How to get a graduate job in London, UK

Now what?

Its tough right now for new graduates fresh out of university but here is a simple guide to getting to an interview stage for a large company.

1. First, use your friends and family to ask if they can refer you directly to the HR dept or a team that needs grads. This will always be the best route to gaining an interview no matter what anyone says.

2. Get to know recruitment consultants in the city and go and meet them. Just type "financial recruitment", "IT recruitment" or "consulting recruitment" (or whatever you're into e.g retail/fashion) into Google or join linkedin and search for headhunter or recuitment.

NOTE: If you're shy and retiring then you're going to have to learn to be a bit more out going. Don't just send them your CV and hope, go and speak to them. Suggest meeting them over a coffee and talk to them about what you want to do and who they feel is recruiting right now. They want to know if you're capable of having a grown up conversation in English, so have one! Discuss your CV and prior experience, what type of role you would want and BE enthusiastic. - Remember they don't want to put people forward that are completely incapable, it will reflect badly on them.

3. Remember your CV gets you an interview that its its main purpose. People need to get a feel for who you are in a few sentences. No one has time to read through your life story! Keep it clear and simple with any minimal formatting, and no colours. Microsoft Word offers some simple templates automatically when you click "new document".

Start by summarising your experience, qualifications and education in 4 or 5 bullets at the top. Then list your education and experience in chronological order starting with the most recent experiences. Finally, at the bottom include your name, address and contact details.

4. Include your general ability to use technology and which Microsoft or specialist software you are comfortable with and if you can program (even just trying VBA in Excel) add it in.

5. Ask your parents or siblings to read through your CV to look for errors and formatting issues and also ask them how it reads and what it says about you. Update accordingly.

6. You have the option to participate in the "milkround". This is the name for the various corporate institutions' HR departments attracting students to apply via their website. BE WARNED if you do not have a good academic record these applications will not make it through the automated systems most large employers use.

7. Educational record isn't everything - if you feel you've got "street smarts" and just don't perform in exams you will need to get to these jobs in a different way. Its even more important to talk to recruiters and family and friends. Often working on a temporary basis at a large company in a midlands/North location will put you in contact with consultants or external staff where you can show your skills and be referred into an organisation which will allow you to move to London.

8. Work experience is a definite bonus and I would suggest to recruiters that you are happy to gain some work experience at a large institution. It may not be paid, but you'll get to know people and applying for a job at that firm will come with a referral (if you perform well!). Don't do unpaid internships forever (i.e longer than 9 months) unless you want to work for NGOs or charities (or you're very wealthy!)

9. Milkround forms - Be prepared to answer tedious questions which have no relation to the work you will be doing. These questions are simply comprehension exercises that require you to do some research (internet, news and company intranet) and write a short punchy summary answer. Its best to try and write a longer answer and then adapt it to fit into the word count limit specified.

10. Cover letters - if required, these are again a chance to highlight some research you've performed on the company along with your change to show off your ability to write English prose. Most of the cover letters I've read are vacuous identical drivel so I'm not sure how anyone uses this as a gauge of ability except for spelling and grammatical mistakes. MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT HAVE SPELLING MISTAKES ON APPLICATIONS, COVER LETTERS OR CV's! A paragraph on you, another one on the firm, what excites you about its work and what makes you right for the role and finally a summary of the reason you're applying.

10. Take a look at The Times Top 100 employers to see who you'd like to work for and which industry you think fits with you best. Unless you're going into a profession e.g legal, medicine, army -  most jobs revolve around communicating ideas, time management for task completion and IT work.

Thats it - hope that gives you some ideas of how to begin looking for a job and getting to an interview stage. I'll write another article dealing with interviews at a later stage. Good Luck!