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Avoiding the Graduate Employability Crisis

All hail students, graduates and employed graduates – if you hadn’t noticed from the news, things are beginning to look rather grim. For the younger amongst us, if you want to get a job (or for the managers, keep one) it is time we woke up and smelt the roses – we are now facing an unprecedented ‘Graduate Employability Crisis.’

Tertiary education, which has enjoyed a steady rise in popularity since the 70s, has for the first time reached a tipping point – there is now a huge oversupply of graduates (Papadopolous, 2014), coupled with the lowest number of jobs for graduates (Dodd & Tadros, 2014). Add to this the fact that 49% of graduates say they are unprepared for the workforce (Huynh, 2014), some are, for the first time in decades, wishing that they simply started working after high school as they believe their university course was a ‘waste of time.’ (Kimmorley, 2014). Given the potentially imminent exponential increase in fees, university could be about to become an extremely expensive waste of time (Knott & Gilmore, 2014).

I’m not about to give up on degrees altogether, though. After all, they are a minimum entry requirement for many professions, and can provide an opportunity for fun times and a great lifestyle (yes, I was a marketing student). However, completing your degree with decent academic grades is simply not enough. What do you need to do? Well, let’s start with a great resume and cover letter…

NO

I’m joking.

I barely glance at peoples CV and Cover Letter.

I’m serious.

Read on for some real advice.

Contrary to the views of most university careers professionals, advice columns, books and websites, success as a graduate these days is not about the best CV and cover letter. Nor is it about the best answers to interview questions, or the best psychometric testing results. Succeeding in these areas certainly helps, however, gathering experience in a number of key areas will increase your employability far more than a well-crafted cover letter. Yes folks, I’m about to let the cat out of the bag in terms of graduate success. Read on if you dare.

i) Fail, fail often, fail repeatedly – and live to tell the tale: It was said once that you can’t understand success until you’ve experienced failure and this, more than ever, is true of graduates. The workplace is often, and especially when you are young and inexperienced, far from peachy and in fact littered with challenging and frustrating obstacles. It goes without saying that the more times you have failed in your pre-work life, the more resilience you will have built and the better equipped you will be deal with workplace challenges (including tough interview questions!). So fail, fail, then fail again, and hone your coping mechanisms and emotional control, whilst developing a healthy and positive attitude towards setbacks.

ii) Start a business – or get involved with one: Even if you aren’t studying business – you will no doubt be employed in one when you finish, so you will need to accumulate a reasonable amount of business and commercial acumen. The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to start your own business whilst at university. The product or service is irrelevant, the important part of the exercise is that to start a business, you will need to consider how to create a strategy, market and sell something, manage finances, and possibly even manage people. Doesn’t that sound like…yep, that’s basically what any business, large or small, tries to achieve. Learning these lessons early will put you light years ahead of your peers in terms of ‘big picture’ business understanding. This is your lightbulb moment! Clarity365 would help you actually develop your acumen with our easy, simple business management solution. Don't go excel if you do go it alone, speak with us!

iii) Learn how to sell: I feel like ‘sales’ has turned into a slightly dirty word, and many students avoid jobs of this description like the plague – but I can tell you, nothing influenced my interview skills, and later influencing skills, more than having a challenging sales jobs. Because it goes without saying if you can sell a substandard product that you don’t believe in to people you don’t like, that you will be able to translate this skill into selling yourself and your services. So the next time you see a job advertisement for telemarketing…think about it.

iv) Say Yes to Everything : This is simple mathematics. The more activities you participate in the more people you meet, the higher chance you will meet someone that will give you your ‘lucky break.’ Furthermore, having a diversity of experiences makes you a more interesting person, and also increases your chances that you will be able to make better conversation and have more in common with more people, including the hiring manager sitting in front of you. Party? YES. Travel? YES. Volunteering? Yes. Yes. YES YES YES.

v) Go it alone: I turned up to a final interview once, and the hiring manager had screwed up my interview guide. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, perplexed. ‘I don’t need that,’ she responded. ‘The only question I need to ask the graduate is what is she is doing to be independent from her parents.’

It was an extreme reaction, but one that had an undertone of truth. How are you meant to function as an independent adult in the workplace, if you have never cooked a meal, cleaned your bathroom or made your bed? Despite the emphasis placed on teamwork in modern workplaces, at the end of the day you are paid a (base) salary for your individual performance. You will have to make decisions, take responsibility, and generally function as an independent being. It’s better to ‘practice’ being independent then before you are forced to – by moving out, and taking responsibility for your own life and decisions. Also – remember that you are Generation Y, and the hiring manager staring at you on the other side of the table probably was married with children at your age. So it helps to show them you are an established, independent adult.

vi) Believe in Something: The amount of young people I meet that can’t identify a passion (outside of their studies, which I believe they are sometimes programmed to say) is truly startling. My sibling is one of these people, she went to University, studied fine art and now...well what does she want to do? what does she believe in? If you don’t believe in anything, is life even worth living? Having a passion is absolutely key, both whilst studying and when at work, as it shows you have balance. Also, if you can convince a hiring manager you believe in something, or ultimately, inspire them to share your belief, they will have every reason to believe you will bring that same passion to your work and career. So – what do you believe in?

Friends, the Graduate Employability Crisis is amongst us — but don’t let it apply to you.

REFERENCES

Dodd, T & Tadros, E (30 July 2014) Graduate Employment Worst Since 1992 Recession. AFR. http://www.afr.com/p/national/work_space/graduate_employment_worst_since_cgxKIHNeXZ5nvpl0jB85y

Huynh, M. (Aug 11 2014) Australia’s University Graduates not cut out for the workforce? Start Up Daily http://www.startupdaily.com.au/2014/08/australian-university-graduates-cut-workforce/

Kimmorley, S. (Aug 7 2014) Graduates are Leaving University Feeling Underprepared Saying Working Would Have Been Better Than a Degree. Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com.au/graduates-are-leaving-university-feeling-underprepared-say-working-would-have-been-better-than-a-degree-2014-8

Knott, M & Gilmore, H. (May 14, 2014) Graduates Could Pay Up to $120,000 in debt, HECS architect warns. SMH. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/graduates-could-pay-up-to-120000-in-debt-hecs-architect-warns-20140514-zrctv.html

Papadopolous, T. (11 July 2014) Overqualified and Underemployed – Meet Australia’s Graduates. Business Spectator.http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/7/11/education/overqualifie in d-and-underemployed-meet-australias-graduates 

republished by medium

 

Is B2B Better at Social Media than B2C?

B2B marketing can be tricky, time consuming and sometimes unrewarding, and according to the 2011 Global Marketing Effectiveness Program by the Fournaise Marketing Group 73% of CEO's believe that a good old marketer is not able to prove that their strategies to increase sales and improve the organisations market growth will actually work.

Is this true? I don't actually think so! 

B2B historically was all about the trade, and cold calling trade customers or sending informal, discount driven direct mail. For example, buy now and get extended credit until December. Brilliant.

However now we must feel empowered, and realise our potential for B2B marketing and allow the B2C marketer's to do the front facing branding. Stop trying to do it. Now I am a slight hypocrite because I have always been in the commercial B2B market, where now; I believe, there has been a transitional shift. No longer is it trade only, you have to appeal to the end users too.

So lets ask ourselves some questions:

Internal social Media, but why?

You get it, most brands have jumped on the "our team is totally awesome, look at how awesome we are, we wear hoodies" band wagon, so now on a ton of websites you get to "meet the team".  For example meet Janice from HR who loves dogs, and mugs of tea but she also loves her job. Insert picture of her possibly with said dog/mug of tea/or a benign smile proving her adoration for the role she's been in for fifteen years. However, it does appear to work in the B2B market, people actually feel that a value proposition is getting to know the organisation properly, almost becoming a member of the family. Whereas within B2C - the consumers just want the shiny product, and strong advertising to prove their buying worth.

So what's my worth?

Think about what your values are, and stick by them. A question to ask is do you have the resources available to be successful? What I mean by that, is most social networking platforms are free so in the purest of senses it should be cheap to add social media to your marketing mix.

Fact is guys and gals, we know it isn't cheap. It's time consuming and sometimes can be uneventful. I suppose a lot of B2B companies use social media as an experiment. I struggled massively with Facebook, when I was in the commercial B2B market not so much however specialist B2B markets are flat in responding when interacting so was difficult to sustain a following.

Your worth, is quite simply realising that social media is non linear within your market. Your aim is to deliver a website with personality and core values, show leads and customers based on relationships.Be transparent. Be trustworthy.

Its all in the maths

Tell a great story, and analyse it! So story + data analysis = you're awesome! A great B2B marketer should be a fantastic story teller, and no it shouldn't all just be buy my product stories, and aren't we great - it should be informative, interesting and very very quietly pushing your business into their mindset. There are so many great software houses out there, such as Hubspot which will track anything you do social media wise. It really is worth a go.

At data clarity we offer a range of services to suit a vast array of B2B users, from web development, data management to SEO so in retrospect we're extremely versatile so in order for us to have succeeded, we did the above first and we're winning so can you!