Graduate employment: a new kind of life.

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 graduate employment.

Then, there is yet another way of approaching graduate employment; it does not suit everybody, but it is called the pro-active approach. In effect, rather than waiting for an employer to approach you by advertising a job, you could approach selected employers by (effectively) advertising yourself.

The first stage of this process would be to thoroughly research a number of companies who do, on occasions, have graduate employment vacancies, and who might be interested in your likely area of expertise. You could start be studying their web-sites, and follow on from there. But it would definitely not be a good idea to inappropriately "spam" companies.

Then, having found out as much as possible about a company, send them a carefully designed exploratory letter, and a copy of your CV. Get professional help in preparing these, if you feel that you may need it, and always try to send them to a named person at the company (whoever would be responsible for graduate employment). Then, after a week or so, if you haven't heard anything, it would be time to telephone that named person purportedly to answer any questions arising.

If the sort of graduate employment that you are seeking requires initiative, or has any kind of sales/marketing slant, this kind of approach might well stand you in good stead.

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