Jun

21

Graduate employment: a new kind of life.

June 21, 2008 |

Coming to the end of student
life and moving into graduate employment is a moment of
serious discontinuity for most people.

There such a difference
between the old life as “just another student” and the
proposed new life as a graduate employee.for example, in your “old”
life you may have been able to attend morning lectures looking bleary
eyed, perhaps with a hangover from the night before, but if you allow
yourself to do this sort of thing when you are attending interviews
for graduate employment, or
worse still when you are actually in graduate employment,
it is much more likely to lead to problems.

It would not be beyond the
bounds of possibility, of course, to simply “mask” any such
undesirable indicators for the hour or so of the face-to-face
interview, in an attempt to get the job. But then, if the tactic
works, when you actually start the job your employer would have
expectations that you would continue to behave according to the
“mask” worn at your interview for your graduate
employment.

What
all this is getting around to saying , I guess, is that if you want
to start a career in graduate employment,and
you have the classical student image, you would be well
advised to have to think about abandoning that image. That image
manifests itself in a variety of ways, but just to get your thinking
started, how about …

  • Do
    whatever it takes to make sure that you are fresh and alert in the
    mornings. If you have been used to keeping unusual hours, and late
    night partying, then try to start getting used to sleeping “normal”
    hours.

  • Review your clothing
    situation, and if you don’t already have some “professional
    looking” clothes, it could well be worth buying some and
    getting used to wearing them before your graduate employmentinterviews

As the end of your
undergraduate days approaches, and your mind naturally turns towards
starting to look for your first graduate employment there will
be two main places to be looking for adverts for graduate vacancies.
The traditional source, of course, would be the traditional media
(i.e. newspapers and magazines) whilst the more modern source would
be the Internet jobs boards.

Whilst realising that it
would be only natural for every young graduate to be hoping to find
that perfect vacancy, there is some merit in being flexible, in
keeping an open mind. Jobs-for-life are very much a thing of
the past these days, and however ideal that first job might be it is
statistically likely that you will soon be moving on for a promotion
to the second rung on the ladder of your , this kind of approach might well stand
you in good stead.

About the author

John Bult runs internet jobs sites for people seeking graduate employment, and for graduate recruitment agencies to place adverts

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