Jun

13

advice for uni graduates

Filed Under education and career | 7 Comments

Don’t stress and be realistic.

Congratulations on your newly minted degrees, I hope you worked hard, had fun, and still have a fully functioning liver at the the end of your years of study. Welcome to real life - hectic, fast-paced and generally a whole lot of fun.

First things first. You don’t have to jump straight into full-blown adult life and money worries straight away. You don’t need to buy a flash new car, a house or an expensive wardrobe straight away. Think carefully about what you are actually planning to do in the next few months and budget accordingly.

If you haven’t acquired a job yet, fret not, research has shown that the vast majority of graduates obtain good employment within two years. That might sound like a lot of time to be doing less great stuff, but often you get the best jobs through the most unlikely beginnings. When we left uni, my best friend and flatmate temped for about 6 months, before walking into a job at one of the organisations that she was temping for. A job that she would never have got as a graduate with not the best classifcation (like gpa) in the world. Several of my other friends have done the same or similar and, with effort and application, it’s worked out for them.

If you don’t know what you want to do, What colour is your parachute? comes highly recommended. Another of my friends used it to great effect to determine that being an actuary would suit him, and indeed it does as he successfully passed all his exams very quickly. He now earns about twice as much as I do, but even more importantly - he really enjoys his job.

If you do know what you want, but it’s a competitive field - the best thing seem to be to get as much work experience in that area as possible and hope to get a break. This is working for people interested in media and graphic design and advertising.

Maybe you’re in the fortunate position that I was, having a good job lined up before graduating. In that case, celebrate, but don’t spend your pay packet before you get it. It’s a good idea to think about what you want to get out of this job, and to start as you mean to carry on. Keep a record of your achievements and what you’ve learnt, and keep copies of every piece of positive feedback that you get.

In any case mentally prepare yourself for the tiring prospect of full-time employment. Someone once told me that after a few months it became difficult to drag yourself out of bed to go to work, again, but that stage wears off. I thought it wouln’t happen to me, and that they’d underestimated the amount of working time that I’d put into my degree. It did happen - I think the realisation that you’re going to be doing this for a long time, together with the annoyance of keeping someone else’s hours causes it - the key is to keep going, because that stage wore off for me too.

About spending lots of money, don’t. Whatever income situation you’re in, you probably don’t have as much free money as you thought you might. Keep a tight grip on your finances until you become used to the amount of money that you do have.

May

21

worst tactics for trying to get a job

Filed Under education and career | 16 Comments

Now going to gossip about an alleged incident that took place where I work.

My team is trying to expand so they’re often interviewing people. Allegedly, there was one interview which went so-so, but after the interview, as the candidate was being escorted out, he basically went down on his knees and begged for the job. According to the guy who was interviewing, if they’d had any thoughts of hiring him before, he had officially blown it.

I don’t know whether I’m abnormally sensible, but I just can’t see myself ever thinking that would be a good tactic to get a job. No employer wants to see my desperation (if I’m desperate), which handily saves my pride somewhat. Behaving well at a job interview isn’t really that hard. Do what is asked. Be a sensible, normal person in habits (fake it if you have to). They might not hire you, but you’re giving yourself the best chance.

I could do with a laugh, does anyone else have any awful tactics that they wish to share?  Can you beat begging on your knees as ways not to get a job? Let me know in the comments.

May

5

it doesn’t matter what you study at Uni

Filed Under education and career | 13 Comments

Honestly, it doesn’t matter which subject you study at University. The degree subjects with the highest average earnings are medicine, dentistry, law and engineering. That’s because there’s a clearly defined, well paid job at the end of each of those courses. If you want to be a doctor, dentist, or engineer, then I’d strongly suggest you take the relevant subject at Uni.

Interestingly, the same is not true of law. If you want to be a lawyer - whether a well-paid city lawyer, or working for the CPS - you can either take a law degree as your first subject, or you can take some other subject and do a post-graduate law conversion course. If you want the well-paid solicitor’s job, then it doesn’t really matter which you do, as long as you get an excellent degree from a good university and, of course do well in the relevant interviews.

the reality of post-university jobs

Most careers don’t have a specific first degree attached to them. Most don’t have necessary post-graduate training either. Some of those careers are well-paid, and some are less so. But with any given degree subject you can earn a lot of money if you want to.

I’ve got a maths degree, there isn’t an obvious job that leads from that - most people seem to assume that maths graduates become teachers. Not really the case, teaching was an unusual maths related career to go into after my course, most people have ended up working in finance, others in transport, toy manufacturing, supermarket retailing, and cold fusion research. Some or all of those careers may require additional on the job, paid learning, but all accepted graduates with little more than good grades.

Now, you might say that maths is a *hard* subject, or that anything numerical is going to be ok, but things like media studies are joke subjects. I don’t think that’s really fair. It’s true that if you do a science  / technology / numerate degree it opens plenty of doors for you, but these are only good doors if you like numerate stuff. If you don’t like that kind of science-y stuff, then why on earth would you want a job doing something related?

There are also plenty of careers that prefer arts or social science graduates. Publishing, tv and media, libraries, marketing, journalism and advertising. Some of these careers pay more than others, but you get to pick what you want to try and do, so you can take that into account if you like.

Finally, there are lots of jobs that are looking for graduates with no preference for degree subject. Surprisingly, in the UK banking and accountancy fall into this category. It’s not uncommon for historians and classicists to become accountants. Indeed plenty of engineers move into accountancy because it turns out the engineering, despite having good starting salaries, isn’t that lucrative after all.

what does this mean?

It means that the implications that your choice of degree subject has on your finances can be limited if you want them to be. Yes, many jobs with high earning potential are closed to, say, sociology graduates, but if you wanted to do sociology you probably wouldn’t have enjoyed them anyway, and there are plenty of other careers that you could pursue.

If earning a lot of money is important to you, it doesn’t matter what subject you studied at university, you can earn a lot of money, if you try hard and smart enough. You can certainly find a job you enjoy regardless of your degree. You may not be able to combine money, and enjoyment, but that’s true of everybody.

It doesn’t matter what you study at Uni, you can make anything work.

Image by tompagenet

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