quite late it inevitably affected my final grades and I did not graduate with the degree I wanted.
But all hope was not lost. While at university I had undertaken a yearlong placement course in a fortune 500 company; so I felt regardless of my degree, I could still be employable with my work experience. How wrong I was.
I graduated at the height of the recession in 2010 and I soon began to understand how difficult it could be to be to secure a job. Depending on the job role, you could have hundreds of people applying for a single position. A majority required you to have had work experience in the job field before you could make an application. Furthermore, when I tried to apply for graduate schemes, most positions available were for 2.1 and above graduates or graduates with a master’s degree. It was safe to say competition was high. I searched the web for any advice for graduates but they were few and far between and none really had all the information on one site.
After a few months of research and job applications, I soon realised what employers were looking for. I used this knowledge to help me secure my dream job and now I am sharing this knowledge with you all.
Navigating The Advice For Graduates Site
The tools on the left will help you on your path to getting the job you want. I will explain in the sections how I used the specific tool to help me and colleagues of mine gain advantage in such a competitive market. All the information found in the Advice for Graduates site is from my own personal experience and experiences from friends, work mates, colleagues and months of intensive research.
In Employability Skills, I will explain how you can use your life skills, skills learnt in university and skills learnt in previous job roles to help secure a position.
The Graduate Schemes section will discuss how having previous work experience gave me an edge when I applied for certain job roles and how this would be extremely beneficial for graduates with a 2nd class lower degree.
The Post Graduate Qualifications section will discuss how furthering your education after getting a 2nd class lower degree could put you on a level playing field with other graduates. It will also highlight the reasons why i chose this path.
The Graduate CV Advice section will explain the importance of tailoring your CV's and how to avoid the "black hole" of recruiters. It will also explain the mistakes I made which you SHOULD avoid.
Finally, the Graduate Job Interviews section will give you tips and tricks to help you excel at interivews.
I have to stress that these tools are only guidelines which could help you succeed in your job hunting goals. You have to be motivated, hard working and be able to bounce back from rejections.
Lets get started Employability Skills.