Episode 99: Can I get a graduate job with a 3rd class degree?

June 25, 2020 Podcast

Hello and welcome to the 99th episode of the UKs number 1 careers podcast. In today’s episode I answer a listener question, which this time comes from Bruno. Bruno had been listening to episode 61 on how to get a graduate job with a 2.2. or 3rd and asked me the following question, ‘There are lots of companies who take a 2.2, but what about a third-class degree? Does that count as well? Or is there really no hope for someone who got a third?’ Don’t worry Bruno, there is always hope, and today I will take you through what you need to do to get a graduate job with a third. We will cover why first you need to take a bit of time to reflect on why you got a third, but importantly you need to understand that this degree classification does not in any way define who you are as a person, or what you will go on to do in your life. We look at why you need to focus down in your approach, and why graduate jobs and not graduate schemes will be the best way forward. Finally, we touch upon why experience is the key for your long-term success. No matter where you are in your job search, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. As always you can find a full downloadable transcript and all the links from everything, we discuss today at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/third

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • Why you are not your degree, and why your self-worth should not be attached to a degree classification
  • The importance of self-reflection and thinking about why you got a third-class degree
  • EY’s forward looking approach to looking at a graduate’s all-round abilities and not just their degree classification
  • How looking for graduate jobs and not graduate schemes is the way to go
  • Why experience is the key to getting a graduate job with a third

SELECTED LINKS INCLUDE:

Transcript – Episode 99 – Can I get a graduate job with a 3rd class degree?

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.

Hello and welcome to the 99th episode of the UKs number 1 careers podcast. In today’s episode I answer a reader question, which this time comes from Bruno. Bruno had been listening to episode 61 on how to get a graduate job with a 2.2. or 3rd and asked me the following question, ‘There are lots of companies who take a 2.2, but what about a third-class degree? Does that count as well? Or is there really no hope for someone who got a third-class degree?’ Don’t worry Bruno, there is always hope, and today I will take you through what you need to do to get a graduate job with a third. We will cover why first you need to take a bit of time to reflect on why you got a third, but importantly you need to understand that this degree classification does not in any way define who you as a person, or what you will go on to do in your life. We look at why you need to focus down in your approach, and why graduate jobs and not graduate schemes will be the best way forward. Finally, we touch upon why experience is the key for your long-term success. No matter where you are in your job search, this is an episode you won want to miss. As always you can find a full downloadable transcript and all the links from everything, we discuss today at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/third.

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 covering 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, 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, lets jump straight into Bruno’s question, ‘‘There are lots of companies who take people with a 2.2, but what about a third-class degree? Does that count as well? Or is there really no hope for someone who got a third-class degree?’. A couple of things, before we start, If you haven’t already, make sure you listen to my previous episode 61, links in the show notes, where I cover how to get a graduate job with a 2.2. Also, before we start let’s just clarify exactly what we are talking about here, as overseas listeners might be confused already, what’s a 2.2., what’s a third. So first let’s have a brief explanation of the degree classifications over here in the UK so some of this makes sense. So, at the end of your degree you are awarded what is known as an honour’s degree classification for all of your hard work. If you score over 70% you get awarded first class honours, known as a first, with about 25% of all students getting a First. A grade of 60- 69% is upper second-class honours, known as a 2.1, and with about 50% of people getting a 2.1. A grade of 50-59% is a lower second class honours, a 2.2 degree, with about 20% of getting a 2.2. And then 40-49% is a third-class honour, known as a third, which is what Bruno emailed in about. About 5% of people who graduate tend to get a third. Under 40% and it’s a fail. For listeners in the USA, a rough rule of thumb comparison with your Grade Point Average GPA would be 3.7-4.0 would be a 1st, 3.3-3.69 probably be a 2:1, 2.7-3.29 would be a 2:2 and below a 2.7 GPA is probably a Third. There is no direct comparison but it would be around there.  Now why does this matter, because in recent years many graduate schemes, although not all have set a 2.1 degree as the barrier to entry to being able to apply. Below that and you are barred from applying. Some will take people with 2.2’s, but Bruno wants to know about what about if you have a third. So, lets explore what he needs to do.

Self Reflection

Self-reflection in your job search is always important, especially in this case Bruno. Have a sit down and be honest with yourself about why you got a third, as this will impact what you might do next, and also importantly how you present your story to employers. Where their other things going on in your life that knocked you off your stride at university? Bereavement, illness? Did you choose the wrong degree? Was it advanced mathematics or nuclear physics, and it was just a really tricky subject. Did you have a lot of extra-curricular stuff going on? Sport, societies, running the student’s union. Were you working 40 hours a week at the same time to pay for university and to support your family? Were you running a business on the side? Or, did you spend 3 years partying like a rock star and just didn’t go to any lectures or do any work? Have a period of self-reflection and be honest with yourself. Being honest is important as people are going to ask you about your degree, so you need to have an answer. Maybe that answer is that ‘Getting my third-class degree is the proudest achievement of my life. I’m not naturally academic, I was told I was never bright enough to go to university, but I worked really really hard and managed to achieve the goal I set myself’. Or it might be ‘I was on track for a 2.1 but suffered a family bereavement in my final year and it really threw me off track’. Or ‘Uni was great fun; I developed some amazing transferable skills from starting my own business and also running the entrepreneur society’. Whatever your reason is, own it and embrace it, because part 2 is.

Remember – You are not your degree.
You are not your degree classification. Getting a third doesn’t mean you are a failure, someone with a first or a 2.1 is not better than you. Getting any degree is a great achievement, so don’t judge yourself or be self-critical. Getting a third is not something that is going to hold you back in life or stop you from being a success or doing what you want to do…. unless you let it.

Let’s go to a quote from Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of the advertising giant the Ogilvy group. ‘I have asked around, and nobody has any evidence to suggest that, for any given university, recruits with first-class degrees turn into better employees than those with thirds (if anything the correlation operates in reverse)’

There you go, there is no correlation between your degree and actual job performance. Getting a third doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to not be amazing at work. Let’s break this down, if you think about what you need to be good at to get a degree it’s essay writing, memorising and regurgitating information in a timed exam in May and June each year.  Great skills, but ones which don’t necessarily reflect what companies are looking for.  So just because you got a third, doesn’t mean that you don’t have the skills which companies are crying out for. A friend of mine got a first from Cambridge, lovely guy, but, by his own admission he has terrible interpersonal skills. What he loves is working by himself, and not speaking to other people unless he has to. As a result, he found university a breeze, as it was all the things he loved, sitting in a library and revising and not speaking to anyone else. Put him in an office, in meetings, doing presentations, and he knows they are not the things he is good at, and so do the people he works for. Getting a first has helped my friend get a job, but it’s not going to help him going forward.

What you can’t do if you have a 3rd is to start to mope, doubt yourself, or think that you aren’t good enough. Don’t let an arbitrary degree classification define you or what you want to do with your life. Remember you are not your degree. You have a range of amazing skills, competencies and experiences. Don’t let your grades keep you down, be positive and confident.  This takes us onto point 3. What you do need to do is

Focus your efforts.
You need to be realistic, and despite how much you think it is unfair, many companies want candidates with a 2.1 degree or a 2.2. Don’t take it personally, the reason that companies do this is just to limit so they can manage the number of applications that they get and so they aren’t snowed under with tens of thousands of applications. Do they miss out on good candidates as a result? Yes, but for cost and time reasons they acknowledge that that is a price worth paying. Companies will put their degree requirements front and centre, and this is a key point, you need to keep this in mind with the companies you apply to. If companies say they want a 2.1, don’t even bother applying, because they will filter you straight out without even reading it. It will go straight in the bin. So, you need to focus and pick your battles. One company who are forward thinking about degrees is professional services company EY, who don’t mind about the grade or course you did, as long as you have an honours degree. They thought they were missing great candidates by restricting it to just people with a 2.1 or above, as they realise that people bring a broad range of skills and experience, and that a degree is just a small part of that. That doesn’t mean though that they don’t have high extremely standards throughout the process, it just means that don’t restrict, they do, but a third won’t hold you back from applying. So, Bruno, this is one company you should have your eye on. At the moment though they are the only large company with a big graduate scheme I could find who adopted this approach.

Focus on Graduate Jobs not Graduate Schemes

Don’t think that the big graduate schemes are all that is out there, there is a big difference between graduate schemes and graduate jobs. An interesting stat for you courtesy of episode 26 with Simon Reichwald. The top 500 graduate employers take only 10% of the total graduate market every year. Just 10%, so 90% of graduates are going to work for smaller companies or start-ups. That is a huge huge number of roles, and a huge market out there to be applying to. So, Bruno, you need to clear on the type of role you’re looking for and carefully target those companies. Think laterally, you might need to start with a more junior lower level position, showing them what you can do and impressing them and working your way up. Your degree and what you got at university only matters for the first role, after that it is all about personal achievement.

Experience is the Key

Linked to that point above, the more experience you get in your chosen field, the less relevant your degree classification becomes. If you can show companies that you’ve done the role well in the past, that mitigates their risk. They want to know that hiring you will be a sure thing and you will get on and earn them money. By showing that you have done the work, or something similar before, you can tick that box, which is why work experience is so important. Now where to go for work experience? This really depends on the work you are looking for Bruno, but options include trying to get an internship, volunteering for free if you can afford it, volunteering with charities to build up experience. Remember though that how you approach a company is crucially important. When you approach people about work experience remember that whoever you are going to is probably going to be very busy, and just the offer of, “Can I come and work in your office for free?”  is not actually that attractive to them, because they then think urrrgh, that is going to be effort. I’ve got to find work for you to do.  What are you going to do day?  How am I going to train you?  Etc. etc. The better approach is to sell the benefits of what you are going to do for them. “I want to come in, and this is what I want to do, and this is how it will benefit you, and this is the difference that it is going to make. Before you send it, think about what objections that they are going to have to you coming in, and then try and mitigate them in your approach. Talk about the benefits, but also how you are a self-starter, work under your initiative, you won’t need looking after or managing etc. Make it easy for them to say yes.  And the beauty of work experience is that you never know where it is going to lead

Be patient

Your career will be defined by who you are, not what you got at university. If you have a dream of where you want to be, be prepared to play the long game. It’s not where you start that matters, it’s where you finish. 6 months down the line nobody is going to care what degree you did or got. It’s all about what you can do. It might take you slightly longer to reach you destination, but never give up. It’s never over if you never give up. Keep focussed on where you want to get to and keep going one step at a time.

So, there you go Bruno, I hope that was useful. Show notes as I mentioned at graduatejobpodcast.com/third. If you have a question like Bruno, drop me a note at hello@graduatejobpodcast.com and I’ll see what I can do, or if you struggling to find a job and need some one on one coaching and support then drop me a line as well. Don’t forget to sign up to hear about the upcoming course on how to get a graduate job which you can do via the show notes, this course will take you through everything you need to do and everything you need to know to impress at every stage of the application process, sign up so you can get it with special bonuses and offers when it goes live in August. If you want to support the show, make sure you rate, review and subscribe the podcast wherever it is that you listen to it. I hope you enjoyed it today, but more importantly, I hope you use it, and apply it. See you next week.