Getting ahead in the rat race
During the heady, care-free days of university, graduation and ‘joining the real world’ can seem like the ultimate hangover to three eclectic years of hedonism. Faced with such a distant and daunting hurdle to overcome, it is easy to become fatalistic and ignore this rather pressing issue until the Spring term of your third year – when it is often all too late.
There are some people who come to university knowing exactly what they want to do with their lives after graduation. We all know the type, those annoying individuals who have been passionate about accountancy since age five. They have it all planned out, down to the colour of their inevitable Audi estate. Fortunately the vast majority of students are too interesting to fit into this category – but what do you do if you just don’t know what to do? Aside from some serious research, the immortal advice of the University Careers Service is to get out there and get some work experience.
However this is not just a big conspiracy to take away our fun. After academic qualifications, work experience is frequently cited as the most crucial requirement that graduate recruiters look for in potential applicants. Many job-seekers are plagued by the classic catch-22 – almost all good jobs require experience, but how do you get any experience without a job? Those studying vocational courses or degrees that include industrial placements are inevitably at an advantage in this respect. However there are plenty of opportunities available for students studying more mainstream degrees. Careers experts will tell you that sixty per cent of employers recruit graduates from any academic discipline. You don’t have to be studying Economics to go into financial consultancy and just because you are studying History of Art, museum archiving need not be your depressing destiny. Despite this, it is crucial that you stand out from the crowd and work experience is one of the best ways to do this.
Most employers work on the premise that intelligent graduates can be trained, provided that they have enough transferable skills. Even if you spend a month working in a law firm, only to realise you would rather emigrate to Baghdad than meet another lawyer, the experience has been invaluable in helping you realise this. Work experience is as much about trying on a lifestyle for size to see if it fits as it is about learning the ropes of a profession.
If you have designs on pinstripe suits and lots of flash cash, many of the major multinational firms offer well-paid, structured internships for penultimate year students over the vacations. These placements are often highly competitive and located in the larger cities, but with forward planning and the self-discipline to fill out numerous online application forms, you could ultimately secure yourself an impressive CV asset and a foot in the door at a blue-chip firm.
Registering with organisations that publish lists of internship vacancies, such as www.milkround.com or www.prospects.ac.uk may be worthwhile, along with searching the online university careers service vacancy list and dropping in to get your CV and applications checked. Most of the deadlines for applications expire at the end of the year or early in the Spring, so it is prudent to think about it early, ideally at the end of the first year.
However if you miss the boat at KPMG or PWC don’t bury the casket on your career ambitions. Sometimes working at smaller, independent firms can be just as valuable, as these companies are likely to offer greater scope for granting you more responsibility and more interesting jobs than simple photocopying.
For those attempting to make it big in the media, gaining work experience can be much harder as there are less formal opportunities, even though the need for relevant work experience is ironically more sought after in this sector. In these situations, being pushy is usually the answer and writing off to local firms or applying online with the BBC are both good options.
Using your imagination, making speculative enquiries, swallowing your pride and networking can also reap impressive rewards. Indeed Irena Zintek from the university careers service stresses the need to shake off that terribly restrictive British politeness and flex the muscles of a little black book. Whilst at university the concept of cronyism may well be frowned upon, but in a competitive graduate market nice guys finish last and it is time to take off the gloves and call in old favours. Those dull golfing friends of your Dad’s who made inappropriate jokes about you throughout puberty may be a backdoor into shadowing an engineering consultant or someone at a national paper. And remember, as long as you are polite and don’t bribe or blackmail, you are not being rude – just a bit cheeky.
Furthermore, your application is more likely to be successful if you are clear about what you want and what you hope to gain from the exercise. Try to argue the business case for a firm offering you experience, rather than how it will help you.
Also, bear in mind that money can be a sticking point and that sometimes you may need to make a short-term sacrifice in order to gain the long-term benefits.
But whatever stage you are at in planning your career, it is prudent to have something more substantial to rely on after graduation, aside from your degree and a stint as social secretary for the pole dancing society. However, even if all the work experience that you have been able to muster is working behind a campus bar or dressing up as a peasant for the Jorvik viking centre, half the battle with a successful application is mastering the art of blagging. As long as you can explain persuasively why the skills that you have learnt in these roles makes you perfect material for the career that you really want, you are half way there.
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