Episode 100 – Job search lessons from my first 100 episodes

July 3, 2020 Podcast

A big hello, to a very special episode, a milestone which has been 2051 days in the making, welcome to episode 100 of the graduate job podcast! It’s taken me longer than I would have thought to get here, and I wasn’t sure if I would at some points, but here we are. Today I will explore some the key things I have learnt over the course of these nearly 6 years and 100 episodes, and how you can put that knowledge to use in your search for a graduate job. I will cover the importance of taking the leap and starting, and how that first step is the most important. I touch upon imposter syndrome, and why it’s something that everyone has and how it doesn’t go away. I talk about how people will always help if you ask them, and why when the going gets tough you need to stick with it. Crucially I talk about why you should always look to learn from the knowledge and mistakes of others, and why it is important to follow your passions. No matter where you are on your job search, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. As always a full transcript which you can handily download and all the links from today can be found in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/100.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • Why starting can be so difficult, but why it is so important
  • What imposter syndrome is and why it is more prevalent than you think
  • Why you need to be asking people for help as you look for a graduate job
  • How perseverance and staying the course will be so vital as you look for a job
  • Why smart job seekers look to utilise the knowledge of other people
  • The importance of having a passion that gets you out of bed in the morning

SELECTED LINKS INCLUDE:

Transcript – Episode 100 – Job search lessons from my first 100 episodes

Announcer: Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, your home for weekly information and inspiration to help you get the graduate job of your dreams.

James Curran: Hello and welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each episode I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, graduate recruiters and career coaches who bring decades of experience into a byte size show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had when I graduated.

And a big hello, to a very special episode, a milestone which has been 2051 days in the making, welcome to episode 100 of the graduate job podcast! It’s taken me longer than I would have thought to get here, and I wasn’t sure if I would at some points, but here we are. Today I will explore some the key things I have learnt over the course of these nearly 6 years and 100 episodes, and how you can put that knowledge to use in your search for a graduate job. I will cover the importance of taking the leap and starting, and how that first step is the most important. I touch upon imposter syndrome, and why it’s something that everyone has and how it doesn’t go away. I talk about how people will always help if you ask them, and why when the going gets tough you need to stick with it. Crucially I talk about why you should always look to learn from the knowledge and mistakes of others, and why it is important to follow your passions. No matter where you are on your job search, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. As always a full transcript which you can handily download and all the links from today can be found in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/100.

Before we start let me tell you about the brilliant course I’m working on cunningly titled “How to get a graduate job”. This course is packed chock full of decades of experience into one step by step guide of everything you need to do to get a graduate job. There are videos, guides, handouts, cheat sheets, example CVs, example cover letters, example answers to those annoying 200-word competency questions, help with telephone interviews, video interviews. Look if you need to know it to get a graduate job it’s in my course. The course is going live in August, with the exact date to be revealed very soon, but to be the first to hear about it and get it at a never to be repeated price with special bonuses, head to graduatejobpodcast.com/course and leave me your email.

So, let’s get going on today’s show. With point number 1….you need to Start!

1 – Start

You dear listener, wherever you are in the world are listening to me sat recording this on a wet and windy day in July in my temporary home in Leeds. We’ve not met, but here you are listening to me gabber away. All because coming up to 6 years ago I decided to launch a podcast. To date I’ve had coming up to 400,000 downloads, from over 150 countries around the world. People have been listening to the show in Togo, Guadeloupe, Benin, Tajikistan, and everywhere in between. I’ve coached people one on one to get jobs in 4 different continents, and received countless emails from people who have kindly reached out to say how much the show has helped them with different aspects of getting a graduate job. And all this happened because I started. The easy thing to do would have been not to start. I didn’t have broadcast experience, I’d never done a podcast before, I didn’t have any of the tech, and it was scary as hell. But I started none the less, and here we are 6 years later, 100 episodes in.

To get the graduate job of your dreams you also need to start. Applying for jobs can be scary, you are exposing yourself to criticism and opening yourself up to rejection. People that you don’t know are passing judgement on you, and you might fail. However, to get a job you don’t have a choice. You have to put yourself out there. If you never start the application, if you never click send, you will never get the job. I can remember how nervous I was the first time I was putting the first episode live, back on the 22nd of November 2014. Embrace that fear and don’t be afraid to take the leap, great things will come from it.

2 – Imposter Syndrome

Point number 2 is imposter syndrome. Starting can be difficult, but once you’ve started you’ve started. One thing that doesn’t go away though, is imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is the psychological pattern where you doubt your accomplishments and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. It is effects men and women equally, and its real. I had this starting the podcast, I’ve had this with every guest I’ve ever approached, I still have this now when I reach out to big companies to come on the show. 6 years later, 100 episodes in, and it is still a voice which still pops up when I’m about to send the email. ‘They’ll never come on the show, they’ll say who are you, why would we do that’. That no company or guest has ever come back and said that is by the by, but it’s still a thought that appears. I’m better now than I was at shutting that voice down, but it’s always there, and it will probably always will be there. The thing about Imposter Syndrome is that you understand why you have, it but are surprised when other people say that they have it to. They will be looking at you and thinking the same thing. ‘I know why I have it, but you shouldn’t have it’. Its something everyone has.

Imposter syndrome can really impact people as they look for graduate jobs. It stops them from applying for jobs in the first place, ‘well there is no point in me applying for that, I’m never going to get it’, so people don’t apply. And if you don’t apply, it can be difficult to get the job. And then as you go through the process, sitting at an assessment centre the voice will kick in again as you look round the room at the other candidates in their sharp corporate outfits as you think to yourself, ‘I shouldn’t be here, they all have better work experience me, or they went to better universities, or they did more relevant degrees’, or whatever it might be. You’ll be oblivious to the fact that they will probably be worrying about the same thing looking at you. And even if you do get the job, it will still be there, and it will be telling you that you are the one mistake that the recruiters made, the one imposter who slipped through the net at all those different stages. And again, the other new starters will be worrying the same thing. Imposter syndrome never goes away, it’s just something that you will learn to live with and deal with.

Author Seth Godin talks about it a lot in his book Linchpin, tracing it back to the part of the brain called the amygdala, what he calls the ‘lizard brain’ and how it evolved to keep us alive back on the plains hundreds of thousands of years ago. Useful then, not so useful now. If imposter syndrome is something you struggle with, it’s well worth a read, Seth Godin, Linchpin. Links in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/100

3 – People will Help

Point number 3 is people will help. Following on from imposter syndrome, if you can break free and be brave, you will find people are universally friendly and helpful. Starting the podcast, I was approaching bestselling authors, like Denise Taylor, Jon Gregory, Richard Maun and Steve Rook. I hadn’t launched, I had zero shows, and I was asking them to give up their time to record. They all said yes. People love to help, and they love to share their knowledge. You just have to get over yourself and ask. If you are applying for graduate jobs at the moment, the number one thing you can do is to speak to people doing the job you want, at the company you are applying for. People are scared to ask, worried that people will say no. Some will, but what if they say yes. Use LinkedIn to find alumni from your university and ask them for 5 minutes of their time. If you approach them in a courteous and friendly way, they will say yes more often than not.  

4 – Stick with It

Point number 4 is stick with it. Starting something is always fun, and I do have shiny red ball syndrome. Launching the podcast was exciting, putting content out into the world and trying to help people as they looked for work. But sustaining it has been hard. My aspiration initially was for an episode a week, but that lasted until about episode 4. Sustaining it has been hard, when life, especially work, friends, holidays, stag do’s illness, and family get in the way, when downloads plateaued, when the tech stopped working, when the website crashed. It was tough to keep ploughing on. Working full time and spending the precious free time that I did have putting out episodes that not many people listened to was tough. But I stuck with it.

Applying for graduate jobs can be equally demoralising. Hard work goes in (hopefully), and then nothing can come out the other end. Spending hours and hours, researching companies, completing online applications, crafting brilliant answers to 200-word competency questions, putting your time, heart and energy into it……and then. Sometimes nothing, other than a rejection, with no explanation why. ‘Thankyou for your application, but we will not be progressing it at this stage’. Or you do get through and you progress through the process at a snail’s pace, waiting and waiting for the next stage from graduate recruitment teams that never respond. Getting a graduate job is hard, but it’s worth it. Stick with it, and just think of this episode when the going gets tough and you feel down.  

5 – Learn from Others

Point 5 is learn from others. One thing that I have learnt over the course of the 6 years is definitely the power of learning from others. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, people have gone before you and made tons of mistakes, so learn from them. Before I started the podcast, I bought an online course which told me step-by-step, everything which I needed to do to launch a podcast. What equipment to buy, how to use it, how to record, the best way to edit episodes and launch the podcast, how to get it on iTunes and all the other podcast providers. The course wasn’t cheap, but it allowed me to save hundreds and hundreds of hours of frustration. Someone else had done all of the hard work, and I could learn from them. Without the course I wouldn’t be speaking to you today.

As a graduate job seeker, learning from others is also crucial for you as well. You aren’t the first person to graduate and need to look for a graduate job. No matter what issue you face, someone else has been through it, and will have written a book on how to get through it. If you are listening to this and have no idea what you should apply to, read How to Find a Job you Love by John Lees. If you want to get into PR, or banking, or advertising or law, or whatever field it is, there are specific books on exactly what you need to do in each of those fields. If you know what you want to do, have you spoken to people in your chosen field, or at your chosen company. Have you spoken to people who are working where you want to work, doing the job you want to do? If not, why not? Find them on LinkedIn and ask them for a chat. What advice do they have, what mistakes did they make? What path did they take, and what do they wish that they had done differently? Learn from those who have gone before you. In the same vein, as a graduate career coach for the last 5 years I’ve been helping people get jobs and internships, you don’t have to do it by yourself and make the mistakes yourself. With graduate applications one mistake can put your application straight in the bin. A rejection and you have to wait another year to apply. I can help you shortcut the process by sharing my years of knowledge with exactly what you need to do to get the job. Other people have made the mistakes so that you don’t have to. This is the whole point of my soon to be released course, How to get a Graduate Job, which distils down all of my knowledge and learning over the years into one step by step course. Sign up at https://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/course to hear more. Don’t reinvent the wheel people, utilise the knowledge of other people.

6 – Follow your creative passions

Finally point number 6 is follow your creative passions. The podcast is here today because I followed my creative urges. Up to my sabbatical in September, I’ve been working full time in an internal consulting role for a big FTSE company. Lovely people, a great place to work, but I wasn’t passionate about the work, it didn’t excite me and fire me up, it didn’t give me a creative outlet. So, I created something that did, which also aligned with my values of wanting to help people. The podcast allows me to be creative, to write, to try new things, to speak to interesting people I never would have spoken to before, to learn and do new things, to push myself, and to importantly for me, help people.

Don’t lose sight of what your creative urges are. Once you start a graduate job it can be easy to let your hobbies, and activities that you love slip away. What are the things that fire you up that have you setting the alarm at 5.30am so you can get 90 minutes of work done before you get ready for work? Ideally try and fulfil these with your work, but if not, carve out the time and energy for them outside of work. Can you start them as a side hustle, a passion project to keep life interesting? What is your equivalent of the podcast? Make sure that you aren’t giving everything you have at work, so you have nothing left for yourself.

So there you go, episode 100 in the bag. 2051 days from episode 1. At this time, I just want to say special thanks to a few people. Namely you, thank you so much for listening to the show. You’re the reason I do it, so I hope you are finding it useful. If you do, please rate, review and subscribe where ever you listen. I’d also like to say a quick thanks to all of my guests from the first 100 episodes, Jon Gregory, Denise Taylor, Richard Maun, Steve Rook twice, Mildred Talabi, David Shindler, Sarah Stimson twice, Jack Catherall, Ali Paterson, Lis Mcguire, Micheal Tefula, Jennifer Holloway, Elsa Sharp, Susan Griffith, John Lees for coming on several times, Mark Williams, Ernst and Young, Matt Hearnden twice, Brad Burton, Prash Majmudar, Stefan Thomas, Corinne Mills twice, Jane Sunley, Simon Reichwald, Teach First, Chris Delaney, Karen Kelsky, Kim Stephenson, Frontline, Think Ahead, Inge Woudstra, Geoff Thompson, Ben Williams, Kath Houston, Marielle Kelly, Chris Marr, Annabel Smoker, Andras Banath, Instant Impact, Raghav Haran, Tamara McCleary, Josh Doody, Enterprise, Police Now, Allen and Overy, Amba Brown, Jeff Kavanagh, Craig Williams, Leanne Jacobs, Unlocked Graduates, Sophie Milliken, MJ Demarco, Golin, David Wain, Charityworks, Royal Mail, Dr Colby Jubenville, Tristam Hooley and Korin Grant, Jason Swett, Sarah Cave, Nick Elston, Mars, Emma Rosen, Change 100, Scott Barlow, IPS Grow, Job Test Prep, Karandeep Badwal, DS Smith, Brian Sinclair, and Jean.

I couldn’t have done the show with you. Links for today in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/100 and if you do want to learn from the expertise of others and invest in yourself, then sign up at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/course to hear about my course on how to get a graduate job. Let’s leave it there then today, join me next week when I have Capgemini on the show talking about the brilliant graduate opportunities that they have available. I hope you enjoyed it today, but more importantly, I hope you use it, and apply it. See you next week.