Episode 97 – 3 Graduate Jobs; A Coaching Success Story

June 9, 2020 Podcast

Hello, and a very warm welcome to the 97th episode of the UK’s number 1 careers podcast. I have a very special episode for you today, an episode which has been 9 months in the making. Back in September, a listener got in touch asking about my coaching services to help with his applications for graduate jobs, and I’m pleased that today 9 months later, he joins me on the show to discuss how he got on. It’s not too much of a spoiler to let you know that he did really well, getting 3 jobs offers in this time. We delve into his thoughts, reflections and advice as a graduate going through the different application processes. We cover the importance of focussing down and why it so crucial to ensure that your CV is perfect before you start applying for graduate jobs.  We talk about his experience with online tests, and why you are wasting your time if you don’t put energy into practising this vital step. We explore practical hints and tips for video interviews, and key mistakes to avoid, and Jean shares his feedback and advice from taking part in 4 graduate assessment centres, and in particular his insights into how to stand out in the group exercise at an assessment centre. We also delve into the benefits of getting outside help to assist you through the process, and why you definitely should think about investing in yourself. No matter where you are in your job search, just starting after graduation or one year in with lots of rejections under your belt, 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/coachingsuccess.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • A graduate’s perspective on going through the graduate job application process
  • Why it is so crucial to ensure that your CV is perfect before you start applying
  • Why you are wasting your time applying if you don’t focus on practising the online tests
  • Practical hints and tips for video interviews, and key mistakes to avoid!
  • Feedback and advice from taking part in 4 graduate assessment centres
  • How to stand out in the group exercise at an assessment centre
  • Why you should think about investing in yourself and getting some outside help. 

SELECTED LINKS INCLUDE:

Transcript – Episode 97 – 3 Graduate Jobs – A Coaching Success Story

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 a very warm welcome to the 97th episode of the UK’s number 1 careers podcast. I have a very special episode for you today, an episode which has been 9 months in the making. Back in September, a listener got in touch asking about my coaching services to help with his applications for graduate jobs, and I’m pleased that today 9 months later, he joins me on the show to discuss how he got on. It’s not too much of a spoiler to let you know that he did really well, getting 3 jobs offers in this time. We delve into his thoughts, reflections and advice as a graduate going through the different application processes. We cover the importance of focussing down and why it so crucial to ensure that your CV is perfect before you start applying for graduate jobs.  We talk about his experience with online tests, and why you are wasting your time if you don’t put energy into practising this vital step. We explore practical hints and tips for video interviews, and key mistakes to avoid, and Jean shares his feedback and advice from taking part in 4 graduate assessment centres, and in particular his insights into how to stand out in the group exercise at an assessment centre. We also delve into the benefits of getting outside help to assist you through the process, and why you definitely should think about investing in yourself. No matter where you are in your job search, just starting after graduation or one year in with lots of rejections under your belt, 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/coachingsuccess.

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.

One final thing to say, as my guest today is still working at one of the firms and has 2 open offers from 2 other firms didn’t want to use his real name, so for the purposes of call today, we christened him Jean. Right, on with the show.

James Curran: I am very excited to welcome today’s guest to the show, because it is one of my coaching clients I’ve been working with for the last nine months, and he agreed once he got his dream job that he would come on the show to tell all you listeners about it. Pleased to say, on Friday, he got the phone call offering him a graduate job at one of the top 4. Jean, welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast.

Jean: Thank you very much for having me, James. It’s exciting to be on here after nine months, so long work.

James: Definitely, and congratulations. How did it feel when the phone call came through?

Jean: I think, as I was explaining, if I would have had that phone call maybe six months before, it wouldn’t have been the same feeling as having had nine months of working and really also having experienced currently working to having now an offer. It was really exciting, and I think unbeatable, that feeling when you get that call saying you’ve got it.

James: I could tell when you rang me up. I could tell in your voice that you had a smile on your face. I was extremely pleased for you. Today, we’re going to explore in detail what we’ve been up to over the last nine months, and the fact that you’ve done really well is not just the first offer you’ve got. This is the third offer. It’d be a good one for us to talk through in more detail. Maybe just to kick off, do you want to give us a bit of background and explain to the listeners who you are, where you went to uni, and all that good stuff?

Jean: Yeah, sure. I graduated from Manchester Uni in 2019. I was studying French and business management. A little point to make is that I am half French, so I would say that that part of my course was, I guess, a little bit easier than what my other colleagues would have had. I enjoyed the course overall. Definitely, for me, the parts that I really enjoyed about the course were the business modules that I had. That was something that I enjoyed doing. I didn’t do quite a lot of finance in the first and second year, and then did a year abroad in my third year where, again, I did quite a lot of finance and accountancy modules, but in French, so obviously not having the language barrier meant that I could take harder subjects whilst I was on my Erasmus.

I finished off my last year, fourth year, doing more business management type modules, so less on the finance and accounting. I graduated, got a 2:1, which is what they say you need, so I was very happy with that. From there, it was a long summer before getting my head worrying and getting in place to think what I was going to do next in terms of jobs and what my kind of future looked like.

James: I checked the email, and you even talked to me on the 13th of September, reaching out and asking just about the coaching. Maybe if we delve into that a little bit, why did you feel that you needed a coach, and needed some help, and why did you get in touch with me?

Jean: That’s a good question. My brother, who is actually currently on the EDF graduate scheme, which is a very interesting scheme for the listeners. I would definitely recommend, if you’re interested in a lot of diversity, a lot of variety, and also a business which is actually investing heavily into its renewables. It’s one of the only ones, then definitely have a look at it. Very competitive, very hard. It’s a three-day assessment day.

James: Three-day?

Jean: Three-day assessment day, so it’s not your half days, which you hear about more and more. But, I got, basically, the idea and the level from him, so I would say that my brother’s a pretty bright guy. He speaks three languages: French, English, and Russian, and she was still struggling quite a lot to find a job. This isn’t to scare anyone. All that it’s to say is that it’s extremely competitive, the job market.

The graduate job market is extremely competitive, and so I thought that I looked at where he had maybe gone wrong, what were the areas? He was trying to juggle quite a lot of things at the same time. He was trying to do a master’s and also trying to get a job, and that was highly stressful, and I saw that. I realized that this was actually going to have to be a full-time job finding a graduate job. I learned a lot, so it’s thanks to my brother that I actually learned pretty much what it was going to take to get this graduate job. He was also very transparent with me about how much work it would require to get past the first few stages with the numerical exams and all of that. That’s why I started shopping around looking for sources for graduates.

What’s quite useful with James’ service that he’s marketed himself on the Graduate Job Podcast so it’s one of the first things that appeared that looked interesting. I started listening to one of the podcasts, and it was really relevant to me because it was discussing these numerical exams which I’d heard about so much, and to hear it and to understand what it was going to take, I thought it was really interesting. That’s pretty much how I came to meet James.

James: We started working together in September, and you had an idea about the companies that you wanted to apply to. What’s been interesting is looking back at that list now is they slightly evolved. There’s quite a tech focus at the beginning, but then lots of general business graduate schemes on there as well. I’ve gone through some of them. Fujitsu was on there, BT, Mars, the Big Four, consulting companies, Capgemini, Accenture, American Express, Diageo, Vodafone. We might touch upon some of these as we go through.

Initially, the focus was on your CV and cover letter, or getting them to a high standard. When we looked at it initially, it was a good CV, a really good starting place. It was one page, you weren’t trying to cram in too much information, but it was just a question of working to tweak it and just make it a bit crunchier and a bit more relevant for the specifics of the jobs we were applying to.

I can remember we spent three or four sessions getting the CV so it was absolutely perfect. I can remember, at the time, we felt a bit frustration that that was holding you back from getting out and applying for all these companies initially, but it’s so important to get the CV right, and I think a lot of the success that we’ve had has come from the fact that the CV is really, really, really good. It gets you past that first stage.

I was speaking to the recruiter at Cap last week, and he said 65% of people fail the initial online application stage just because their online application and CV isn’t up to the right standards. It really is important to make sure that the CV and cover letter is to a high standard. Jean, any recollections on working on the CV and getting it up to tip-top standard?

Jean: I remember that part of the process pretty clearly. I had spent a bit of time with my brother writing out a CV. He had also had a bit of help done by someone who’s really good actually and helped him out. It was good for me as in I think maybe I based myself a lot on his CV. James is right. We actually did need quite a lot of tweaking to get it relevant for the applications that I was doing. I think that there is, like you said, that initial part of you that really wants to get these applications out. You hear that you’ve got to get these applications out in 10 days, maximum from the opening date. At least, that was the sort of information I was being fed from various people. You just constantly feel like, in three, four days, there’s already that more people that get in.

I will say that what I did learn is that some of the places I did the best in weren’t actually the places I applied for in the opening days. There is, I would say, you do need a cut of the right balance between getting in there early enough. I definitely think that is actually a point that is key, but you also want to have a quality CV that you’re presenting, and if you can, you do want to try and tailor it so then it’s really ticking the boxes.

Once you’ve got the basis of your CV done, it really is just a question of going on the website, looking at a few keywords that have jumped out like “collaboration”. It is always normally quite similar in that sort of sense, and once you understand that, it’s just about putting in the points where you think that you’ve done those things and just making it really pop out in your CV.

James: Jean had good work experience throughout uni holidays, you’ve been working, so we had good work experience to play with, coupled with, as you mentioned, the year abroad and also working in Australia on a gap year. We had really good examples. It wasn’t an empty CV, but as you say, it’s tweaking them so, “Are you applying to a finance company? Okay, let’s play up the finance aspect of your degree, let’s play up the finance aspect of the roles you’ve applied to. Is it more of an FMCG company? How can we tweak it? Do we need to maybe play up the international aspect of it?”

It’s as you said. Companies aren’t shy about telling you what they want. On the graduate recruitment pages, they’ll have the key requirements, the values, or whatever it is that they term it. They have these things front and centre. It’s the question of picking out the things that is important to them, whether it’s collaboration. Do they call it collaboration or do they call it teamwork? Then, just making sure that you replay these things in your CV not so it’s really blatantly obvious. You’re not cut and pasting it, but it’s just, as we said, the core of your CV doesn’t change, but it’s just tweaking that 10%, 15%, 20% just to really play up the different aspects that are important to each company.

Once we got the CV in place, I think one of the first people that we applied to with it was Fujitsu. We had a brilliant CV, sailed past the first stage, got to the online testing, and how did that go?

Jean: James had posted some links for some really good sources for the numerical exams, and there was also some sources there for the SJT, the situational judgment tests, as they call them, or situational awareness. They take various forms, but they’re really just making sure that you’re in line with their values and that you’ve got some kind of professionalism. They want to make sure that you’re someone who’s going to be professional when they take you on, so this is kind of a test that they’ll do to make sure that you fit the bill in that respect.

The Fujitsu one, I’m not going to criticize it. I think it’s just merely because I hadn’t practiced the situational judgment test. I thought the numerical test, that needs practicing, but surely, I’m someone who’s worked in a professional environment before, I’ve read their values, I’m sure I’m going to do well in this test because it’s really just about that.

But, I didn’t. I actually failed that, and I think that was the real turning point, actually for me, that I was already putting in a good amount of work, but after that, I really realized that if you want your CV to count for something, then you’ve also got to get the online tests because it will come in straight away. You’ll have your CV. It’s, I think, a lot of the time, 80 to 90 per cent of the time, it’s a computer that will just check your CV and make sure that there’s obviously everything that’s in line, and you’ll get, straight away, an invitation.

In fact, I think even with Fujitsu, it wasn’t even a case of them looking at my CV. Before you could even get your CV validated or looked at, you needed to do the situational judgment test. It was a double step there, so you had to do both of them before even getting someone to look at it. It is important to brush up on not just the numerical side. I would say, actually in fact, the situational judgment tests are probably even more important than the numerical tests. I know that might sound a bit out there, but that’s what I struggled with the most, at least.

James: You make great points there, and when you submit these things, they don’t say, “Take your time. You’ve got two weeks, three weeks to do it.” They give you what? Between three and five days was sort of the average for all the different companies with how long you’ve got to do the online testing? You don’t want to be sending your CV in and then suddenly thinking, “Alright, I’ll start thinking now about practicing the online tests.”

You need to be practicing them – this episode will go live in June – I’d suggest if you start practicing them now instead of then trying to cram everything into three days, if you can do it gradually over three, four months, you can buy packages often six months long. Buy a six-month long package for 50 quid. It’s not a huge investment in the grand scheme of things if you want to get a job that’s going to pay you tens of thousands of pounds a year. Invest in yourself, get the decent tests, don’t be scrabbling around on the internet trying to find free ones, and start practicing now so it doesn’t come a shock. As Jean said, “You can have the best CV in the world, but if you’re sending it in and you’re failing the next online testing step, you’re not going to get very far in the process.”

Just to say, listeners, that all of the links to everything we discussed today, including a full transcript, will be in the show notes, which today are at graduatejobpodcast.com/coachingsuccess. In there, I’ll make sure I link to a couple of the best online test providers so you can choose which one is right for you.

Jean, which testing site did you use? Was it JobTestPrep, Career Gym, or AssessmentDay?

Jean: I used JobTestPrep and Career Gym. I first started off with Career Gym. That was because it was the first test I saw. I went on there and I purchased the numerical pack because that’s the thing that I thought I needed the most help with. I did that, and it was a very high level, so I remember doing the first few tests and sometimes being in the bottom 20%, bottom 10%, and I thought, “This is really, really hard,” so it really forced me to put in a lot of time, a lot of effort. I’d do that for about two hours a day, I would say, so really working on those tests, both doing timed and non-timed conditions to familiarize myself with the questions. Some of the questions were really hard. They would take me four minutes to solve when you were meant to be solving them in a minute. It really forced me to bring up my standards.

When I moved onto JobTestPrep, just because they had a little bit more diversity in tests they were offering, and they also offered SJT tests, so situational judgment tests, that’s why I kind of moved on to use their services, but I actually found myself doing a lot better in the numerical tests. I’d be scoring in the 85, 90, even 95 per cent, which is more than enough to pass.

James: Practice with these is the key, especially if you’ve not been doing any maths since GCSE maths, you do need to practice. No matter which site you choose, again, links over in the show notes at graduatejobpodcast.com/coachingsuccess to all of the sites that Jean’s mentioned. Choose one which is right for you, but the key is just that you keep on practicing and hammering these home.

After Fujitsu, then things picked up. You put the extra work into the online tests. Maybe just to touch upon, though, first for listeners, you talked about the time you needed to put in. You were working whilst you were doing this. You had a part-time job in the evening and then working on applications during the day. Is that right?

Jean: Yeah, for me, I thought that my work ethic was important, so I’m someone. This will really vary from each person. Some people might feel that they need to completely dedicate themselves to this, but I felt that I also needed an outlet, so something else to do, so I was working part-time in a restaurant. It wasn’t my dream job by any stretch of the imagination, but it actually kept my mind off the tests, it kept my mind off of what I was doing, it was a little bit of extra income, so obviously that was good for paying for these sessions, and it really gave me a lot more accountability knowing that this was my investment into my future.

I would really recommend, if you can, to do it like that. I think that having accountability for yourself is really important, and I think that having that job on the side was actually not a hindrance. It was actually the complete opposite. It was actually really, really positive. In a strange way, this little restaurant that I was working at was actually part of the key to my success with this whole process, even though I wouldn’t have thought it at the time. I would have said, “Not again. Going into the shop and having these tricky customers.” Actually, it was really useful. I would actually really recommend that.

James: It is a balance. I know, when I was applying for the big graduate schemes, I was working full-time at the time, and it was difficult because I was working long hours and then coming home and trying to do applications in the evening and during the weekends, and it’s difficult. I think one of the reasons you’ve been so successful is you’ve been able to put the time in and you have put the work in, and you’ve been successful as a result. I think it’s been a nice balance for you in that you’ve been able to work hard during the day, work part-time in the evening, and you’ve had that nice mix. But, for some listeners who were working full-time during the day, it’s just about it’s difficult, you can be tired in the evening, but just putting that focus in to make sure that you can get a good application in.

The other applications, then, we were applying to were bubbling on in the background, and once we had a good CV, and cover letter, and the online application questions that we were working on and making sure they were nice, and tight, and focused, we were applying to a lot of things on the side. Bloomberg was one company that you were really keen on, and when you got to the online interview stage, any recollections of this one?

Jean: This one was a hand-me-down from my brother. Basically, he was really keen on Bloomberg, and he recommended it for me. He said, “There’s a sales and analytics role, you need languages,” and I thought, “Wow, this really sounds like me. I’ve done sales before, really enjoyed it. It’s obviously going to be a lot more sophisticated selling gas and electricity door-to-door,” which I have done. This was actually selling a very complex software, the Bloomberg Terminal, highly sophisticated.

Bloomberg also pride themselves about transparency, pride themselves about being extremely high in the customer service because they’re obviously offering a 20 grand, sometimes 40 grand software for very, very busy people. Essentially on that, you’ll be working on that terminal, making sure that you’re almost a help desk in your first year, and then in your second year, you’d move into a sales role where you’d be actually trying to convert new customers for Bloomberg with this terminal. It really is exciting, and I 100% would say if that’s something that you’re interested in, especially if you’ve used a Bloomberg terminal, that would really stand you in great stead because just having that extra depth of knowledge when you’re talking about the terminal will really impress the interviewer.

I think, where I went wrong with that stage was just that I didn’t know enough about the company, and Bloomberg is quite picky about who they’re going to take on. If you really don’t know that much about Bloomberg, it will come across. They will have a question in there that you didn’t expect, something about, “Can you tell us about a new product that we’ve launched in the last couple of years?” all those types of questions that really catch people out. Bloomberg is the one that will do that to you.

My recommendation is if you really do want to apply to Bloomberg, because it is actually a very, very interesting scheme. It opens so many doors for you later on. If you speak languages, you could be speaking in French, in Italian, German, all that, speaking with very intelligent people, trying to come up with quite interesting solutions for them, fantastic. But, that being said, you will need to do your research, and you’ll need to know a lot about the Bloomberg Terminal, you need to know a huge amount about the business model. You need to understand all of its services, and that was definitely a very tough interview.

James: We practiced with several mock interviews before Bloomberg, and where do you think you could have improved on the Bloomberg interview?

Jean: This was my first video interview, so I think that you can’t discount that as being one of the key factors that probably made it a lot harder. Your first few interviews will be hard. I think that you can also ace them. I have a friend of mine who’s just very, very good at interviews. I think he did one, and he’s now working at Amazon, actually. He did that interview, one interview. That was his first one. He’s got the job now at Amazon. But, I think that, for the majority of people, you need to work on it.

That comes from understanding, first doing your research into the firm, being confident about what you know about the firm, making sure that you brush up on all of the situational questions that they might ask you, such as, “What would you do if a colleague and you had a disagreement? How would you handle that disagreement?” Those are the types of questions that you’re getting more and more frequently at interviews, and then also the competency questions, so, “Tell us the time where you showed initiative,” or, “Tell us the time where you came up with an innovative idea.” These are the staples, these are the questions that always come up in some form, just with different phrasings.

Get them on point, understand and do your research about the firm. I think that you don’t have to do so much research that you know absolutely everything. I think, actually, to an interview, I think maybe James might not like me saying this, so feel free to disagree, but I did sometimes feel that people would be over-prepared for interviews and they would know so much about the firm that I think that interviewers found that a bit almost off-putting.

I think there’s a nice balance to be had where you know a good amount that you’re confident that you can speak about what the roles can entail, confident about the company that you’re joining, but not too much that you’re sounding a bit like a robot. There is a bit of uncertainty when you’re going to come into a job. They’re not expecting you to know what you’re going to doing from 8 AM until 5 PM. That’s just not really possible, but definitely do your homework.

James: I completely agree. It is a balancing agree. I completely agree about the robotic thing. No matter what the question is, it needs to come across as you’re telling it, even if you’ve practiced it 100 times before. It needs to come across that you’re telling it for the first time. From my point of view though, I would rather be over-prepared than under-prepared in terms of facts and knowledge about the company and stuff like that. You just need to use your judgment in an interview so you’re not just robotically regurgitating, “This company has 125 offices around the world in 49 countries,” and da-da-da. You need to use your judgment and be flexible with it.

As you said, the questions, it’s easy to know what questions are coming up in terms of the general questions. You know you’re going to be asked about the firm, why you want to work there, why that particular scheme. These things, you know you’re going to get asked them. If you’re not expecting them, you’ve only really got yourself to blame. We did lots of practice. We were getting to the stage where I was correcting you on your stories that you weren’t maybe telling right. I knew all your different competency stories for the different things that you’d done around the world, so you do need to just keep practicing them.

As you said, the video format can be a difficult one, and with Bloomberg, was it a recorded video interview or was it a face-to-face interview?

Jean: Recorded interview. You had a number of tries, so you could record yourself three times. I think that that’s what kind of put me off. It’s funny because I think a lot of people would like to have multiple tries when you’re doing these questions. I just felt that, in my head, I thought, “Well, everyone’s getting three turns at doing this. Surely, everyone’s answers are just going to sound amazing.” I found that to be a little bit harder. I found it difficult to be natural once you’ve recorded yourself for the second time, even more so when you did it for the third time. I’m someone, and this will really vary again from person to person, but I’m someone who really likes the moment.

I like to be put on my feet. I do like that hard question from an interviewer where I have to think, “Okay, how am I going to answer this one?” I know that’s not everyone’s favourites, but I feel that that’s where how I differentiated myself from people. That was one of the things I knew I could do was thinking on my feet. In that sort of case, I knew that people were very, very well-prepared that had done all the research and had done these were going to have very, very slick answers, and that sort of interviewing wasn’t my sort of style, if I’m honest.

James: For listeners, I’m pleased to say that I’ve actually got something that can help if you want to practice these. I’ve got a little tool where you can do the video interview itself, you can let me know what company you’re applying, I’ll sort out the specific questions, you’ll go on, and just as Jean had, it’s the exact same tool that all the companies use. You’ll have one minute prep or 30 seconds prep, and then just record the two-minute video, and then do that for each of the questions, and then we can go through it together.

We can go through and review the performance, and we can work on improving and helping you to get better with those. For details on video interview practice, check out the show notes at graduatejobpodcast.com/coachingsuccess. Do you think it was, then Jean, that you improved that in time, just the video interviews, because you did do quite a lot of them?

Jean: Yeah, I did a lot of them. I had a few successes. I had quite a few successes, actually, as time went on. There was also those one or two that I kept on not doing so well at. UBS, the investment bank, that one there was again a bit like Bloomberg. You had to do research. It wasn’t very hard questions. My brother had even warned me because he’d done it. He said, “Just make sure that you brush up on what’s happening in the news, what big deals they’re in the process of doing, values, points of technology that they’re using that are different from their competitors, how do they differentiate themselves from the other investment banks,” so all those questions that are actually not that hard. You can actually research that in a couple of hours.

Probably, if you don’t have a lot of time and if you’re someone that’s working at the same time, you could easily do that research in one night and write down all the key facts about that company. What are they currently doing, technology. That’s always a big one. It always comes up. What technology could be used, how do your values fall in line with their values? These are the questions that will most definitely come up, especially with particular types of companies like UBS, like the investment banks, probably like with some of the other ones as well like IBM and all that. You’ll always hear those a bit more like they want to know that you’ve done your research type questions.

James: Where did you go wrong on UBS then?

Jean: I went wrong on a number of fronts. Firstly, the recording was not good. This is really silly, but this is something that I learned is that I let myself record without knowing it, so that was already something that’s really, really silly to do, I know, but I didn’t realize I was recording myself, so for about 30 seconds, 40 seconds, I was recording myself, and I came up, and I started talking, and I was not in my element because I’d been caught unaware.

The other point that I did was that a question came up about what the current deals were that they were working, and I was trying to Google it in the 30 seconds they gave me. What I’m saying is that I was definitely not a finished product by that stage, but also I remember that I wasn’t that interested about getting that particular job and I wasn’t that bothered when they got back to me and said no. It would have been good to just use it as a training ground and just look at the questions, do your best at it. Even if you don’t get it, it’s still good practice. I completely flopped that one.

James: It’s good practice and a good learning experience. We talked about quite a few companies here, but I want to just make sure that listeners aren’t thinking that we had a scattergun approach. We were very focused with how we applied to things, and I made sure that we were focused. We worked hard in that application, make sure that either the CV and the cover letter was tailored specifically or that the online application question’s really good, and then we’d send it off, and then we move onto the next company, and we do the same for that. We were only ever really working on one company at a time and making sure that they were the best they can be. Dangers and difficulties that people get often come from the mistake people make is that they often just try and apply to as many people as possible without putting that work in, and if you do that, you’re not going to get past the first or the second stages. I just wanted to make that clarification.

We were flying at the end of Q4 last year. You’re making great progress. One of the companies you did well with was one of the Big Four, so we won’t delve into the names, specifically, of which one it has because through the process of elimination, you’d probably then be able to identify which one you’ve just been offered. You got through to the assessment centre with one of the Big Four. That was the first assessment centre that you were going to. How did that one go?

Jean: Assessment centre for the Big Four was tough, very tough, especially it was my first assessment centre. When we first arrived, we were put in a room where we — I’m trying to remember, exactly, how this went. We were put into a room, we were given a laptop, and there we had briefs that we could unlock throughout the day. We didn’t get given all the content all in one go, and on those contents, there would be tasks for us to prepare.

The first task for us to prepare was a room discussion between ourselves where we had to discuss the information that we’d been given. Bear in mind that they didn’t give us one or two papers to read. It was like 40 papers, so 40 pages worth of documents with graphs, with tables, with text, with newspaper cuttings. You had to read through that, and I think we had our 30 minutes to prepare that or 20 minutes. It was very, very quick, so you had to read through. Essentially, where I really went wrong with that was trying to read everything.

I think that, in those sort of situations, you might want to quickly gloss over and look at what all the titles are so then you know what people are talking about. It’s actually probably better to focus on just a couple of documents so that, during the discussion, they can’t catch you. You can’t be caught out by not knowing anything about anything because you tried to read everything. It’s better to try and focus on one or two documents so that during the discussion, when you are participating, no one’s going to be able to say, “No, you’re not right,” because you’ve actually spent a lot of your time on those documents, so you will be the expert on those one or two pages, whereas what I tried to be the expert on all the pages, and during the discussion, I remember I was out of my depth because I didn’t know what anyone was referencing.

I kept on trying to keep up with what everyone was talking about, and it just stressed me out. I felt like, “How has everyone managed to read these documents?” I think that what people did is that they just — some people may be very quick readers. I know I’m not, so for anyone out there that’s not a quick reader, don’t stress out if you’re given lots of pages.

Just think about this. You just need to talk for 10 minutes, and you’re not going to be talking full time for 10 minutes, so all you need to do is have three points that are well-argued that add value to the discussion, and for the rest of that time, you can just be mediating, you can come up with some organizational role for yourself: time-keeping, writing notes down for the group, making sure that you’re staying in the right direction, maybe reminding people what the question is.

Those are my top tips, and honestly, if I would have done that in that, I would have been so much better, and I think so much more confident. That’s just one point I would make.

James: That’s a really good point. A group exercise is always tough, and we’d worked beforehand making sure you were all ready and prepared, and the group exercise is difficult to prepare for because it depends on the people in the room, and it depends on the exercise, and the exercises are always changing. How did you find the interview with senior manager or partner? How did that one go?

Jean: We were in the room. I think it might have changed. It’s no longer the partner interview. I don’t quite know this. It might have changed, but now they put you normally in a room with a senior manager or a manager of that region or of a particular department, and for this one, it was actually a reflection of the day, so it was actually quite an interesting interview. You were asked questions based on how you think you performed, what you think you could have done better on, and it was really a self-analysis or a self-evaluation of what you thought you did well, what you thought you didn’t do so well, and that was really a good occasion to kind of flag any parts that you thought, “Hmm, yeah, maybe I wasn’t so good on this, but these are my reasons.”

It was almost like a justification to maybe lacking performance, and then there were also questions about your aspirations and your goals, so why you wanted to join that particular firm, and because of my energy levels, I just remember that interview being really tough. If that would have been the first interview of the day, I think I would have done pretty well on it, but because I’d been so swamped with information, 100 pages of documents, I had to write a thousand-word report in an hour. I don’t want to stress anyone out. I’m just saying that this is the level that some of these places are asking to do, and I’ve heard of places that actually have a lot more and are actually tougher that are full days.

This was only half a day, and already at the end of it, I was really tired and my brain was really struggling to get into gear. Be conscious of your energy levels. I remember not taking any breaks during assessment day. I didn’t think anyone took any breaks. Actually, like I said, take your time. Don’t rush through it just for the sake of gaining a couple of minutes. Go to the loo if you need to, go get a drink if you need to, be relaxed because that will also come across in the assessment day that you’re someone who’s relaxed, who’s calmed, who’s collected. Read enough information to be able to come up with points and keep some of your energy for each round.

I’m not saying don’t perform 100% on each round, but remember that you’ve got four, five steps in that day that you’re going to be marked on evenly, so you want to make sure that your performance is pretty steady, so don’t overdo it in one round like I did and then leave yourself no energy for the final interview.

James: I can remember speaking to you after the assessment centre, and you were frazzled. I could be saying that you’d underestimated the energy and just how draining the day would be. As we said, this was your first one, so it’s a learning experience, and you learned a lot from it, and took it too. They were coming thick and fast at the end of last year, so you also got through to the assessment centre with BT, which I remember you came away from that one thinking that you got it, didn’t you?

Jean: Yeah, completely different experience altogether. When I went into the BT one, it was just outside London, which was quite nice. I just got in, quite relaxed. Saw some people at the train station, and this is what I’m talking about being very over-prepared, and this girl had a 150-word document that she had conjured up with BT and all of its values, all of its business ideas, and that was stressing me out just watching her go through this. I was trying to discuss, speak with them, and I would say one thing that’s really good for calming your nerves is when you go into the assessment centre, really actually try and get on with the people that you’re with the assessment centre with.

Fair enough, if you’re not super-social, then I understand, but if you are someone who’s social, it might actually help calm your nerves. I know that getting on with the people in my group made them seem less like an opposition and more like we were collaborating to get this job together, and that’s the key. I know they always say that.

James: Sorry, just jumping in. I completely agree, and it is a mind-set shift you need to get when you get to the assessment centre because you aren’t in competition. It’s maybe for a couple of, say, strategy consulting firms where they will only take the best two people from the assessment centre. Everyone else, apart from that, it is just not the case. If you are all good on the day, you will all get the job offer. I was speaking with a graduate recruiter two days ago and he said exactly the same thing. He said, from their point of view, “We’ll only put you into the assessment centre if we think you are good enough to do the job. If we think you’re good enough to do the job, why would we not want to offer you the job?”

Up until that point, they’re trying to whittle people down. They’re trying to get people out of the process. If they put you through to the assessment centre, be confident that they think they have liked what they’ve seen from you and they know you can do the job. You’re completely right. If you can make friends with people, if you can get to learn people’s names, during the group exercises and things like that, it just makes things so much easier. Sorry, Jean, I jumped in there.

Jean: Absolutely, so just that point to just try and calm your nerves any way you can. The more confident you are, the more relaxed you are, the more of a good time you have, the better you do, and I know, 100%, this sounds so easier said than done. It also sounds quite cliché, but I guess that’s why clichés exist. There’s a bit of truth to them, and this is the case. If you can, when you arrive, come in a little bit early. You definitely don’t want to arrive late. That’s a golden rule, but I imagine you would know that, but just make sure you’ve got a little bit of extra time.

Maybe also try, if you see other people lurking around, they’re probably going to be the graduates that are going to be doing that thing with you. Try and have a chat with them, try and calm your nerves. They’re going to be stressed as well, so if you guys can kind of talk together and say, “Yeah, what are you doing? How are you finding it? How did the process go?” I remember that helped the BT and that just helped, in general, to kind of calm my nerves. That’s my number one thing. The actual setup of the day was very, very different to the accountancy assessment day that I had.

The reason was that it was a lot more informal. The way you were interacting with your assessors was kind of a friendly sort of the kind of wanted to make it feel like you weren’t being assessed. Again, I would say always have your wits when you’re in those sort of situations because just because they’re relaxed, they’re maybe not wearing suits and ties, they’re asking about your day, they’re asking about what you’ve eaten, that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to have some kind of degree of assessment going on and evaluation.

I think that because I’ve been so marked by the previous assessment that I had. I really thought this was going to be full-on nonstop. Again, the thing that let me down on that assessment day was the group discussion. Essentially, we were given a pack of information. It was so much lighter. I just couldn’t believe my luck. It was only two pages. Finally, I’ve got something I can actually do well in, but the other thing is that they gave us a piece of information that they mentioned that no one else would have and you would have this unique information in that group discussion, and it was up to you whether or not you thought it was relevant disclosing it.

The major point there was that they were basically asking you like, “Are you going to do this?” This is like flashing red lights, you need to share that information. I didn’t share that information, a lot of people didn’t. I think you can get complacent. You can think your idea isn’t going to be valid. I’d say rather sound a little bit stupid in a discussion than say something that people disagree with or people don’t think is actually relevant than not say anything. In this particular case, I should have just made a point about, “Guys, I just want to make sure I’ve got a piece of information here. I just want to see whether or not you guys think it’s relevant,” read it out. That would have been all it took just to be like, “Right, tick the box, full marks on sharing that information.”

It sounds basic, but you just need to tick boxes, really, at that sort of discussion level. Just remember things like that. If you’re taking the time, remember to not just give the time and then say, “Oh, I’ve got a minute left.” If you’re taking the time, just maybe also take it upon yourself to say, “Right guys, we’ve got 10 minutes’ discussion. First two minutes, let’s work on the introduction, first three minutes let’s do this, bang, bang, bang,” suggest that to the group. Always suggest things to the group. It’s a bit happy and clappy, but you have to, and then see how they feel.

If they think it’s not a good idea, then that’s fine, but you’ve actually scored your marks. Just by putting that, you’ve scored your marks. If they want to be difficult about it, then that’s them that’s going to have their marks reduced, not you. You’ve done your bit by that stage. You’ve intervened, you’ve given your two cents as it were, and that’s kind of what it’s all about. It’s about making sure that you’ve done your bit because you’re being marked individually, not being marked as a group.

James: That’s quality advice there. This was December time at this time and the assessment centres were coming thick and fast. Whilst you’ve been interviewing for BT and one of the Big Four, you’ve also been doing really well with a smaller company who we won’t name at the moment who are an expert networking company. You did very well with them, and you got through to the final stage with them and did really well, didn’t you?

Jean: Really interesting type of companies there. If you’ve never heard of expert networks, don’t worry. I hadn’t either. A lot of people haven’t. What they do is they work with consultancies, they work with private equities, they work with corporate clients, and I’ll be working on projects with them, so normally these would be deals, and what we’ll do is they’ll help source experts that will advise during this process. You might or might not know this if you’re in consultancies, but obviously, in order to build those big kind of 500-deck PowerPoint slides that they give for the private equities, these consultancy groups will need valid proof or validation of the hypothesis and of their market research, and that can only really come from experts that have actually been in that industry or are currently in that industry.

The work that they do is actually really important because without them, basically these big deals can’t go ahead. Really tough, the process there was really hard. There was a huge amount of steps, four or five interviews, a case study interview which was really fun. I actually did really well in it, so much so that they thought I had somehow got some information beforehand and had this inside information. I felt flattered, but it wasn’t the case.

James: You did so well in the interview, they thought you cheated.

Jean: Yeah, it was the sort of interview, as I mentioned before, where you have to think. That was something that I really enjoyed in the interview process was thinking on my toes because those are questions that you can’t prepare, and that’s what I really like because that’s what I knew, “This, I can do, no preparation required. That sounds good. Thinking on my feet, that’s great,” and a lot of the interview questions were basically, “Bang, tell me what private equity does?” Boom, had to give an answer. “Okay, tell me how much you think it would cost to run a hospital,” bang you had to answer.

These questions were hard, but I enjoyed answering them because I thought, “Oh, this is fun, this is a challenge. This isn’t how many officers we have around the world?” I don’t know that one.

James: We practiced for an interview, you’d have the interview, and they’d be like that would have been the last stage, and then they’d suddenly find somebody else that you had to interview with, and then you’d interview with them, and then suddenly someone else would come out the woodwork and you’d have to do an interview with them. We thought the recruitment process would never end with that one, but you got offered the job, so that was job offer number 1. Congratulations.

Jean: Yeah, so that is actually where I’m working. That’s where I’ve worked. Such a great training experience.

James: That’s also why we’re not mentioning the —

Jean: Briefly getting into it. No, but obviously being able to speak with senior people on the telephone, it’s something that you won’t get in other jobs which you would get here. Definitely that, that was a good learning experience as well.

James: Again, gives a chance to update your CV with the new company that you’ve been working for, and I’d like to use the analogy that getting a job is a lot like dating, and if you have an attractive girlfriend already, then you become more attractive to other people, and it’s sort of the same with jobs. If you’ve got a job, then you become more attractive to recruiters because it just is validation that somebody likes you enough to offer you a job, so that makes sense for them to do the same.

It did make the recruitment process a little bit more difficult, didn’t it? You started working for them the turn at the beginning of the year, and was it two days after you started, Vodafone wanted you to come along for an assessment centre?

Jean: Yeah, so I had to turn that one down, unfortunately, as the first week of training, I couldn’t miss it, and I thought that – this is an expression in French that basically says, “Rather stay where you are. Be safe than run and basically be in danger,” to put it a little bit more nicely.

James: Give it to us in French then. Impress us.

Jean: [speaking French], I think it is. It’s like, “Better to jump than to sink,” basically. I don’t know about that one. I might have to come back on that one because my dad, he always uses it. He loved quoting that to me during that time.

James: The point for this one was Vodafone were completely inflexible, weren’t they?

Jean: Yes, that was the one assessment centre, and that was it. There was nothing else that was coming up, so just warning that you have to be extremely flexible with these. You are, sometimes, a little bit just a number in the pack, and it’s no criticism of Vodafone or anything like that because I think that all of them have the same ethos. It doesn’t change. They’ve got thousands and thousands of graduates. One that’s not coming in can be replaced within 20 minutes or an hour.

James: They don’t care if they give you a date for interview or an assessment centre. You’ve got to do what you can do to be there because, as Jean said, if you can’t make it, then it doesn’t matter. They’ll just go down the list and they’ll just invite somebody else. I know it’s a pain. I know it was such a pain when, as I said, I was working full-time and applying for graduate jobs, and I would get someone that cancelled, and there was a place in an assessment centre, and it was two days later, and I’m living in Leeds, working full-time, and hey expect you to be in London in 48 hours’ time from the assessment centre and try to juggle pulling a sickie or whatever it is. You’ve just got to do it, so make it happen.

You started work for the expert network firm, and the applications were still bubbling along in the background, one of which was you got through to the assessment centre for a top 10 audit firm. How did that one go?

Jean: I think that, as you mentioned in the beginning, we went through a little bit of a timeline starting off with they were a little bit more tech-focused. I think that’s where I kind of wanted to focus my interest in this time. I realized that what really suited me, just through the application process and just in general from what I seem to just generally prefer doing was looking at the professional services firms, so the kind of accounting and the consultancy firms were really interesting to me, and that’s mainly towards the end. Those were the ones that I was kind of focusing on.

This particular one there was interesting. Basically, the application process was very smooth, there was a telephone interview, which as I mentioned before, really liked that, having that not face-to-face, but the contact of someone else in the other line not just speaking into a camera was very nice. I enjoyed that. You’re able to build rapport. Of course, there are set questions and they are still marking you, but there is a level of rapport that you can build. The smilier you sound, the happier your interview is going to sound, and they’re going to give you a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt if they know you’re struggling with questions. That was interesting. It was a good round.

The actual assessment centre for that one was fairly simple. It was done in the morning, so I like that. It was just a half day, and you went in the first round again, so you met everyone, you met all the other graduates, everyone was really friendly, everyone was getting on well. After all, by this stage, it was my third one or fourth at least. I had the chance to speak to quite a lot of them before going into the group discussions. We all felt relaxed with one another, and yeah, the first test was the team test, so it was actually you were given items on a table and a list of items on the table that you had to complete, like make a paper airplane, count the marbles. All these kind of different things and you had to organize yourself.

The thing that I did that was quite good is that I looked on the list and I said, “Guys, should we try and find the quickest things, so the quickest tasks to do on the list, and just distribute them to everyone?” because everyone just started doing things. I was like, “Wait, wait, wait, why don’t we find –?” I kind of assigned people. I said, “Look, here, why don’t you count these? This will be quite quick. Why don’t you do that?” I think that I took leadership. I would kind of give precaution on that that you don’t want to be too assertive either because you don’t want to come across as a control freak.

James: But, if you can see that people aren’t being organized at all, then I guess you talked earlier about the learning from the earlier assessment centres you had and the time when you wish you’d spoken when you didn’t. This was the point about putting it into practice, and actually speaking, and getting involved. You could easily have just said nothing and let people get on with what they were doing, but you took a step and didn’t, which is why you did well.

Jean: Exactly, and I think that it really depends on who you are. I always thought that I always was worried about coming across as someone who took too much charge of something. I know that that’s always what they talk about in the assessments. Don’t be that person who talks over someone. At least in my experience at assessment centres, what you found was everyone was very, very nervous and very worried about being that person so much so that things just would take longer because everyone had to kind of tiptoe around each other.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with asserting an idea or asserting a plan as long as you follow it by, “Does this sound like something we can all agree on? Happy for anyone else to kind of bring in some suggestions.” That’s all it would take just to make it sound like you’re not taking control of the situation completely, and it’s just a subtle nuance between, “Hi, I’ve got a really good list of things. Just wanted to get your thoughts on it.” Just adding those little extra words at the end of taking charge just makes you sound like a cool person. You’re not someone who’s going to be telling someone, “We’re doing it this way, no other way.”

Don’t worry too much about taking charge. There’s no problem about being assertive. Just be assertive with taking consideration that everyone else is going to be there, so just acknowledge them. That’s all I would say.

James: Yeah, you said it nicely. There’s nothing wrong with being assertive. Just recognize that it’s a team aspect. If everyone’s going down the wrong route, you need to step in and say, “Hey guys, how about we come back and look at this or look at it from a different angle.” Don’t be afraid to speak and put your two-penneth in. You’re not going to get any marks in a group exercise if you don’t say anything. It’s just finding that balance, which sounds like, in this assessment centre, you really did find the balance, so much so that congratulations, you got job offer number 2.

Jean: Yeah, that was very good. I got that offer there, so it meant that, from my first job obviously that I got given the offer, it just meant that I had a little bit more options and avenues to explore, which for me, was really nice, really, really good, and it just showed me that, finally, I’d gotten that kind of official graduate job. I think it was very nice to have that in the bag.

James: However, you were still in the process for lots of other firms that you were interested in. The job offer, was it February or March time?

Jean: I got given the offer, as I first started. It was in my first week. I just wanted to put forward that actually I did the assessment centre before starting this job, that it was just beforehand, which was actually very, very useful, and I was very lucky that I managed to do that. Because, as we’ll find out, when you’re working and people give you things, they can sometimes not go according to plan.

James: You had the job offer from the top 10 audit firm, you started working in another job, and you’re still interviewing for other people. Then, of course, we have chucking in the mix, the Coronavirus, which has been awful at every level, but it also had its own difficulties for yourself because you were actually through to the assessment centres with quite a few other firms, but then due to Corona, they just grounded to a halt, didn’t they? Assessment centres, they’ve stopped running them, of course, so it meant that even though you’d actually got to the final stages of people, they then just stopped, which was frustrating.

Jean: Coronavirus hit, and I think that was a major blow because there were some companies that were still in the mix, four of which dropped out, so two of them. One of which I did particularly well in, Mars, and I had done very well on the interview, spoken face-to-face, had done a video interview even before that. I’d done all the right steps, and they filled up their assessment centre. I think because of the Coronavirus situation, they kind of slashed the numbers of intakes.

James: Again, you’ve got to be flexible, and it is another reason why it pays to get through the process as quickly as possible. Part of it’s getting an application in sooner, trying to make sure that you are available as soon as possible for the video interview. They give you a week to do it. If you are ready, you do it straight away, don’t wait the week, just so that you can be the first person through the process because you never know when things are going to come up. That can throw spanners in the works, so getting through the process as quickly as possible.

That was a real shame. There was Mars, Capgemini, they sort of stopped, or you got through to the assessment centre stage and then came to an end, but you were still in the hunt with one of the other Big Four firms, and it did slow down over a lockdown period, but then they carried on doing it. Last week, or it was the week before that, you had a virtual assessment centre with one of the Big Four. How did that one go?

Jean: It was with the same person who’d interviewed me, and it was really good because that meant there’s obviously that rapport. It did feel, with all the Big Four, by the way, just a point that I’d make on the interviews and the interviewers. It’s a very regimented system. There is a criteria that they use and they’ll be using that criteria all throughout the process. Just bear that in mind that it’s a little bit different, so there’s a little bit more formal.

There’s a lot of a strong structure, so you score points on what you say, or what you do on how you do something, and you’re scored. You can get passing grades, which means that you passed the assessment centre, but then they’ll use your score to kind of look at how that looks in comparison to the others, so you do still want to be scoring high and you do want to also bear that in mind because actually having the scoring system is not always the worst thing as long as you know, pretty much, what you’re being scored on.

I would say one good thing about applying to the Big Four is that they’re very transparent about how they’re going to mark you and they’re very transparent about what their process looks like. Actually, on the whole, I had a very positive feedback with all of them. I think that they were actually, in terms of recruitment process, personally, I thought that they were the best-organized, they were the quickest at getting back to me, their assessments were probably the most relevant, and they’re using more modern ways of assessing people than just numerical tests and verbal reasoning. It’s a combination of all three. I would actually say that, I think, in terms of being a bit of a connoisseur now of all the different applications, this was the grand cru of the recruitments. They were very good, very efficient.

James: You’re just biased now that you’re going to be working for —

Jean: No, no, no. I think maybe, but I think that I’d rather —

James: You’ve gone corporate already. You’ve been offered the job two days and you’ve gone native. You’re espousing the corporate line already.

Jean: I think it’s just because of some of the others that I had. I felt that it was a little bit of unprofessionalism on their part. I’m not going to go into detail with them because I don’t think it’s fair, but I would say that there have been moments where you’ll be messed around. Just expect to be messed around during the process. That’s another point that I’d make. The process is not linear.

James: Yeah, and also don’t expect it to be quick. We are recording this at the end of May. You started the process with a lot of these companies in October, so it’s not quick. Granted, it’s been slowed down with lockdown and stuff, but you’re still talking four, five months from the application to assessment centre, depending on how quickly you get through the process. It can be a slow process. That brings us towards the end of the story, so lots of applications, lots of video interviews, fewer number of assessment centres but three job offers. You’ve got to be pleased with that.

Jean: Yeah, very pleased, and yeah I think there’s a lot to be said about it is a little bit of a numbers game. I know it’s not that I mean that — I think you should definitely focus on a set amount of applications, and if possible, really try and target it in the same sphere. I really started targeting professional services at the end, and that gave me just a little bit more of an understanding of the culture that they have, and the switching cost is a lot lower than if you’re kind of working across FMCG, you’re working across professional services firms, and you’re working in IT, you’re going to struggle because they’ve all got pretty different working mentalities, they’ve got different cultures, and that is quite a high switching cost. But, it is definitely worth getting in the numbers. It’s not a bad idea to get in a few practice applications. Even if they’re not the top choice, you can get into the video interview, and it is all practice, and I would say any practice is good practice.

James: Completely agree. We’ve talked about the assessment centres in quite a lot of detail and how some people will go in, first assessment centre, the stars align, they perform brilliantly, and they get the job offer. That happens, but also you learn as you go through it. You’ll learn so much just in terms of getting up early in the day, getting there, the nerves. As you said, you underestimated how tired you would be, how much of a stressful experience it would be just using your brain continuously all day. Things like that, you learn so much as you go through. How has the coaching process been for you? What have been some of the key takeaways?

Jean: The key takeaways for me is very, very useful. When you’re at the stage of applications, so you know where you want to start applying, having you looking over the CV, working on the CV together, it is a joint effort, so I think that what was really good about working with James is that he did actually let me have my input, so sometimes we would have small kind of ideas which we thought, “I would put it that way, I would put it that way,” but he always accommodated to my decision to work on particular phrasing or something I wanted to highlight.

I thought that that was really important during the process was on-going communication and having both sides. It is also important for you to feel happy with your CV, and you want to communicate that. I’d say that was really important was the, I wouldn’t call it, negotiation, but the coming to an agreement on what the CV looks like not only from your standpoint, but from my standpoint so that it’d be something that I’d be happy and proud to share with employers.

James: At the end of the day, it’s your CV. It’s got your name on it, not mine, and I’m here to help and offer my advice, but it’s a collaborative process.

Jean: Totally. Interviews, yeah, I think you do want to have someone who can help you with an interview. I think you obviously can learn a lot by yourself, but it is really useful having someone there who’s going to teach you and who’s going to pick up on some of the things that you might do. It might be mannerisms, it might be phrasings, it might be points that you just never even thought about.

For me, for instance, it was always forgetting that I was bilingual, and that was something that I just didn’t think it was worth pushing, but having someone there really highlighting your USPs and making it quite clear during every interview that you’ll have three USPs, let’s say. You’ve got to get them in at some point. It’s not about throwing them there at any time. You’ve got to have some sort of tact, but finding the right moment to sell yourself on a question.

Learning how to do the STAR methodology, you can learn how to do that. It’s a serious art. What does it stand for, the STAR methodology?

James: Situation, task, action, results.

Jean: Yeah, I started doing it on my own. Just unbeknownst to me, I started doing it, but that is something that you need to start getting into, and it’s a good way to format your answers. STAR methodology doesn’t work everywhere, by the way, so don’t STAR everywhere. If you’re asked a situational question in your work, it might be a case where it’s not relevant, but I would say most of the time, if you can, try and STAR methodology it. It’s a pretty good way of looking at it. It doesn’t have to be too formulaic as well. You can make it flow, and it’s much better to sound natural, comfortable, and maybe have a little bit more disorganization in your answer than to make it sound very, very regimented and pre-rehearsed.

James: We talked about the robotic aspect earlier on, and it does need to sound fresh, and if you’re just regurgitating the STAR methodology, it can sound rehearsed, which is what you want to avoid.

Jean: I’d say that, also, another point that you don’t initially think about when you’re doing these applications is it’s a bit of an emotional roller coaster, and having someone outside of your family or your friends that actually knows what you’re going through, what you’re doing, support is super-useful. Definitely, having someone that I could talk to about in my performance after an assessment, after a given task definitely boosted my motivation levels and gave me a goal to work towards. That’s also something that you might want to take consideration.

If you’re someone who thinks that you’d do well when you have a bit of support and you think that that could also help with your overall emotional roller coaster journey to make sure that you get feedback, that when you’re struggling with something that you can come up with a solution with someone else. I think it’s also very useful.

James: Completely. From my side, definitely a few things that stood out for me. You mentioned one of them. It was a perennial thing that we used to talk about through all the sessions. Jean mentioned at the beginning that he’s bilingual, he’s half-French, and I’d have to really try and draw it into him that this is an amazing skill that you’re fluent in French. For you, it’s just natural. You’ve grown up that way, but for everybody else, you need to keep hammering this point home, “Did I mention I’m fluent in French?” Don’t overlook your skills. Things that come naturally to you, don’t overlook them. Other people will highly value them.

You’ve done really well. You’ve got three job offers, which is great. For me, there’s some really key things that stood out for how that’s happened. The first is that you’ve invested in yourself. You reached out to me about coaching, and what we’ve not mentioned, and I hope you don’t mind if we mention it is you pay for the coaching yourself.

Jean: No, absolutely.

James: This wasn’t your parents paying for it. This was coming out of your pocket from your part-time job, and you’ve got to recognize that that’s a really grown-up way to do it, and a lot of people don’t. I think you’ll agree that, in terms of investment, it’s one that’s going to pay itself back many, many times over with the jobs that you’ve been offered. The other thing that I think you’ve done brilliantly is you’ve been proactive. Every stage of working together, you’ve proactively been applying jobs.

Once we got the CV sorted out, we’d come back to the next session and then you’d say, “Actually, I’ve applied to X, Y, and Z companies.” You didn’t hang around, you went out, you saw what jobs were available, you tweaked your CVs, you did what you needed to do, but you were proactive in getting the applications out. You were proactive in doing the tests, you were proactive in practicing. You really just made things happen, which is what you need to do.

Another thing, in terms of a coach perspective is you really listened and took things on board. When we worked together, when I gave you advice, you took it in the spirit it was intended, and we didn’t agree on everything in terms of when we talked about the CV and stuff, but you listened to feedback, you took that feedback on board, and that’s a real skill. You should be commended for that. Above all though, you just worked really hard. Over the last nine months, you’ve put the work in. You’ve worked really hard. Getting to assessment centres and doing well at assessment centres isn’t easy, and the hard work goes to you. Jean, congratulations.

Jean: Thank you very much. Definitely, great pleasure. They’re obviously difficult parts of the processes, but definitely working alongside you definitely helped with a lot of areas which otherwise might have taken a lot longer to figure out, or sometimes it might not be that obvious to yourself. Having a second opinion is really useful. Also, as I said, accountability, so really making yourself as accountable as possible during this whole process is really essential.

I remember my parents, at the beginning of August, they were really giving me a hard time of basically not thinking that I was really taking this very seriously because I hadn’t started the application process, and I just remembered saying this because you might be in the same situation as me when you graduate. You come to live back home with your parents, and you kind of feel like you want to leave, you’ve done everything you’ve done, you’ve been living at university, and then your parents, then, might be on your back about getting a job.

Remember that I would say that it’s really about you and how you want to go about it because I remember they were giving me a hard time. They were saying, “You’re not really doing anything about it.” I said to them, “Look, this is for me to get on with. I’ll do this when I feel like I’m going to do this,” and that’s what I did. Come September, I set myself that goal, and I think just being proactive and accountable is really important, but don’t feel stress from parents giving you pressure from what your friends are doing if they’ve got jobs. Just don’t worry about that, just get already started on the process, even if it is a bit late. It’s better late than never, so I wouldn’t worry about it.

James mentioned two things there that I would totally agree with: make yourself accountable, so if you can pay for these types of services or at least try and make it as accountable as possible. If you don’t have the money, maybe say to your parents, “I’m going to pay for this, so when I get the job, I’ll be paying you back for that,” so then you know that you’re actually being accountable for this and that this is your future.

Be dedicated, put in hard work. Every morning, set yourself a time table to get up and do it. Don’t be lazy, don’t think that today is an off day. Every day, you have to go at it.

James: Definitely, and if your parents are giving you a hassle, then check out my last episode, which was graduatejobpodcast.com/parents where the eight things that your parents need to do to help you get a graduate job, and one of them is to stop nagging. If you’re getting stress from your parents, then definitely check that episode out. Jean, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Let’s move on to the weekly quick-fire questions. I’ll be interested for your responses on this one. First, what is one book that you would recommend listeners to read?

Jean: I’m going to disappoint James on this one, because I think maybe he wants me to give a sort of self-help that’s like one of those motivational books like Arnie. I think that James particularly likes Arnie’s book.

James: I keep pushing Arnie, but you never read it, did you?

Jean: Yeah. For me, I’ll tell you what are the books that really helped kind of kick-start me into just thinking a bit differently was 1984 – a really good book. You might have read it. Read it again, why not? I’ve done that, and I’ve definitely found it to be very useful. The unpacking of ideas and what things mean just got me thinking in a different way, which for me was a real kind of crux in my way of thinking, and I know there’s tons of books out there, so honestly, I’m not saying this is a fix-all one, but it’s definitely one that really helps you think in a different way, and I think that when you’re doing these applications, you have to be creative. It sounds like something which is very dogmatic, and very linear, and very standardized, but actually being able to be a little bit creative and to think a little bit differently when you’re writing your applications, the questions, answering the interview questions in the assessment centre, that will give you the edge, and sometimes it can be just the book.

For me, I know that 1984 is one of those books that really helps me think outside of the box. It really gets me thinking about an idea in a completely different way, so I would highly recommend it if you haven’t read it. If you have read it, have another read through it.

James: It’s a classic, and quite a scary book when you look at what’s going around the world in different places. Definitely one you need to read if you’ve not come across it. I’m gutted you didn’t choose Arnie’s book, but I’ll give that a plug. Next question. What one internet resource or website would you point listeners towards?

Jean: I think what’s really relevant for this process is stay up to date. Use a news article: The Economist, Financial Times. For me, two really, really good sources there. I think that if you read that every day or every morning, I think you’ll just be a lot more engaged with the discussions you’re having. I think that, also, in interviews, you’ll pick up things that are going on, so you’ll know what’s going on in the corporate world. The interviewer wants to know that you’re switched on with that.

If you can reference that in interviewers, say, “Oh, that’s really interesting that you mentioned that point. I actually read something about that in the Economist recently, really interesting article, and it was referencing just what you’ve just said.” It sounds so much more impactful than saying, “Yeah, I think that that sounds really interesting because I think it’s great.” They want to know that you’ve got ideas, but if you can say, “Well, I read something. This is what I think about it,” it just makes you sound so much more credible, especially when you’re citing sources like those.

Obviously, if you’re not really into that sort of style of writing, you could read any kind of online newspapers, but I think those are really the two that will give you an idea of what’s going on all around the world, not just the UK.

James: That’s great advice, and The Economist is so cheap. If you’re at uni, you can pick up a student subscription of The Economist for 60p a week. Even if you’re not a student, you can just pretend that you’re a student. They don’t actually check, I’ve heard. You can also just say you did a master’s somewhere and you can still get it for the same price, and their website is excellent as well. Two good recommendation. Finally then, Jean, what one tip would you give listeners that they can implement today to help them on their job search?

Jean: I think that the most important thing for being successful in the job search is discipline, and I think that in order to be disciplined, I recommend coming up and doing exercise. For the listeners that know, I do a lot of kickboxing. I did a lot of kickboxing when everything was still open. I still do it now in the garden with my brother, but that’s just something. Whatever it might be, you might not be doing kickboxing. You might really like doing any kind of gym, running, swimming, biking. I think that the best way to get yourself already into a really healthy mind-set and into a disciplined mind-set is to be disciplined with your workouts and those types of things. That would be me.

First thing I would do, before even starting a job search is come up with an exercise regimen and you’ll feel so much better and so much more confident to take on the job search then.

James: That is a lovely way for us to finish the interview. Jean, thank you so much for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast, and good luck in September with your new job with one of the Big Four.

Jean: Thanks very much, James.

James: There we go, a long one, but I hope you enjoyed that episode. Many thanks to Jean for coming on the show and being so honest and sharing his story about his search for a graduate job over the last 9 months. I intentionally only take a handful of coaching clients at a time so that I can offer a service which delivers value, and you do get really invested in the success of your clients, so when he rang me to tell me about his recent success I was dancing round the kitchen in celebration. He gave so much quality advice throughout the episode so go back through, have another listen or download a transcript from the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/coachingsuccess If like Jean you want to invest in yourself and would like some help with your applications, no matter what stage you’re at, whether you haven’t start applying or you have interviews coming up, checkout  http://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/coaching/  for more details. Don’t be shy and get in touch. You only get one shot to apply for each firm each year, so make sure you are well prepared and ready to give your best. As I mentioned at the beginning, I’m also working on my ace ‘How to get a graduate job’ online course which is going live in August. Head to the show notes to see how you can be the first to hear about this and get it at a special price with special goodies including coaching support. 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 the show today, but more importantly, I hope you use it, and apply it. See you next week.