Angels Den Blog

You’ve spent the last three or four years of your life negotiating your way through endless parties, hangovers, new and exciting experiences and people (oh, the people), along with the odd lecture or two, and one day you wake up with the vague recollection of a ceremony, a stage, a handshake, a photo and a really silly gown. Could it have been a dream? The parchment still grasped in your hand would suggest not. Congratulations – you’re a graduate. What now?

Strange feelings well up inside you (or is that last night’s curry/Chinese experiment?) as you realise that the comfortable life of education is about to end, the uncomfortable cramped freezing-cold room that you’ve called home is about to be given away to its next occupant, and the rest of your life is about to start. What will you do? Where will you go? The job market awaits you and…maybe…yawn…maybe we can chat about that later,, because it really was a late one last night and dinner is starting to make you feel a little like cookery was not the direction the cosmos had in mind for you.

Richard Lambert, director of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), seems to be a little worried about just this. Not the vindaloo sweet & sour chilli lamb (or, as we like to call it, Larry’s Revenge), but the survey his organisation has carried out that shows that business leaders believe too many graduates are leaving higher education with inadequate communication and language skills, while some even lack the ability to get up in the morning!

Even though this quality issue has been raised, the Higher Education Minister, Bill Rammell, is keen to keep on increasing the number of university attendees so that the UK can “stay competitive”. But are degree students going to suffer if the volumes increase, real life skills are neglected, and the employment fraternity loses confidence in the latest batch of degree-clutching employment seekers?

To make matters worse, there may well be too many graduates out there at the moment for the economy to handle. The lovely lot at the CBI suggest that there are 10.1 million graduates leaving higher education this year and only 9.1 million graduate-level jobs (although if you look at the job pages you’d be forgiven for thinking this number is a little optimistic). So if you’re recovering from Larry’s Revenge and a heavy night out after the phone call home to let them know that you’ve not wasted their money because, believe it or not the institution they’ve been pouring money into for the last few years actually gave you a degree, you may well be tempted to pull the covers over your head and go back to sleep because the alternative could well be bleaker than was suggested when you started your degree all fresh-faced and naive a few years earlier (before the economy went to Hell in a handbasket).

The credit crisis is having a knock-on effect all the way down the career ladder to the graduate rung. Institutions which were once major employers at the Milkround and beyond, keen to lap up the cream of the university crop quickly and mould them into pin-striped calculators, are staying away in their droves. With uncertainty throughout the economy, how can a graduate in 2008 find that elusive first job?

1. The CV blitz: If the market’s bad then up the ante. Send off hundreds or even thousands of CVs for specific jobs or speculatively to companies you wish to work for. In a tough employment market it’s sometimes more important to get any job than your dream job. You’ll need some way of escaping your parents’ basement, after all. It’s time for some serious photocopying.
2. Temporary or contract work: Although traditionally less secure than a permanent job, we no longer live in “traditional” times. Gain CV-worthy experience, then either move on to better and more highly paid contracts or keep an eye out for a permanent role in your company and get in there first before it is advertised more widely.
3. Internships and work experience: OK, it is slave labour and you may well be stuck doing endless hours of filing, but offering your services either for free or just enough to cover your travel costs will give you excellent CV fodder and position you well for any internal jobs that come up.
4. Go online: Job billboards or websites, online recruitment firms and networking environments like LinkedIn and FaceBook could be used to expand your job search. Use technology to the full and it could well pay dividends.
5. Networking: Friends, family, other graduates who have found employment, networking websites, job fairs can all be sources of people who could help you to find a job. Ask them, keep their details and stay in contact because staying in touch will ensure that you are the person they think of when they do have something for to offer.
6. Go overseas: Travelling overseas for work is an eye-opening and challenging experience that I’d recommend to anyone. Experience a different culture, learn a language and gain useful work experience. Take a year or two out to explore, and when you return you’ll find that UK employers respect this kind of experience in their more rounded recruits.

Alternatively you could forget all of the above and instead of struggling with the rest of the sheep to escape the pen you could ignore the scrum of the job market and start your own business. It is crazy that tradition dictates that you must work like a dog for ten to twenty years helping to line someone else’s pockets before you could possibly have the experience and funds behind you to go it alone and launch your own business. In fact many of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs started with nothing but self-belief and a great idea.

At Angels Den we love working with graduates. After all, you’ve spent the last few years either using or abusing your grey matter, either of which could be conducive to the development of fresh, new and innovative ideas along with the enthusiasm and determination that only someone with a stomach full of Larry’s Revenge could muster. All you need to gain the financial backing of one of our Angel investors is an idea that you feel will set the world alight, the confidence to convince them that it will work and buckets of zeal.

Graduates – don’t become a job-hunting sheep: build your own business dreams with the help of Angels Den.

Image © riczribeiro