Personal factors and their impact on career plans

• Family circumstances: is anyone relying on your income? Are you a carer for a child, a younger sibling, a sick or elderly relative? Do you have a partner who is committed to a course or job in a particular area?
• Impact: you may need to look for work in a particular location; your available hours for work may be determined by your responsibilities for others; you may feel under pressure to take any job in order to bring money in; or you may have to delay your entry to the labour market.
• Finances: apart from servicing your student debt (which applies to most graduates) do you have any significant debts? Do you have savings, or access to financial support?
• Impact: you may feel that you have to take any job to start to pay off debt; alternatively, if you have savings and/or financial support, this could give you freedom to undertake further study or voluntary work.
• Location: do you need to stay in or return to a particular area, for example because of family circumstances? Do you have preferences about location and how important are they? Are you willing to move for work? Can you drive?
• Impact: opportunities may be more limited if your location is restricted, and conversely more wide ranging if you are willing to move. Housing/living costs in a new location may be relevant.
• Family influence: is there an expectation that you will enter an occupation held by your parents, or that you will join a family business? Will your choice of career be a family decision, or one made by you alone?
• Impact: it could be helpful to enter an occupation that you know intimately, including understanding the benefits and drawbacks for your way of life. A family business might provide a good start, especially if opportunities are otherwise limited. In either case you can work towards a specialist area based on your interests and preferences.
• Further study and training: are you willing and able to commit to further study? If full-time, how will you support yourself financially? Impact: some jobs require further study so, if this really isn’t an option, you may have to re-plan or defer entry.
• An existing job: could you work full-time for the employer you have worked for during university? Are you under pressure from the employer to do so? What’s in it for you if you do?
• Impact: this route could leave you wondering why you went to university; alternatively, it could give you the prospect of a graduate-level job by another route.
• A grand plan: do you have a longer-term aim that is influencing what you do after university?
• Impact: sticking rigidly to a set plan can be dangerous if it just leaves you marking time; it can be good if you use the time constructively.
• Health: is there anything about your health that might have implications for your choice of job?
• Impact: there may be some jobs from which you are excluded (e.g. people with epilepsy cannot usually work with machinery), or some that you need to seek out, for example a job where you are mainly sitting down. Be aware that, if you have a disability, you have certain entitlements by law; if you meet the selection criteria for a job you must be offered an interview; and once you are in employment, your employer is expected to make reasonable adjustments to your workplace and equipment to enable you to carry out your work.

Reasons, not excuses

A reason is an attempt to explain.

An excuse is an attempt to avoid.

It might help to assess where you stand in respect of each of these personal factors, both now and in the future, and to consider what is negotiable and what isn’t. You might not like working at weekends because it interferes with your social life, but is it a reason? On the other hand, you might coach a junior football team on Sundays and just now there isn’t anyone else, it’s a tough part of town, and you won’t let them down.

Once you have identified honestly what is non-negotiable, be positive, not apologetic, both with employers and with yourself – it’s a reason, not an excuse; and review regularly – circumstances change, a new coach comes along, your partner finishes their course so you can relocate – and you can reassess your situation.

Review your personal circumstances regularly – a change of situation may enable you to broaden your job search.

External factors

There is really just one, big external factor affecting graduate jobs and that is the economic climate. More localised events that impact on jobs, such as the opening or closing of finance houses, production plants and distribution centres, are all the result of changes in the economic landscape.

The good news is that the graduate jobs market has improved significantly in the last two years – more graduates have found work than ever before and almost 70% of those going into work are getting jobs for which a degree, though not necessarily in a specific subject, is a requirement. The most recent information (in What Do Graduates Do?, October 2015 and published annually) tells us that graduate unemployment is down by 2.5 percentage points compared with two years previously.

A few years ago, at the start of the recession, graduate unemployment had its biggest increase for some years. Even though the picture is much better now, be aware that there are still some negative headlines about, especially stories about graduates doing jobs for which they don’t need a degree. However, these graduates are likely to move into a graduate-level job in due course – they are wisely getting some experience of work and some income in the meantime. Later in this chapter you will meet four successful graduates, in graduate jobs, three of whom had an interim job between graduating and their present role.

So do get accurate data, especially about your own subject area and your own university. Have another look at Chapter 3 for an analysis of what graduates do, and talk to your university careers service for information about recent graduates from your university.

As the economy recovers there are reports of shortages of graduate entrants in some occupational areas. Recent studies by the Bank of England and by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills refer to unfilled jobs in a number of areas including IT and web design, most branches of engineering and, in some parts of the country, marketing and retail management. However, despite the upturn, patterns of recruitment do still mean that there may be a delay between graduating and moving into a graduate job, so be prepared to be flexible:

• it may take longer to get to where you want to be;
• you might go by an unexpected route.

	If you do find yourself in the very unfortunate position of not having a job, not having anything to do and there’s nothing in the pipeline, you must do something to get yourself out of that rut. Any job is better than no job. If it’s not a job, if it’s voluntary work or a training course . . . there’s a whole range of things you could be doing.
	Carl Gilleard, Chief Executive, Association of Graduate Recruiters

	Being a supermarket assistant is not my dream job; however, neither is it beneath me.
	Kim, BA (Hons) Christian Youth Work

Your first graduate job

	You move from school and home to experience the freedom and independence of university; then suddenly you are thrust back into an environment where you must abide by much stricter codes of conduct and adhere to an unwritten rulebook of new behavioural expectations that are often difficult to interpret.
	Rose, BSc (Hons) Biology

Focusing on your final year and on getting a job can mean that you start work as a graduate without thinking too much about what it will feel like to be a graduate employee, and how your life will change. For example, in many graduate jobs there is no flexibility to your working day – good timekeeping is critical and lunch breaks and time off are fixed. This might seem like a small detail, but it’s a big contrast to your student life and one that many new graduates struggle with and find unexpectedly tiring. And you will almost certainly be working at a different level of responsibility from the jobs you have done as a student, as in this brilliant example.

There are additional pressures if you have had to relocate for your graduate job, and even making sure that you have suitable, clean work clothes each day adds another new demand. So, imagining yourself in your new job and anticipating some of the challenges might help you to make this crucial transition more smoothly. To help you to do this we have spoken to some recent graduates about their experiences and asked them for their best advice.

The good news is that it really does feel different, and better, to be a graduate employee.

For many employers, too, graduate trainees are good news, and ambition is rewarded with support for professional development. In our next brilliant example, Rob talks about the high expectations his employer (a large insurance company) has of graduate trainees.

When you are applying for jobs and going through the selection process you will hear a lot about the induction programmes employers require new entrants to follow. These can be quite informal, especially in SMEs, or highly structured and lasting several weeks. But what about the unwritten rules? All organisations have these, from coffee routines to protocols for communicating internally and externally, and they can be hard to grasp. Judging how much to use your initiative is a tricky one, especially in the first few weeks, which might feel a bit slow while you are learning the background to your work – yet you are working alongside very busy people, and you may be unsure about speaking up. Our graduates are very clear about the best approach – get to know people and how they work and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

	The sooner you build confidence to offer help, be proactive and offer solutions and ideas, the better.
	Rose, BSc Biology

	Everyone works in different ways and is motivated by different things . . . you have to key into this and it’s important not to rub people up the wrong way.
	Rob, MSc International Business and Management

	One thing I have learnt is that you can never ask too many questions, for example don’t just do something because you have been asked to do it, ask why and how and try to understand the background . . . always try and do as much as you can; this shows you are willing to learn new things and improve.
	Sally, MChem

	Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. Our generation is used to instant messaging – but people place a lot of value on speaking to humans and it gets problems solved much faster, especially where there is urgency or scope for confusion.
	Ed, MEng Civil Engineering

We mentioned earlier in this chapter that three of our four graduates had intermediate jobs, ranging from restaurant work to unpaid internship, so, if you don’t have a job straight after graduating, keep applying and build up your work experience and your skills. Here’s our graduates’ advice to final-year students:

• Start early in your job search.
• Look for companies you admire, in the field you are interested in.
• Go for something that will give you training and progression opportunities.
• Make the most of any training and courses you are offered, whether you have a temporary or permanent position in the company.
• Go out of your comfort zone – otherwise you will limit what you learn and the experience you gain.
• Working with people at the top of their game means you have to elevate yours and you can learn a lot, fast, to broaden your skillset for the future.

Your second graduate job

This might seem an odd topic to introduce when you are probably still looking for your first one, but by the time this happens to you – two, three or four years down the line – you may feel cut adrift from the sources of help you have been able to use at university, so here are some thoughts for you to keep in the back of your mind till you need them.

Do

use the skills of reflection we discussed in Chapter 8 to assess how your first job is going;

record your key achievements along the way – they will be invaluable in updating your CV and in completing future applications;

seek out professional help – some university careers services will help graduates with subsequent job moves for a fixed period of time after graduation. Others offer a fee-charging service to graduates from any university.

Don’t

move without giving your first job a chance. Discuss with your manager what you need to develop your experience and interest, and how your job will develop in the future, before you decide to move on.

In this example, Victoria, whom you met in Chapter 5, describes moving from her second to her third graduate job, so she is at a point of leverage rather than a point of entry.

Notice that she was in a much stronger position than when she had first graduated, because she had her own network of contacts. Note too that the actual process of jobsearch helped her to identify her preferred focus.

In our next example, Estee left university seeking a job which made direct use of her psychology degree, but was unsuccessful. However, she made the connections in the job that she did get, so that the next time around she was a much stronger candidate and succeeded in her goal.

Your life and why all this matters

As a current graduate, you will be affected by two of the biggest changes to working life in recent years.

Firstly, you will be working for longer than your parents did (but you will benefit from flexible working patterns, including homeworking).

Secondly, you will probably have several jobs and many careers during this time. It helps that relationships between health and well-being and job satisfaction are well established, and there is much more recognition of the need for a good balance between working life and life outside work. Some organisations even make provision for staff to have ‘career breaks’ of a few months’ unpaid leave, to go on that trip of a lifetime.

So it’s worth investing some time and effort on your career plan, not just now, but at key decision points as they come up. For example, it’s never too late to start postgraduate study, and it’s often even more rewarding and interesting when you have some experience behind you.

It’s impossible to predict now what your working life will look like over the next 40 or so years. It will help if you are open to changes of direction and new opportunities and it’s important to recognise that your own interests, skills and values will change over time and that good career progression need not necessarily be upwards.

	Most of those who are graduating now will have two or three careers – not jobs, careers. Be confident enough to step off the career ladder in order to be the best at what you do.
	Carl Gilleard, Chief Executive, Association of Graduate Recruiters

We wish you the very best of luck for your future and we hope that our book is there for you along the way – and remember, you are the one in control of your brilliant graduate career.