Monday 27 February 2012

Believe In Your Dream Graduate Job

We all have our ideal graduate jobs in mind when we graduate, sometimes even before. Maybe it’s a graduate scheme with a big company or SME, a direct entry role into an area of great interest from your studies or even small jobs or voluntary work for taking some time off to travel. Even though they are all very different aspirations, all graduate recruiters will need to be equally impressed.


It’s all about the skills you have, the impression you make and your desire for the role. So what sort of impression do you make when you don’t believe in yourself? Graduate recruiters want someone resilient, with a great personality and optimism and if you don’t believe that you can provide them with what they want and need how are they ever going to believe it? So take a step back to when you were younger and willing to believe in everything and anything, don’t let the current job market bring you down, believe in yourself and others will believe in you too.

Everyone has a dream...what’s yours?

Monday 20 February 2012

Don't Leave Your Graduate Interview Preparation Too Late

You’ve worked hard on applications to graduate jobs, your graduate CV is great and you have landed yourself an interview. This doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax though, you will need to start preparing for it straight away so that you have the best possible chance of impressing those graduate recruiters.


Before attending a graduate interview you will need to have done a lot of in depth research. Make sure you know their market position, their latest moves, their products and services and their strengths and weaknesses. Ensure you know their history, their target markets, their marketing campaigns and their competitors. In fact the information you need to know goes on and on. Make neat notes from your research on a nice paper pad or in a folder that can be taken into an interview with you and keep them short so you can easily refer to them. Take a pen for making notes in the interview and jot down lots of questions you could ask so that you won’t be left with ‘no you answered everything’ and instead will be able to ask intellectual questions that will impress.

Monday 13 February 2012

Tweet Your Way Into Graduate Jobs

There are many different networking opportunities to explore when searching for graduate jobs. Recently social media has been becoming a popular medium for reaching out and finding potential graduate recruiters, one of the most notable being Twitter.

As a micro-blogging site Twitter allows its members to remain up to date with the lives and events of the people and companies they choose to follow. This is beneficial as it keeps you up to date with latest graduate job postings and prepares you for graduate interviews by keeping you informed of latest company news. It’s also a good opportunity to show off your writing skills, especially if interested in a literary career path. Taking advantage of Twitters many functions can result in your appearance under key word searches, giving you more presence.

If you haven’t yet created an account sign up today and begin building your presence. If you do have an account but don’t use it much, keep it fresh, you never know when companies may view it and if you do use your Twitter frequently be careful of what you post, your online identity says a lot about you to graduate recruiters.

Monday 6 February 2012

What Not To Write When Applying For Graduate Jobs

It’s a very competitive market right now and your graduate CV has to stand out. There are a few simple rules you need to ensure you have followed in order to make sure your CV doesn’t turn off graduate recruiters.


Save room for important, factual information and don’t ramble. Listing basic skills everyone has is not beneficial, such as Microsoft and the internet. Only list specialist programme familiarity that will be relevant to the role you are applying too such as programming languages if applying for a software engineering role. There is also no need for ‘responsible for’, just list the responsibilities straight away rather than wasting valuable lines and space.

Avoid generalisations and unsupported statements. With your new found space ensure you back up your claims. Don’t say you are experienced without listing experience, a team worker with no evidence of team working or accomplished and results driven with no proof of achievements. Make a list of what you have been involved with and achieved and go from there, only detail things you can back up confidently in an interview or you’ll fail at the second hurdle.