Most of the parents we speak to believe that if their son or daughter gets a 1st or 2:1 from a good university, then it will guarantee a graduate job after University.
Sadly this is no longer the case.
With 78% of students now achieving a 1st or 2:1 with honours, a good grade no longer helps you stand out from the crowd. Many students work hard on their studies but neglect building the employability skills employers look for in graduates.
With 500,000 students graduating each year, how can you ensure your son/daughter gets ahead of the competition?
This article outlines how to help them land a great job, all is not lost!
But first of all, here’s a bit about Graduate Coach.
Who are we?
Over the past 9 years, the team here at Graduate Coach have helped students and graduates to transform their degrees into careers. We’ve helped 400+ people to land opportunities at great companies such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Google, Facebook, Walt Disney, Amazon The NHS, and many more.
How to help your son / daughter get a graduate job
1) Encourage them to get work experience
Why is work experience so essential to career success?
There are far too many graduates competing for too few graduate jobs. Some vacancies receive over 100 applications. For roles at Blue Chip companies, it can be well over 500.
As a result, employers only consider employing Graduates who can hit the ground running from day one. To hit the ground running you need extensive, demonstrable work or work-related experience.
- 85% of graduate employers automatically reject candidates with no work experience
- 91% of employers believe work experience is more important than a degree.
Work experience is vital for two reasons;
- It teaches graduates vital employability skills
- It helps graduates understand what they WANT to do as a career.
1.2) Employability skills
The infographic below shows you the nine key CBI employability skills that employers look for in Graduates.
You must encourage your son or daughter to acquire these life skills via work, volunteering, any other form of experience. Anything that enables them to demonstrate to employers that they are work-ready.
But what happens if they have already graduated and don’t have these skills?
Essentially, they need to acquire these skills via a graduate-level internship or any other form of employability/work skill acquisition. It’s quite acceptable to do a short stint as an intern after University.
1.3) What the Graduate WANTS to do
Graduate employers’ biggest frustration is that most Graduates do not know what they want.
How many of us went into a job blindly at the start of our career, only to realise that it didn’t suit us at all?
Years can be wasted, confidence lost, potential earnings lowered – the negative impact on our well being of working in the wrong job can be astounding. We have seen examples of these symptoms time and time again in the Graduates we coach.
The more work experience that a student/graduate has, the better they understand their preferences and values and thus; what their ideal career is.
They can, therefore, be clear with employers about their wants and desires for their career. The employer can have confidence that the graduate will put 100% into the role and are likely to commit to the job and stay for a number of years.
This is a huge area that most people overlook.
For these reasons, work experience is vital for your son and daughter.
2) How else can you help?
- Encourage your son or daughter to find work experience that is related to their areas of interest and passions.
- Consider your network, who could help them in these areas?
- Encourage your son or daughter to activate and build their own network, former teachers, lecturers, re-contacting old acquaintances.
- Contacting companies with a carefully prepared cover letter that highlights the skills they will bring to the company.
3) Hire a graduate coach
As your son or daughter grew up, they will have undertaken extracurricular activities such as learning a musical instrument or playing a sport. To help them learn the violin, you’d get them a music teacher, to excel as a tennis player, you would hire a tennis coach. More recently, to learn to drive, your son or daughter will have utilised a driving instructor.
Graduate coaching is no different. 
To land their dream graduate job, it makes sense to get them a graduate coach to help write excellent CVs, perform well in interviews, navigate their early career and more.
We are the UK’s leading Graduate Coaching company. Please schedule a call with our Head Coach and founder, Chris Davies at a convenient time for you.
Graduate Coach: What We Do
We help Graduates who struggle to secure a graduate-level job. We have seen countless examples of Graduates who have failed a couple of job applications and as a result, are now working in bars and coffee shops. This is a tragic waste of talent and ability.
Our mission is to help Graduates find the jobs that their education deserves.
We help Graduates to understand their unique strengths, skills and values and to select graduate job types that suit them best.
We also help guide students who are currently at university to build a career plan to increase their chances of securing a Graduate level job after graduation.
We offer a wide range of services to suit every budget from ebooks to 1-2-1 career coaching sessions. We invite you to check out our website for more information.
Our mission is to help as many students and graduates as possible. No matter what your son or daughter’s situation is, we are here to help.
Our Resources
- Check out, and share our blog with your son or daughter. We share careers advice specifically tailored to students and graduates.
- Encourage your son or daughter to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more tips on interviews and other career advice.
- Our founder and Head Graduate Coach Chris has published 2 books. The Student Book is designed to tell your son or daughter everything they need to know to get a job. The Graduate Book helps Graduates to thrive in their career.
- We offer a range or Online courses and 1-2-1 coaching as part of our core services.
Contact us via email or call 02070 149547 to find out more.
Featured Photo by Johnny Vision from Pexels
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