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!
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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.
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