Episode 26 – Creating a Bright Future with Simon Reichwald

July 28, 2015 Podcast

This week I speak with Simon Reichwald, a true expert in the world of graduate recruitment. Simon is the Director of the Bright Futures Society and Bright Futures Resourcing, and on the Advisory Council for the Association of Graduate Recruiters. What Simon doesn’t know about graduate recruitment isn’t worth knowing. Today we focus on his work at Bright Futures who are the UK’s largest career focussed society. We cover a fair few topics from who Bright Futures are and why you should get involved, why you need to differentiate yourself in your job search and how you can go about doing it, through to why now is the best time in the last 7 years to be looking for a job. No matter where you are currently in your job search, this is an episode you won’t want to miss! You can download the podcast to your computer or listen to it here on the blog. Additionally, you can subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Soundcloud.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • Why now is the best time in the last 7 years to be looking for a job
  • Why you need to differentiate yourself in your job search
  • Who Bright Futures are and why you should get involved
  • Why employers are no longer as focussed on your academic achievements
  • Why getting involved with a university society can turbocharge your job hunt
  • Simon’s predictions for the graduate recruitment market over the coming years

SELECTED LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Transcript- Episode 26 – Creating a Bright Future with Simon Reichwald

James: Welcome back everyone to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your weekly home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each week I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, entrepreneurs, coaches and bloggers who bring decades of experience into a bite size weekly 30 minute show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had a decade ago when I graduated.

I’m joined this week by Simon Reichwald, a true expert in the world of graduate recruitment. Simon is the Director of the Bright Futures Society, and Bright Futures Resourcing, and on the Advisory Council for the Association of Graduate Recruiters. What Simon doesn’t know about graduate recruitment isn’t worth knowing. Today we focus on his work at Bright Futures who are the UK’s largest career focussed society. We cover a fair few topics from who Bright Futures are and why you should get involved, why you need differentiate yourself in your job search and how you can go about doing it, through to why now is the best time in the last 7 years to be looking for a job. No matter where you are currently in your job search, this is an episode you wont want to miss! As always, links to all we discuss and a full transcript are available in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/brightfutures, but lets not beat around the bush and and crack straight on with episode 26.

James:  I’m excited today to welcome Simon Reichwald, Director at the Bright Futures Society.




Simon: Good morning, James. How are you?

James:  Very well. Thank you.   So Simon, you come with over 20 years experience working in graduate recruitment and on your blog it describes how if you were a stick of rock cut lengthways in half, the word running down the middle would be “graduates”. So would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us a little bit more about what is it that you do?

Simon: Yeah, thank you, James. Yeah, I can’t quite believe it’s, I’ve been doing this this long. So essentially, ever since I’ve left university I’ve been involved in helping companies recruit graduate talent and helping students land really great graduate jobs, and I’ve done that in a number of different organizations. In the last 10 years I’ve been doing it through Bright Futures. So, it’s been a really exciting time and it’s something I’m still really, really passionate about and really care about because I think, you know, there are so many graduates coming out of university and it’s a really competitive job market and I’ve always been really focused on how we can help more graduates get great jobs on leaving university.

James:  So, starting at the beginning, can you tell us a little bit more about what the Bright Futures Society is?

Simon:  Yeah, of course. So, the Bright Futures Society is essentially a network of student societies’, runs in over 50 universities across the UK, and in fact, I believe we’ve got a couple in Australia as well — and maybe that’s a story for another time — but essentially it’s a, and they are the careers and skills societies, essentially. So like any normal student society, so just like the football club, the netball club, the economics society, it’s a normal student society but it’s a Bright Futures Society and its focus, from a student perspective, is to help students get the right graduate job for them as quickly as possible on leaving university. So that’s essentially what the society aims to achieve.

The society has been running since the late 1970s. So a long time, but not all by me. I wasn’t that old then but – so it used to be, it was set up by a group of students at Cambridge University back in 1976 and it used to be called the Student Industrial Society or SIS. But when I took the society or the running of the network over about seven or eight years ago, I went to talk to all the student societies about SIS, one of the first things they said to us was we needed to change the name because Student Industrial Society is just not really very catchy when you’re standing there on a Fresher’s Fair. So working with the students we re-branded it and it became the Bright Futures Society. So it’s been running a long time. It’s got really great history. We’ve got some amazing alumni over the years who have gone on to have fantastic careers all over the world and a lot of those have started off during their time at, in this society when they’re in university.

James:  Excellent. And how would students get involved? Is it open to any particular student or do you have to have say, a more business or economics focused degree?

Simon:  Yeah, that’s a really good question, James, and one of the things we were really, really keen on with the Bright Futures Society and our message to students is really simple; is whatever your background, whatever your route at university, whatever subject you’re studying, whatever you want to go on to do when you leave university, joining in the Bright Futures Society can help you make that happen. So it’s deliberately a really, really inclusive society. Yes, we have lots of business students but also we have humanity students, we’ve got engineering students, we’ve got technology students. It really, really is a really broad, broad membership. They come from all year groups. Nearly 30 percent of our members are first years. So it really is a society for any student who wants to help themselves to become more employable, the Bright Futures Society can help.

James:  It’s impressive the first years to be thinking ahead at that point to their careers. I know at my university it tended to be a final last term of the third year when people suddenly started to think about, oh, dear. I better start thinking about getting a job.

Simon:  Yeah, me too, James, and I think to be fair, some students still do. And the last thing we’re saying is, you know, you have to get involved in your first year. It will be different for people at different times when they want to start thinking about job hunting. But I think with the great number of students wanting to get internships, I think they realize that getting involved in a society like this in their first year can help and they also think , bluntly James, the impact of tuition fees has really focused students’ minds on making sure that when they leave university they get a decent job because of the inevitable debt they’re going to have. So, I think we’re receiving an increasing number of students coming to university with a very, with a really clear objective, as well as having a good time at university — because obviously university will do that — is doing everything they can to help them get a great job at the end of it.

James:  And you mentioned internships. We had Brian Sinclair, the graduate recruitment manager from EY on a few weeks ago and he talked about how, I think it was a crazy statistic, about 90 percent of the people who did internships got offered a job there and then. So, internships are such a powerful way to get yourself a job, lined up.

Simon: Yeah. It is, absolutely is. You know, internships or placement year, you know, you’re absolutely right. I think I figure somewhere between, I figure off about 75 percent of companies will offer their intern a graduate job. Now, it doesn’t mean the grads will take that job but they will be offered it. So it’s certainly a really great route into employment. And a third of all graduate jobs are filled by students who already worked in that company before, be that through an internship or placement or some other form of work experience. So there’s absolutely no doubt that it’s a great way to increase your chances of getting a good graduate job quickly on leaving university.

James:  Completely agree. So thinking then about the practicalities, what would, if you sign up Freshers Week to Bright Futures, what would be involved then? What would you end up doing and how would you end up helping the Society?




Simon:  Yeah, there’s two ways that you can get involved with the Bright Futures Society.   One is as a student member; and the other is as a committee member.   So, if you’re a student member, say you’re a first year and you join Bright Futures Societies at Freshers and all the Bright Futures Societies have a big popup banner. It’s got Bright Futures all over it and it’s got the logos of a number of the companies that we work with. So you join the Bright Futures Society. Once you’re with them what happens, you will be invited to a events that the Society runs on campus. So most societies begin very early on in the academic year, will run an event called ‘How to Get the Best Graduate Job’ which is a fantastic session, and in about an hour they’ll get huge insights into almost every aspect of the graduate recruitment process and how to differentiate yourself and stand out. And then the society will run a series of events through the year with employers. And this is a really important point. So joining the Bright Futures Society you’ll get invited to events on campus where you’re going to get to meet face to face employer organizations and in fairly small numbers. So it’s not like, you know, a big careers fair where there are hundreds or thousands of people there and you don’t get long to talk to the employer. You know, the employer will come in and run some form of a session; that might be skills related, it might be kind of insights into the industry, into the organization and then you get to meet and talk to people from the company, and not just the recruiting people, not just necessarily some of the senior people from the business, but often current graduates or current interns who work in that business. An opportunity to talk to them and find out what it’s really like because what we’re really keen to do is to help students get those really powerful insights that you only really ever get when you meet people and talk to them properly, and it’s about having, what we call, quality conversations.

So by joining the Bright Futures Society as a student member you’re going to get to be invited to events and what will happen because you as a student you’ll give the society your contact details and what year are you in and what subjects are you studying, what careers you might be interested in, a bit about you, so they can then invite you to relevant, or events that could well be relevant to you and be something that you want to do. And that will be — you know, they’re all kinds of different companies, so from retail to fast moving consumer goods, to engineering, to technology, to banking and finance. So it’s a really broad range of different organizations, public sector companies. So it’s a really broad range. And because some students, you know, will know exactly what they want to do, James, in terms of their career, they’ll know. I want a career in finance or I want a career in HR, or I want a career in technology, and that’s great and they can then go to events run by the Society that’s got those organizations offering those kinds of opportunities.

But they will also be a group of students who don’t know what they want to do yet and want to find out, and a may go, obviously, to a really broad range of events with a really broad wide range of companies offering a really wide range of opportunities to find out what are the right opportunities for them.

So that’s one of the core ways as a student member you will benefit from joining the Society. But also the Society will, at a national level and regional level, events will be run. So there will be opportunities to take part in events where the employers we work with, will often provide opportunities for the students to come to their offices and actually come to the office, meet lots of people from the business, have a look around, get more of a feel for it and spend, you know, three, four, five hours in the company, in the business, really finding out what it’s all about. So they get invited to events like that.

We run webinars which are live online events where students can log on and hear from employers directly and be able to ask questions of employers directly. So whatever university you’re at across the UK, you can log into these webinars and hear directly from employers and of course it’s live and interactive. You can ask some questions that they will obviously respond to. So there’s a really broad range of ways that students can get involved.

And then the next level up from there as a student member is potentially to become a committee member.   Now committees are the leaders of our society, so these are the people who run the Bright Futures Societies in their university. It’s their society. They run it. As a committee member you’d actually get to work with other committee members on deciding what kind of events to run, what would be relevant for your membership, for your university. You’d be the one who reach out to the employer network that we provide all our societies with. So we provide them with a network of employers. We provide them with contact details for those employers. You’ve got to reach out to them and invite those companies to come on campus and run events. And all our committees are given lots of training from us in national teams. So we actually come on campus and deliver training sessions to the entire committee in each university to skill them up to run a really great society on campus, to share with them the best practice, to give them ideas for what worked well in other universities and can provide them ongoing support throughout the year; regular phone calls, regular support throughout the year to help them run the best society they can and they want to, and help each of our societies achieve their goals for their Bright Futures Society at their university.

So it’s lots and lots of support and I do really a unique level of support that is provided to the Bright Futures Societies as well as lots of the career services in the universities that we work with, actively support and collaborate with the Bright Futures Society. So they might, Career Services might promote Bright Futures Society events. They might run events together. There’s lots of things that they do to collaborate, work together to help the society have more impact and have more students across the university. So there’s lots and lots of stuff going on by being part of the Bright Futures Society.




James:  That sounds brilliant. And how many committee members are we talking about at each university?

Simon: Yeah, it absolutely varies from university to university. We don’t dictate. It’s up to the students, but normally it’s somewhere between four to six committee members, but some committees are as big as eight to 10 but it’s known what’s typically somewhere between four to six. They’re a mix of second years and third and final year students. We do have some first years in the committee but mostly they’re second years and third and final year students, and again, they come from a really broad range of disciplines. So, they might be studying Law. They might be studying Economics. They might be studying English or History or Technology or Engineering. So again, there’s no prerequisite in terms of what you’ve done historically to be a committee member. It’s just about your motivation and you wanting to shape the Bright Futures Society at your university and you wanting to help more students become more employable so they get a good job at the end of their time at uni.

James:  Brilliant experience to be able to put up on your CV of what you said you were doing at university, and if you’re running student events and you’re liaising with different recruiters, it’s, it will look great on there.

Simon: You’re completely right and I think, there was a really interesting survey, it was a couple of years ago now, of employers. Employers were asked, you know, what is the most useful or the most valuable things that you look from graduates when you’re employing them in terms of their employability and on the top of the list, unsurprisingly, was internship or placements. But number two was taking a lead role in a student society. You know, it’s a really —   because it’s like running a little business, you know. You’ve got to work as a team. You’ve got to set up goals and objectives. You’ve got to decide what events you’re going to do.   You need to research on your membership. You need to plan and organize events. You need deliver events. You need to call and work with employers and with recruiters, and do marketing and promotion.   So it develops such a fantastic range of skills and it’s something that requires, you know, initiative and motivation to do. So it’s a fantastic thing to do and even just being in the Society as a member. Having that on your CV, you know, with company’s you’ve attended events from, it just says something about you that you’ve done something more at your time at university to become more employable and employers love that.

James:  And we’ve talked previously in previous episodes about the importance of networking. You’re beginning to make those networks early on in your university career.

Simon:  There’s absolutely no doubt. And whether or not you end up working for that organization you networked with, it’s about just getting insights into the opportunities that are out there. And I think the other — we had a really interesting — we run a series of national conferences throughout the year for our committee members where we provide them with insights and we bring in keynote speakers, we have Olympic gold medallists come speak to them, but one year we had the head of private banking of one of the really big banks come speak to our committee members and he’d been in the Society when he was at university 20 years before and he worked for five companies in that time, in that 20 years and three of them he connected with and engaged with during his time in the Society. Yeah, so it had a fundamental impact on these impressions of those organizations and the connections that he made with those companies. I think that’s a really great example of not only is it about networking; but secondly, how something you do at university through the Bright Futures Society can shape your career.

James:  So we’re recording this, Simon, in July. So, a few good months short of the beginning of the October term. What can — If people want to get involved, is there anything they can do at the moment to get involved, or do they have to wait until —

Simon:  Yeah. No, not at all. Literally, go to our — so students can absolutely if they want to. So if you’re about to go to university or you are, you know, you’re at university now, or perhaps you’re on holiday at university and about to go back, literally go into the Bright Futures website. So brightfutures.co.uk, and go onto undergraduates and find your society and you’ll see all the societies listed. Click on that and you can join the Bright Futures Society. So immediately you can start, you can get connected up with the society at your university so when the term starts you’re already linked up. And then when Freshers kicks up you can go meet the committee and go and say hi and find out what events they have going on. So, absolutely, this is something you can get involved with right away.

James:  Excellent. And it’s always good to have a few people that you know when you arrive at university so you’re not —

Simon:  Yeah, absolutely, a hundred percent; a hundred percent.




James:  So many of our listeners will have already graduated. How can they still get involved?

Simon:  Well, obviously, Bright Futures Society is something that is an undergraduate, it’s a student society. So if you’ve now left university, I guess taking part in events might get a bit tricky because they’ve probably moved away from university, but you can still go to the website and can join, you’ll still be invited to the webinars that we host, so you can still absolutely get involved there. There’s information about different companies that we work with and the opportunities they’ve got. We produce an e-magazine every single month, James, which again, you can download. It’s on our website and download it for free. We send it to our student members but you can also download it via the website. And that’s got, every month, information about companies who are offering different opportunities. So that’s something you can do.

And the other thing that you can do, the other part of our business here at Bright Futures is we’re a graduate recruitment business. So we help companies recruit their grads. So if you’re a current graduate and you are currently job hunting, it may well be that we’ve got some organizations that we’re currently recruiting for, but might have some opportunities that you could be interested in that we could, you know, make you aware of and then you could apply. So, whether you’re an undergraduate or you’re a current graduate we can help you. I say, our central aim is to help graduates as quickly as possible on leaving university and get a great job.

James: And do you have to have been involved with Bright Futures at university or is it just open to —

Simon:  No. Listen, you know, we’ve got about 40,000 members across the Bright Futures Societies which is big.

James:  Wow.

Simon:  You know, and as student societies go, they’re big. You know, over I think seven or eight of us societies have got over a thousand members which is huge as societies go. About another seven or eight have got over 750 members. So they’re big societies, but listen, you know, there are two and a half million people studying in higher education and clearly, not all of them are members. So absolutely not, and again it comes back to our central kind of mantra, James, which is whatever your background, whatever has brought you to the point you are now, if you want help becoming more employable, if you want help getting a graduate job, then Bright Futures can help you in one way or another. So, no, you do not have to have been in the society for us to be able to point you in the direction of potential opportunities that could be of interest and even if we don’t have organizations that we’re recruiting for that might be of interest to you, there’s all kinds of information on our website to kind of point you in the direction of places you can go to find good opportunities.

James:  And all the links to everything that we’ve discussed will be on show notes. So don’t worry about writing it down. I’ll link to everything in the show notes.

And Simon, what sorts of companies do you work with? Does it tend to be the large graduate schemes or the smaller companies?

Simon:  Yeah, it’s a really good question.   So when it comes to the Bright Futures Society — so, the Bright Futures Society is a, everything we do from the Bright Futures Society is free. We don’t charge the students any money at all for all the support, the conferences we run, you know, the website, all the employer contacts, it’s a completely free service to students. It’s funded by employers and they tend to be the big employers. And again, if you go into our website and look under graduates and look who we work with, you’ll see the range of companies. They’re big players that we work with, let’s say across retail and technology and telecoms and private sector and professional services, accounting, utilities. Yeah, so it’s a really, really broad range of companies that we – consulting — that we work with. And those are companies that want to engage at a national level with lots of our societies. So those will be some of the companies that our students will engage with but lots of our Bright Futures societies also reach out to small to medium size companies that might be based locally to them and invite them to come on campus and engage with the students. So it’s not just about the big companies, but obviously that’s where our funding as an organisation for our Bright Futures Societies come from. Lots of our societies are able to reach out to small to medium size companies and when we look at the recruitment side of our business we, again, work with both large companies, but also very much work with SMEs. So small to medium size enterprises that are looking to recruit graduates. And you know, right now as I talk to you today we’ve got whole load of small to medium size companies who are fantastic and fast growing and offer some amazing opportunities, who are looking to recruit grads into their business to start this summer.

James:  I’ve often found that students tend to focus too much attention on the big companies in the Milkround instead of looking, as you mentioned, the fast growing smaller SMEs where they can get really great experience and probably, maybe progress quicker than with some of the bigger firms.




Simon: Yeah, you’re completely right, James, and look, you know, my experience is, is that for some grads a big company is the right place to start your career. Other grads a small to medium size company is a great place to start your career. They both will offer fantastic opportunities but it’s about fit and what kind of environment is going to suit you best. So I’d absolutely agree with that you said, James.

And I think the other really important point to make students aware of is that the biggest 500 graduate recruiters in the UK take about 10 percent of the total graduate market every year, which means 90 percent of graduates end up in companies that they’ve probably not heard of before they started their job hunting. So the big companies offer fantastic opportunities. Clearly they offer only a limited number in terms of volumes of graduates that come out of university every single year.

James:  Wow, that’s a big — I didn’t realize the ratio was split like that. That’s a big differential.

Simon:  Yeah. Well, we produce some many. We produce, you know, we produce 350,000 fresh graduates every single year of which two-thirds get a 2/1 or a First; such vast numbers and it’s just no way, you know, the biggest graduate recruiters can absorb all those people. It’s just not possible; but across all companies in the UK, no problem at all. Absolutely those opportunities are there and you can see that with low levels of graduate unemployment. There’s opportunities there. But to come back to your original point, James, I think if I was doing my time again, going through university, I’d look at the big companies, absolutely, but I’d also really look at small to medium size companies while I was job hunting.

James: And you talk there about the large number of people getting 2/1s and Firsts. How would you recommend that people get in touch with you, see to differentiate themselves on their CV or application?

Simon: Yeah. I think that’s a fantastic question and I think you hit the nail on the head, James. It is about differentiation because the brutal and sad truth is that academic achievement is no longer a differentiator. Now, 20 years ago it absolutely was. You know, if you’ve got a 2/1, you were one of a minority. Now you’re one of a majority. You know, your A level points. Again, you know, if you have 300 UCAS points or 3 Bs you would be in the minority. Now it’s the majority and of course the other interesting thing that happens, a great number of companies are dropping UCAS points as a criteria for application but anyway, that’s probably a topic for another day. But, the point is academic achievement will not differentiate. Relying on that is a dangerous tactic. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s important you do well academically but — and as well as you can — but it’s not a differentiator and increased — and also sadly, work experience isn’t the massive differentiator because again, because students are smart, and you’re catching on to the fact that you need to get good work experience. So, you know work experience matters too and it will begin to differentiate you but it will not uniquely differentiate you. Increasingly what we are seeing is employers are looking at what else have you gotten over and above the obvious stuff you do at university. And they’re looking for evidence where you have taken the initiative to do more and that could be in all kinds of different things. That could be volunteering.   It can be charity work. It can be, of course, you getting involved in clubs and societies, initially at membership level, and then in time at a committee level, you know, like the Bright Futures Society. So it’s evidence of where you have taken the initiative to do more and achieved in that environment. So again, it can be achieved in sport or music. They’re just looking for where have you bothered to use your time in a way that you’re going to require effort and commitment from you. These are the things that begin to differentiate you and these are the things that employers look for when they’re looking at your application form, when they’re looking at your CV, when they’re doing those interviews. They want to know about what else have you done. They don’t particularly want to focus on your academics. They’ll be interested in it but they’re not going to focus on it because most people have got good academics.

James:  Completely agree and you can see where some of the big companies are starting to drop a requirement for a 2/1.

Simon: Yes. And also, quite rightly, they recognize that getting a — you know, and this is a bit contentious, I appreciate — but getting a 2/1 in one subject is harder in inverted commas than a 2/1 in another subject. Or for the most important one, actually, is that academic achievement is not, there is no direct correlation between academic achievement and work based success. Now that doesn’t mean if you do well academically you won’t be successful at work. But what is does mean is if you haven’t done well academically it doesn’t mean you can’t have a highly successful career. And that’s the bit the employers are interested in and that’s why they’re really focusing on you as the person rather than you as, defining you by your 2/1 or your 300, or 320, or 360 UCAS points. And I think that’s a good thing because where the market therefore, I think, is moving is employers are much more interested in the person rather than defining the person by their academic achievement. And what that does, I think, is level the playing field much more for students. Because any student can take the initiative to get involved in all kinds of other things, that university offers them because university offers you wonderful opportunities and anyone can take part in that and show that initiative and develop those skills and develop those capabilities and network with employers and find out what they want to do. So I think the way the market is moving and it’s moving away from the obsession about academics. As I said, don’t get me wrong, academics are really important in terms of don’t think it doesn’t matter then, it does. But more and more the focus is shifting towards you as the person and I think that’s a really good thing.

James:  Completely agree. You can teach skills but you can’t teach someone an attitude.

Simon:  No, you can’t; 100 percent.

James:  So, time is running away with us, Simon, so one final question before we move to the quick fire round. Looking at the graduate market as a whole, how is it looking at the moment? How confident are the companies you speak to about their graduate intakes for the upcoming year?

Simon:  Much better than it has been. You know, I’ve been doing this a long time and obviously we’ve just come out of the back of a pretty shocking recession over the last, probably going on five or six years, where it’s been really tough for grads but there is no doubt the graduate market is picking up. I’d say in the last two years all the big companies have come back to the market well and truly in terms of numbers. I think the latest stats I saw from the biggest graduate recruiters is something like a 12 percent increase in the volume of job opportunities for the big companies. So that’s great news.

But the other really, really important one which I’ve been seeing in the last year is the small to medium size companies are recruiting graduates again. And coming back to a point I made earlier that that’s where most grads end up, then I think that’s really great news. So, actually, if you are, if you come out of university this year, I think, you know, it’s the best time to come out of university in the last six or seven years, I would argue. And it will continue, I think, similarly for the next couple of years to get stronger and stronger.   So I think coming out of university now as a grad, the job market hasn’t looked as good for the last six or seven years. So you’re in a good place.

James:  That’s a good positive place to finish the interview on then. So just before we finish there’s a couple of questions I ask each guest. So, Simon, which one book would you recommend that our listeners read?

Simon:  My favourite book is called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s written by a guy called Dr. Steven Covey, C-o-v-e-y. It’s absolutely terrific and it’s my kind of bible for success, not just in business but in life.

James:  It’s a good recommendation. I’d echo that one. And which internet resource do you recommend?

Simon:  I’d be missing a trick if I didn’t say brightfutures.co.uk. You can join the society there. You can find out about different companies that we recruit for, connect with us to help find out about events and activities we run and you connect with us to help with your graduate job hunting.   So brightfutures.co.uk, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that one.

James:  I’ll let you have that one. And finally what one tip would you recommend that listeners can implement today to help on their job search?

Simon:  It comes back to a point I made earlier. With 350,000 fresh graduates coming out of university every year, you need to differentiate yourself. So if we take, for example, your CV, the top bit of advice I would give you is make it easy for employers to see how you are different. So, big chunks of texts not a good idea. Yes, text but bullet points good. Maybe use of bold and lift stuff up off the page because employers get lots of CVs and they tend to scan them initially. So make it easy for employers to see how you are different from a pile of CVs they’ve got on their desk.

James:  Brilliant advice and definitely one worth implementing. Simon, thank you very much for you time today. What’s the best way that people can get in touch with you and the work that you do?

Simon:  Well obviously our website. So brightfutures.co.uk is probably the best way to connect with us. I also write a blog. And again, you can find that on our website. So there’s just a mass of ways to connect with us and find out about us. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m always happy to connect with people through that platform. So lots of different ways that people can connect with me. So follow my blog, connect with me on LinkedIn and check out our website.

James:  Simon, thank you very much for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast.

Simon:  It’s a pleasure, thank you, James. I’ve enjoyed it.

James:  Thank-you again to Simon Reichwald, he has so much expertise and knowledge of the graduate recruitment market it brilliant to hear his insights. As usual following the rule of three, three things stood out for me today. The first is Simon’s comment on the need for students to differentiate themselves. As he mentioned, a 2.1 or A-levels are sadly no longer differentiators, having work experience is again no longer a differentiator, so you need to be thinking hard about what you can do to make your application stand out, how are you going to define yourself outside of the context of academic achievement? Something which is even more important if you don’t have a 2,1. How are you going to demonstrate your initiative, enthusiasm, get up and go? How can you demonstrate the competencies and values that your target companies are looking for? Now you don’t need to be thinking here about an expensive gap yaaaah in some far flung location, fun as they might be, this could be you volunteering at a local charity shop, or care home, starting a part time business, running a club night. You’ll have to think about these yourselves, as the perfect opportunity will differ depending on what it is that you want to achieve. But have a think about what would be right for you in terms of sprinkling some magic on your CV and making you stand out.

Which leads nicely on to point 2 and to Bright Futures and university societies more generally.  As Simon said, these are a brilliant way for you to get involved and to stand out. The opportunities at Bright Futures as a member or even better a committee member sound great. If they have one at your uni sign up, if they don’t, even better, get in touch with Simon and start one up. That will look even more impressive on your CV. Even as a first year, it’s never too early to begin making those connections, start the conversations and see where they will take you.

And finally, ending on good news, if you’ve just graduated or are soon to graduate, just remember that it’s the best time in the last 6-7 years in terms of the job market. Get out there, be proactive, listen to the other 25 episodes of the Graduate Job Podcast, and be confident. The perfect job is out there waiting for you, you just need to stand up and stand out, and go and grab it.

There you go, episode 26, all finished. If you’ve enjoyed it get in with us on twitter @gradjobpodcast and @brightfutures1. Check out the show notes at www.GraduateJobPodcast.com/brightfutures where you will be able to find a full transcript and links to everything we discussed. If you’ve enjoyed the show do leave a review on iTunes, just like a listener over in Ireland did, with DNK_Cork, saying ‘cracking show, been a big help as I’m looking for a job in consultancy, really like the interview with Brian Sinclair at EY.’ Thanks DNK, it’s always great to get feedback, so listeners if you are enjoying the show please do jump on to itunes and leave a review. So, all that’s left is to say join me next week when I have James Darley, head of Graduate Recruitment for top grad scheme Teach First on the show. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly, I hope you use it, and apply it. See you next week.

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