I remember clearly graduating from university with a mountain of debt and working on minimum wage in an admin role feeling that there must be more to life than this. Now, there is nothing wrong with admin work, I was just terrible at it and I wasn’t happy. After many interviews with recruiters, IT sales, accountancy, military and other people, nothing felt right. But I asked for feedback at the end of every interview and eventually pulled all the best practices together to finally receive an offer from a FTSE 250 listed company which consistently ranks in the Times 100 Top employers list. Receiving that offer really was one of the happiest days of my life.
These days I am in the fortunate position of being a hiring manager. Memories of those days though have driven me to be passionate about sourcing and onboarding graduates for years and within this time I have met 100’s of people looking to enter the work force for the first time. Someone took a chance on me 13 years ago, so I feel I should do the same. Today more than a third of my team were hired before or straight after they graduated. If we extend that time frame to within a year of graduation, we are talking about more than half!
To begin with, the good news is that this will not last forever, even if it can seem so right now.
How do you get an interview in the first place?
- Research – As your degree will have taught you, finding out information is crucial to a successful career. So it begins here, list out all companies, institutions, organisations, not-for-profits, consultancies or law firms within your area of expertise and interest
- Prepare your CV – ensure that the information in your document highlights relevant parts of your studies, part time job(s), travelling experiences, university societies, business competitions, language proficiencies and anything else that may be relevant for that specific company
- Introduction – Write a well-crafted introductory email explaining why you think you are especially suited to this company. Highlight your relevancy based on the all the information you can get on the organisation including the core values, amount of offices, amount of employees locally/globally, key clients, awards, information from their website etc. Read recent news relating to that company and that industry. Incorporate all of this into your message and you will be way ahead of the crowd!
- Try different points of contact at the Company – HR or Talent Acquisition are certainly one channel but also try reaching out to a specific hiring managers where appropriate to do so, try different locations too. I initially applied for a role I was ill suited to in London, was promptly rejected and rightfully so, tried again 6 months later and was very lucky to be offered a position in our Manchester office!
- Allow for flexibility – even though the company may not be hiring right now, request an initial call to give yourself a chance to be the first person that company contacts when they can move to hire. Also keep an open mind on start date, autumn or even early 2021 could allow companies to feel more secure about adding to their cost base again
- Network – go to any and all relevant meetups (where gatherings are permitted), webinars, read publications in your field of interest, contact start-ups and send out Linkeidn connection requests. Contact anyone and everyone to ask their opinion, advice and see if they know anyone they can put you in touch with
- Automate – Create Google alerts for jobs and sectors that could be of interest. Create job alerts on LinkedIn and all other job boards – let the jobs come to you!
- Mindset – Go against the herd, try to find out companies and locations where other people are NOT applying. Where companies find it consistently challenging to find good people. If you do the same thing everyone else is doing, you will get the same results!
In the end, the key factor that will get you the job you want, is the behaviour that will ensure your success in any career or business venture you choose – grit. That ability to outwork your peers, consistently over a prolonged period of time. As with most things in life, the harder something is to obtain, the more rewarding once you get it! Keep it at and you will get there.
