Graduate jobs made easier with interactive resources

Making the transition from university to the world of work can be extremely hard. First of all, it seems to require students in their final year or recently graduated to know exactly what they want to do in professional life. Some degrees lend themselves in a very straightforward fashion to particular career paths: medicine and law are just two examples taken from the academic realm, while vocational courses tend to be even more job-oriented. However, a number of other degree options are far less suggestive of a particular direction to take after graduation – take history, theology, and philosophy for instance. In one sense, students graduating from the latter category of humanities subjects have an advantage: they have greater freedom to choose which graduate jobs or graduate scheme they will apply for. In another sense, the humanities students are unfortunate: such is their flexibility that they often find themselves caught up in the complex situation of indecision and internship schemes.

The internship culture has a negative press. In the worst case scenarios, bright young graduates positively brimming with ideas are taken on by a company that exploits them; using them for only the most basic tasks such as archiving press and opening mail. Obviously, these internships are to be avoided. But how do graduates know to steer clear of such bad practices? What they absolutely must remember is to do their research. Careers websites will often supply descriptions and insider reviews of internship programmes and as a rule, the more established the employer, the less likely graduates are to find themselves being used for cheap or free services.

An even more certain way to avoid exploitation on the job or internship market is to apply for graduate jobs or a graduate scheme offering a competitive starting salary. Careers services online tend to feature a large number of recruiters from lucrative fields such as law, consultancy, advertising and retail. The better websites will not restrict themselves in such a way though and may offer details of opportunities in publishing, charity, not-for-profit and the public sector. And, if the amount of choice is just too vast and overwhelming, the very best careers sites allow graduates to complete psychometric tests and receive news of recruitment events so that the whole affair becomes more personal.

Please visit http://www.careerplayer.com/ for further information about this topic.

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How to work out whether a graduate scheme is right for you

I always knew it was going to happen, but somehow it still surprised me when it did.  In my third year at university, talk turned to graduate jobs, and I realised that I was going to have to make some plans for my future.  Unlike some of my friends, who had spent their summers in internship jobs with a view to getting on a graduate scheme at a big organisation, I had opted to journey to far flung corners of the world during my breaks from university, teaching English in Asia and South America.  This left me feeling rather like a blank canvas, which I tried to see as a positive thing, and so I set about trying to think about what kind of roles might be fitting for me.

The first thing I did was to visit my university careers service.  The problem with this, though, was that they had a wealth of information about how to get work in your chosen area, if you knew what that was.   The staff there seemed a little fed up of confused undergraduates expecting them to provide answers to all the tough questions in their lives. It was clear that I was going to have to do a little more thinking by myself before I could enlist the help of somebody who didn’t know me.

I decided to start scanning all the job adverts printed in newspapers, to get a better idea of opportunities that were available.  Part of my job search involved widening my outlook to get a better sense of potential career paths, beyond the classic graduate scheme jobs and ‘professions’, which I didn’t think were for me.  From scanning a large number of these I managed to get a good grasp of the kind of roles that interested me and their requirements.

I could see that the kind of jobs I was interested in were mainly in the charity sector, but most of the jobs advertised specified that applicants needed to have a demonstrable interest in the charity sector and some work experience.  I was concerned that this might be difficult for me to illustrate, so I decided to apply for internship jobs and work experience in the charities that I was interested in.  I was offered a couple of placements at medium sized UK charities.  After working as an assistant at both of these for a number of weeks, I was convinced that this was the kind of thing I wanted to be doing. After a few weeks, I had a phone call from somebody I had worked with at one of the charities, saying that there was a vacancy that they would like me to fill. I was pleased that I hadn’t gone for a graduate scheme like most of my friends, and the graduate jobs market had not been quite as much of a nightmare as I had expected!

Please visit http://www.careerplayer.com/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.careerplayer.com/

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