Episode 70 – The Graduate Career Handbook, with Tristram Hooley and Korin Grant

April 9, 2018 Podcast

A big hello and welcome to the 70th episode of the Graduate Job Podcast. This week I speak with Tristram Hooley and Korin Grant, authors of the excellent new book “You’re Hired! Graduate Career Handbook: Maximise Your Employability and Get a Graduate Job”.  In this episode we delve into the book, exploring some of my favourite chapters which I know will help you as you search for a graduate job. Amongst other things we cover why personality tests are so important as you look for a graduate job, the power of utilising your university careers service, and how it could be your secret weapon in finding a job. We touch upon what to do when you don’t know what to do in your job search, why you probably aren’t researching companies properly when you apply for work, and how you need to be doing it. Korin and Tristam also share why personality tests are so important as you look for a graduate job and why you need to be utilising your ‘weak ties’ when you are networking for your graduate job. No matter where you are on your job search, starting at the beginning or deep in applications, this is an episode you aren’t going to want to miss!

Don’t forget, as always, all links to everything we discuss including a full transcript and book recommendations and web links can be found over in the show notes at www.GraduateJobPodcast.com/handbook.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • Why you probably aren’t researching companies properly before you apply for a graduate job, and what you need to start doing
  • How your university careers service could be your secret weapon in finding a graduate job
  • Why you need to be actively trying to build you career capital
  • Why you should be utilising your ‘weak ties’ when you are networking for your graduate job
  • Find out why university careers services could be your secret weapon in helping you get a graduate job
  • Exactly why personality tests are so important as you look for a graduate job
  • Why you need to have a conversation with YOURSELF about what job you want to get

SELECTED LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Check out the ‘How to Get a Graduate Job’ step-by-step online course at https://howtogetagraduatejob.com/
  • Don’t even think about applying for graduate jobs until you’ve read my free guide, ‘The 5 steps you must take before applying for graduate jobs’. Click here NOW. It will completely change the way you apply for jobs!
  • Would you like a free 30-minute video coaching call? Simply select a time that works here https://calendly.com/gradjob/ We can go over your CV, application, or anything that you are struggling with.
  • Assessment Day – One of the top providers of psychometric tests. Click HERE and support the show
  • Career Gym – Use code GJP to get 20% off all of their tests!
  • Job Test Prep – One of the top providers of psychometric tests. Click HERE and support the show
  • ‘You’re Hired: Graduate Career Handbook‘ – Tristam and Korin’s excellent new book which we discuss in the show. Buy your copy HERE from Amazon now, and help to support the show.

Episode 70 – The Graduate Career Handbook, with Tristram Hooley and Korin Grant

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: 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, entrepreneurs, coaches and bloggers who bring decades of experience into a byte size weekly 30 minute show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had a decade ago when I graduated. 

And a big hello and welcome to the 70th episode of the Graduate Job Podcast. It’s been a couple of months since the last show, but as the clocks have gone forward and the days are longer I’m coming out of my winter hibernation ready to bring you some more brilliant careers advice which will help you as you look for your graduate job. Even though the podcasts have been on hold, don’t worry as I’ve been working away in the background, recording some cracking episodes and also working on a brilliant course which will walk you step by step through everything you need to do to get a graduate job. More on that at the end of the show. But back to this week and I have a cracker for you. For episode 70 I speak with Tristram Hooley and Korin Grant, authors of the excellent new book “You’re Hired! Graduate Career Handbook: Maximise Your Employability and Get a Graduate Job”.  In this episode we delve into the book, exploring some of my favourite chapters which I know will help you as search for a graduate job. Amongst other things we cover why personality tests are so important as you look for a graduate job, the power of utilising your university careers service, and how it could be your secret weapon in finding a job. We touch upon what to do when you don’t know what to do in your jobsearch, why you probably aren’t researching companies properly when you apply for work, and how you need to be doing it. Korin and Tristam also share why personality tests are so important as you look for a graduate job and why you need to be utilising your ‘weak ties’ when you are networking for your graduate job. No matter where you are on your jobsearch, starting at the beginning or deep in applications, this is an episode you aren’t going to want to miss!

Don’t forget, as always, all links to everything we discuss including a full transcript and book recommendations and web links can be found over in the show notes at www.GraduateJobPodcast.com/handbook. There is one final treat today, the kind folks over at Trotman Publishing have generously provided a couple of copies of ‘Your Hired! Graduate Career Handbook’ for me to giveaway, so stayed to the end of the show for details of how you can win yourself one.

Before we start a quick request from me, your feedback helps me to create the episodes you want to hear, so I’ve set up a super simple and very quick survey, as I want the show to best serve your needs. It’s got 5 questions and will take you a minute, so please check it out at http://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

And just before we get to Colby let’s have a little message from today’s sponsor who are CareerGym.com. Career Gym is the number one place for you to undertake all of your psychometric tests which you will face when you apply for a graduate job. No matter what graduate job you apply for you’re going to have to face some type of verbal reasoning, situational judgment, and working style tests. You can practice these at CareerGym.com, as well as numerical, and abstract reasoning tests. They are all produced by testing experts, and exactly the same as the ones you will see in the real graduate job tests. You can just practice them as you want, or you can do them in exam mode, under time pressure, and they come all with detailed explanations and solutions, and you can track your progress and see how you compare against your peers.

Now it’s never too early to start revising for psychometric tests, as you might not get much notice before the test so you want to make sure that you’re ready to go. If you’re applying for a graduate job will have to do them, so pull your finger out now and start revising straight away to make sure you don’t fall at this first hurdle. I’ve been recommending this site for years to the clients I coach and it comes very highly recommended. What’s even better is if you use the code GJP, you will get 20% off of all of their tests. You can’t say fairer than that. So, head over to http://www.CareerGym.com that’s CareerGym.com and use the code GJP to get 20% off and start practicing today.  Now, on with the show.

James Curran: I’m very pleased to welcome to this show today, Tristram Hooley and Korin Grant, authors of the excellent new book “You’re Hired! Graduate Career Handbook: Maximise Your Employability and Get a Graduate Job”. Tristram and Korin, welcome to the show.

Tristram Hooley: Hi.

Korin Grant: Thank you.

James: Before we get into the book, would you like to briefly introduce yourselves properly and tell me what you do in your day jobs when you’re not writing books.

Korin: My name is Korin Grant. I’ve spent the last about 17 years of my working life working in higher education in lots of different student-placing roles, all of which were related to careers and employability, so I’ve been a person who led volunteering projects, I’ve led award programs, placements programs, and I’m now a careers consultants for Loughborough University.

Tristram: And I’m the director of research at the Careers & Enterprise company, and so I mainly, these days, work to look and do research on careers and career guidance, and that sort of thing mainly related to schools. But, I have worked in higher education for quite a long while, and so I’ve done quite a bit of work with graduates as well.

James: Excellent, and I have to say I really enjoyed your new book. Listeners, check it out in the show notes, which you’ll be able to find at GraduateJobPodcast.com/handbook where there’ll be a full transcript of everything we’ve talked about today with all of the links, and more importantly, links to the book so you can get yourself some copies. Also, stay tuned to the end of the episode where we very kindly have a couple of free copies that we’re going to be giving away. So, make sure you stay tuned to the end to get the details of how you can win a couple of this excellent book.

As I mentioned, today, we’re going to delve into the book, and starting at the beginning, I really like the title for chapter 1: ‘I just don’t know what to do with myself’. We’re recording this in autumn here in the UK. Lots of people are going to be thinking about applying for a graduate job, and you talk in the book, as you start to apply about the importance of a period of self-reflection. Could you explain what you mean by this and why you think it’s so important?

Tristram: I suppose where we start is actually not really the idea of getting a graduate job, because I think one of the dangers with the way the graduate-labour market is set up is that students can get kind of pulled into a certain room, which may not be the one that’s particularly best for them, but just because they assume they’ve got to apply for a graduate scheme and they assume that they’ve got to kind of go through assessment centers and all that sort of stuff.

One of the things we say in the book is, actually, the graduate-labour market is much broader than that and there are lots and lots of opportunities out there and you should think about them. So, where we really start is by saying, “Okay, think about who you are, what you are, and that’s a process that you’re doing actively all the way through your life and particularly all the way through your degree. Think about what you’re good at, what you’re not so good at, what you’re interested in, what kind of person you are,” and one of the things that I think most important is focusing on your values and thinking about what is it that you really want from work.

Then, the more you’ve kind of done that sort of reflection, the better you placed you are to make a good judgement about whether a particular job is the kind of thing that you might be interested in pursuing, or not really.

James: I completely agree, especially the values part. I think it’s something that’s really under looked at by many of the people applying for graduate jobs. People, in my experience, often, they’ll search based on maybe a salary. They’ve got a salary in mind that they want to apply for, then just look at graduate jobs around that level instead of thinking about what the work is, what’s going to make them happy. Not just six months and a year, but five years down the line, and it can save so much hassle in later years if you actually think about your values early on as opposed to maybe when you hit 30 or 35 and realize you’ve been in a job that’s not making you happy.

Korin: Yeah, absolutely. There’s also a lot of noise around certain types of jobs. Some students are motivated by salary, which is clearly okay, but there are a lot of ways to make a decent living, and often, students don’t know enough about the different ways that they could make a decent living, so they choose quite standard roots. Thinking a little bit more about what you’re interested in and what your experience would have been will lead you to different ideas of what you could do.

James: I completely agree as well about almost the invisible tractor beam just pulling people into the applying for the big milkround companies, the people in the Top Times, top 100, or the people who advertise around campuses, just the automatically pull towards applying to these companies as opposed to thinking about the thousands of smaller companies that are out there, or start-ups, or companies in different sectors where they might find a lot more fulfilling employment as opposed to the big companies necessarily.

Tristram: One of the things that we have to be honest about is that that kind of route of graduate employment is actually a pretty small section of the jobs that graduates do, and so I think one of the things that we’re a bit worried about is the idea that you end up — we always talk about certain types of jobs, and actually, there aren’t enough of those to go around even if everybody wanted them.

The other thing is that we know lots of people do do those jobs and don’t necessarily love them, and this is why we think it’s better to start with this kind of idea of reflection and thinking about what sort of person you are, and really, that gives you then some basis on which to make this kind of assessment. I mean, I didn’t do a graduate job when I first kind of left university, or at least I didn’t do — certainly, I’ve been doing a graduate scheme and so on, and I don’t particularly regret that. So, I think that there are lots of ways to do it, and it’s a much better place to start is to think about yourself and what you want rather than to kind of get obsessed with applications.

James: You talk about the importance of understanding your own personality before you start applying. Are there any particular personality tests that you’d recommend?

Korin: Yes and no. I do really like the idea of trying out some of these online tests. There’s a lot of different types of quizzes that you can try. Some of them are quite light-hearted and fun. This is one on the ICould website.

Tristram: It’s the Buzz.

Korin: The Buzz Quiz.

Tristram: It turns you into an animal and tells you what job you should do.

Korin: They’re all useful for basically starting a conversation with yourself and with other people about what you’re like. What I found when I used them with students and graduates is you have an instant reaction to a statement like, “You’re the kind of person who really enjoys working with others,” and you either think, “Yes, that is me,” or, “No, that is not me at all.” That feeling is what helps you to discuss, “Well, why do I think that? What experiences have I had that make me think I am or am not the kind of person who likes to do that?”

I think it’s a great way to start a conversation. It’s not something I would use as a diagnostic tool to say, “And therefore, you will always be the kind of person who wants to lead or who doesn’t want to lead.” So, in particular, which ones would you say, Tristram, that you’d recommend as ones you were sending people to?

Tristram: I think like you. I’m a bit sceptical about the idea of testing people and telling them, “This is the job you should do.” I don’t think that’s a particular helpful thing to do, but I think it can be useful particularly for those people who do literally say, “I don’t know what to do with myself,” to give them something that stimulates some ideas and gives them some way of sort of framing their thinking, and there are lots of various tools out there. I mean, things like Adult Directions and the Cascaid tools.

I mean, there’s lots of tools like that, but what we talk about in the book, mainly, we give links to quite a few different free tools that were out there, and we also highlight the fact that lots of employers use these as well as part of assessment centers, and so it’s pretty good to have had a go at doing some of these things so you’re not completely surprised. But, I think what most psychologists use, if you’re trying to actually describe how somebody’s personality works, then they use this Big Five test or the Ocean test, and what it asks you is, “How open are you to experiences, how conscientious are you, how much of an extrovert are you, how agreeable are you, and then how neurotic are you?” Neuroticism is about how you deal with difficult emotions and difficult situations.

We also link people to a test like that, and I think if you wanted to do a fairly reliable test that would give you some sort of feedback to reflect on on what your personality is like, then using one of the Ocean-based tests is quite a good thing to do. But, as we said, we generally aren’t in favour of anything in this sort of test-and-tell approach. I think this is all useful stuff that’s really just part of a broader set of self-reflection.

James: I completely agree, and I think the important thing is just that self-reflection. It is just taking the time. As we mentioned, just do a little bit of thinking to think about what you are like and what jobs you are really going to be attracted to. There’s lots of different tools out there and it’s just about doing the thinking with any of them because they’ll all probably help shape and direct where you want to go.

Building on that, with the people’s strengths and weaknesses, again, you mentioned in the book about the importance of beginning to think about what some of your strengths and weaknesses might be. How would you recommend that people begin to do that? Are there any, again, tools that can help shape the way people do it to make it more effective?

Tristram: It’s valuable to think about both your strengths and your weaknesses, and in the book, we sort of made suggestions that people should make lists, and the other thing is that we ask them to go and talk to other people. I mean, it requires a bit of bravery, but actually one of the things that’s most useful in terms of any reflection is getting some input from friends, and colleagues, and other students within your course and so on. Because, you can certainly be surprised about what they think of is your strengths and weaknesses.

I think I’m quite interested in the idea of strengths as being a way of thinking about career and what you’re good at. So, there’s a lot of positive psychology stuff that tries to say, “Actually, we often spend far too much time focusing on the weaknesses and not enough time focusing on the strengths,” and if we can figure out the things that you’re really good at, then actually, that’s a much better basis for you to kind of make decisions rather than spending a lot of time worrying about the things that you’re not good, because you can often find ways to overcome them.

I think, broadly, I’d adopt a sort of positive way of thinking about that, but I think we also do need to be realistic sometimes and recognize there are some things that we’re just not very good at and might be something that we want to avoid doing if we were going to spend a lot of time in a career doing it every day.

James: Definitely agree.

Korin: I was just going to say what Tristram just highlighted is reflected in a bit of a change that we’ve seen recently with some of the graduate recruiters where they’re looking at strengths-based interview techniques, and one of the ways that they approach that is by providing scenarios for students who are graduates to consider. So, how would you react in a situation where there was a fight taking place outside of this building, for example? What that does is it requires people to then look back on their own experiences and draw from lots of different places. So, instead of thinking, “Well, in a work scenario, I would do this,” they might then say, “When my sisters and brothers have been arguing, this is how I would approach it,” and that helps them to draw on the strengths that they have from a wide variety of places in their lives.

I think that’s a positive thing, and I guess that’s one way you can start looking at your strengths is thinking about, “In the different experiences that I have in my life, what things have I done and what do my friends and family have to say about that?” Then, following on from that, if you’re struggling to think of experiences, it’s probably because you need some more. So, certainly, if you’re a student and all of a sudden, you’ve just started university, the absolute best thing you could be doing is signing up for some interesting activities, joining some groups, and getting the opportunity to meet new people and do new things.

James: Definitely agree, and just echoing what you said about strengths, Tristram, a book that I’ve done a couple of times now and really found really useful is called “StrengthsFinder 2.0″ by Tom Rath where I don’t know if you’ve come across the book.

(Click on the image above to buy the book through Amazon and help to support the show!)

The back of the book, it’s got a little code you’ve got to scratch away, and then you go online, and answer one of those surveys where they ask you the same question hundreds of times in different ways to find out what your strengths are. Then, in the book, it talks about how you can then develop your strengths. But, it echoes the comment you made about trying to, instead of improve your weaknesses, just focus on your strengths and you’ll get more benefit from it looking at it that way.

Tristram: Yeah, I’ve looked at that book, and there’s a few people who, in that sort of positive psychology — there’s a guy, I think his name is Alex Linley who was at Leicester for a while who did write a similar kind of thing on sort of positive psychology and focusing on strengths. I mean, it makes really obvious sense, doesn’t it, is that if all you do is obsess about, “Well, I haven’t got brilliant attention to detail,” and so you’ve spent a lot of time, then, trying to improve it, you end up focusing on the thing that’s really not your best sort of thing, and that’s not really that helpful. So, I think trying to focus on strengths and working out what they are — having said that, I do think you can improve areas that you are weaker on, and that is worth thinking about sometimes. But, in terms of career choices and so on, I think, yeah, focusing on strengths is really helpful.

James: Definitely, and also it’s good to get that thinking done early because at some point, over the application process, you’re going to be asked what your strengths and weaknesses are in an interview, so it’s good to have thought about it beforehand so you’re not caught short during the interview itself.

Moving on then to the next chapter in the book we can delve into in detail, one I really liked because I think it’s one that tends to let applicants for graduate jobs down is you talked about look before you leap. Candidates often let themselves down in terms of their research for companies, and you covered this in detail in this chapter. Why do you think the research phase is so important?

Korin: It’s important for a number of different reasons. I mean, it’s really important because you need to understand the role that you’re applying for and the organization that you’re applying for in order to be able to make sense of the questions that they’re asking and to be able to respond appropriately. So, from a very basic point of view, you need to know what it is you’re heading into.

If you haven’t done research, it will show in your application, it will show in your interview in the assessment center, and not only will they not want to select you because you haven’t been able to make appropriate responses to their questions, but they’ll just get the impression that you’re not interested. If you’ve got to this stage of an assessment center, the truth is you are very close to a job offer, and it is worth your time and effort to put additional time into really preparing well.

We go into lots of different ways that you can prepare, including looking at your networks, looking online, seeing if you know anyone who works in that area or in that sector, and it’s incredibly important and it’s probably the number one thing that I would recommend to students is to invest time in researching when you get to that stage.

Tristram: One of the things I — a thing we talk about in the book a little bit is making the distinction and thinking about the difference between the job you’re going for, the company you’re going to work for, and then the sector or the market that it operates in, and actually getting some research on all three of those. Because, it’s not always apparent to students when they’re going for their first job that, actually, all three of those are different and are important.

If somebody asks you, “What is it you want about this job?” and the only things you can kind of come back are, “Well, I really like this kind of work,” or, “I really want to earn this money,” whatever, I think you’re trying to evidence to them that you know about the job, you know about the organization you’re going to be working in, and you also know about the market. In a way, that last bit about the market and the sector is the most important thing really, because most employers are probably not that bothered that you know everything about how their organization’s structured. If you’re going into an organization, they will want you to understand what the market they’re playing in, what kind of business they do, what their competitors are. That kind of thing, I think, is really critical.

All of that stuff is pretty easy to find out now. I mean, you can go online and you can find a lot of it, but we really think that talking to people is a really valuable form of research as well, and so if you can find somebody to have a conversation with, that’s really helpful.

James: I completely agree, and I really like the way you broke it down into those three categories. I think that’s a really sharp way of looking at it. Completely agree. I mean, when I was on the other side of the recruiting fence doing interviews, there was a question where you could very quickly see the calibre of the candidates by their response to this question: the people who all they would be just regurgitate stuff from the websites, and then the people who had actually made an effort, and as you said, had spoken to people. So, whether they’d spoken to people at the company, at open days, or careers, insight days, or people had actually got in touch with people on the graduate scheme and spoken for them. Just, as you mentioned, by speaking to people, it really showed the people who had actually gone the step further and put that effort in as opposed to people who haven’t and just looked at the website, and that was a really key question for me.

How would you recommend that people can then begin to speak to people? Because you talk about the power of using your networks in the book?

Korin: I guess I start with your circle and work outwards is probably the way I would approach it. Looking at who do you know, within your friends and family, who has some connection to this industry or this organization, and then who do you know within, maybe, your online network, which will allow you to access all kinds of people beyond your immediate circle. Then, you’ve got things like your own university service, who are very keen of you to do well and would be very keen to help you connect with alumni or even recruiters who are working in that area.

Start with your inner circle, move to your online network, and then look to other services and organizations that can help you. You can also look online, do some research through professional associations or trade organizations. There’s a lot of ways in which you can reach out to people, but I’d probably start with your registrar, or your family and your friends, and find out who can help you from there. You did an interesting thing with students that we asked them to list all the connections they had in different areas. That was a great example.

Tristram: Yeah, so we ran a workshop once with some students. I got all the students to basically say what they’re interested in, what sort of jobs, what sort of companies, and what sort of hobbies we did as well. Then, we went around, and in that room, everybody had helped somebody with something that they were interested in. So, somebody would say, “Well, I’m interested in being an accountant,” and then another student would be, “Well, actually, my uncle is an accountant. Perhaps, I could connect you up to him.”

One of the things I think you start, if you just start with the people immediately around you, this is kind of like a six degrees of separation idea that everyone’s connected to everyone else. So, if you asked around and you tell people what you’re interested in, often you can get connected up, and that’s really powerful. That kind of really using your social network to try and find people who might be helpful to you and your career.

James: That’s an amazing example, and just a really simple one, but just one that’s so powerful. Once you actually tell people, the people always want to help. Personally, when I was applying for jobs, just serendipity, I mentioned to a friend I was applying to a company, and she said, “Oh, my friend’s just got a job there,” and was able to put me in touch with them, and I had a quick chat with them. Well, maybe a quick chat, we’re talking about an hour about the company. Then, when I got through to the interview stage and people said, “Why do you want to work here?” it was just brilliant being able to talk about, “I’ve spoken to so and so in the grad scheme,” and they knew them, and just to help me stand out as someone who’d gone a bit further and put the effort in.

Tristram: There’s a sociologist called Mark Granovetter, and he talks about the strength of weak ties, and the idea is that, basically, if you think about all the people you know really well, they’re normally people who are pretty much like you, and that means they basically know the same sort of stuff that you know and they also are probably competing for the same kinds of opportunities that you’re going for. So, although you might think, “Well, you’ve got a really close group around you,” actually, in career terms, they’re not as useful to you as you might think.

But, the people who are a bit further away, so your uncle, or your mother’s friend, or the father of one of your friends, who you’re not necessarily really close to, they’re quite different to you. They have different opportunities, and they’re not generally competing for the same opportunities as you. So, that’s why these kind of moving out through your network, moving out through links is really powerful, because it starts to get you to some people who can give you information and opportunities that those people who are immediately around you can’t. We talk about this kind of stuff quite a lot in the book in the idea of networking and then also using the internet for that kind of stuff as well. But, I think at the heart of it is this idea of social networks being a really powerful part of your career-building.

Korin: I think it’s quite easy for the three of us to say, “Just go online or just ask this person to help you,” but I think a lot of students and graduates find it quite difficult to make that first move to talk to someone because often they feel like they’re taking advantage of them. We talk about ways in which you can do this which are respectful, and polite, and professional, and the fact that you should bear in mind that you’re going to be reciprocal. So, you will give this back. At some point, you will give time to someone else, and that’s how it all works, and really, very few people feel annoyed or put upon by somebody simply asking, “Do you know anyone? Is there any way you can help? I’m very keen on this particular sector.” Clearly, you need to know when to stop and you need to know how to start, but it’s not something that people — people are very happy to help, generally, and making sure that you remember you’re going to give back in that way is a good way to get yourself feeling like it’s okay to ask those questions.

James: I completely agree, and Korin, you mentioned earlier that I think is often overlooked by lots of graduates is the graduate career service, the options of speaking to former alumni or people that they know at different companies. What are you able to do for your students through the career service?

Korin: Quite a lot, actually. We’d be thrilled if they all came back to ask for additional help. A lot of career services are investing in tools that will help them to connect with their alumni, and quite innovative tools that link with their LinkedIn profiles. So, it’s not about creating a new profile that doesn’t exist already or doesn’t connect to your existing networks, but it’s a way to make sure that you’re connected to your university after you leave, and then you can benefit from not just everyone else who graduated from chemistry, but all of your colleagues who studied finance, or economic, or a sports science degree, and all the different connections that they have.

One is you’ve got alumni services who will be looking to connect with you, you’ve got career services who will be looking to support you, and both of those will be working together to make sure that they can connect you with any alumni who could be useful to you in your job search. It is really in the interest of the university for their graduates to do well. So, bear that in mind, there’s a lot going on in universities to help graduates get the roles that they want.

The other thing I would say, and I’ll touch on this, when you asked me about the book, the website I’ll recommend later, but there can also be exclusive job offers for graduates that are offered through universities. That’s another really good reason to make sure you remain connected, because that kind of thing is happening, then the amount of people competing for those roles becomes greatly reduced, and your chances of getting a job offer can be increased.

James: Brilliant, everything you said there, and it leads us nicely onto chapter 8 in the book, which you titled “help me”, and I think it’s often overlooked or people underestimate the fact that getting a graduate job is something difficult and it’s something that they can really benefit from getting help from other people, and there’s no shame in saying it’s difficult and asking for help whether it’s from the career service or other avenues. How can people make the most in the career service and tutors when it comes to getting that help?

Tristram: I think one of the things we would definitely say is that if you’re thinking about the kind of skills that you need to be successful in your career or to have the kind of career that you want, then the ability to talk to other people, and also to know what you don’t know, and to ask other people to help you when you don’t know something, are really, really critical, and the university has got lots of resources. I mean, that’s one of the things we talk about is that universities actually provide a really strong platform for you to start building your career.

Obviously, there’s all the stuff that professional services that are sort of offered through the career service, which, as a matter of fact, university career services is getting criticism from time to time. For those students that use them and invest their time in using them, I think they get a huge amount out of them and there’s so much support if you want to get it. But, I think the other thing is remember that universities are actually very big employers. I mean, in most towns, they’ll be normally about the third biggest employer after the local authority and the health service.

You usually find that you’ve got all sorts of people working there. So, if you want to meet someone who’s an accountant, or if you want to meet someone who’s an architect or obviously a researcher, or a scientist, but also people who are project managers, universities employ all of those people right the way across, and so there’s a huge number of opportunities that you can use within the university to ask for help and get advice from people, and I think people often ignore that because you tend to interact with the university as a kind of a consumer and only really think about the things that are above the surface. But, actually, the university’s got a lot more to offer you.

James: That’s something I’ve not thought of, but it makes complete sense. With the topic of health is people need to recognize it’s not a sign of weakness, asking for help, but a sign of strength, really, just having the confidence to go out and to ask that help from the people where it’s available to help them.

Korin: Yeah, and that attitude will help when it comes to answering questions in interviews and actually at work as well. When you are in the world of work, you want people who are going to be able to recognize when they’re out of their depth and work collaboratively to solve problems. So, it’s a very useful tool for life, not just for looking at careers.

If you are looking to get help, some of the things we talk about in the book to help you to think about how to approach that are that you prepare yourself. So, you come to meetings prepared thinking about what you want and try to be clear about what you’re looking for and that you are persistent. So, sometimes, services get busy, but that doesn’t mean they’re not interested in you. Make sure that you go back and try and get your questions answered, and be flexible. It’s possible that the question that you’re asking isn’t the one that needs answering right that minute, and maybe you need to listen a bit more to what the person is responding with to make sure you’re getting the most out of the service. So, be persistent, be prepared, be flexible and open, but take advantage of all those different services on campus.

James: Definitely, because once you leave university, it becomes a lot more difficult if they’re all on your doorstep when you’re there and really do take advantage of them. As Korin said, be prepared. It must be one of your bugbears when some people turn up for, say, a CV clinic or something and they’ve actually not done their CV yet and starting from scratch as opposed to turning up with a CV which has been finalized and is able to be looked at properly.

Korin: I’m always happy to see anybody no matter how prepared they are. It is great when they’ve come with a CV, and even better if they have thought about what they might like to do with it.

James: Well, listeners, check out the book. Again, links in the show notes at GraduateJobPodcast.com/Handbook, and make sure you get yourself a copy and stay tuned for how you can win a copy. So, Korin, Tristram, time is unfortunately running away with us. One final question before we move onto our weekly staple questions. What advice would you give students who graduated this summer and feel a bit lost about what to do next?

Tristram: I think doing something is better than doing nothing is generally my advice to people, and I think, actually, getting a job, or doing something purposeful. It doesn’t have to be paid work. It could be doing some really interesting volunteer work or whatever. But, if you are sitting around just kind of watching box sets, then you’re not really building your career capital. Even if you go and work in a kind of low-paid non-graduate job, you are learning something, and you are meeting people, and you’re expanding your network.

But, I think what you should be trying to do is to think about, “How can I build the career capital that I have? How can I increase my network? How can I learn new skills? How can I find out more information?” Actually, I think that’s a much more important activity than panicking about, “I don’t know what to do with my life.” Because, actually if you were at the point where you’ve graduated and you haven’t got anything to do, or you’re not happy with the job that you have got, then worrying about finding the perfect opportunity is actually something which I think can be quite disempowering.

Experimenting, trying something out, learning new skills, building your career capital, I’d focus on that rather than kind of worrying about exactly what direction you’re going in, because you’re going to change direction lots of times across your career, and that’s fine, and you’ll use everything that you learned as you go along, and so it’s not that important to make sure you’ve got the right job, but it is important to feel that you’re moving forwards.

James: That’s brilliant.

Korin: Yeah, I’d agree with what Tristram said in that there’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re stagnating. So, simply by doing something will start to get you feeling more positive about what’s happening with your career. So, getting your LinkedIn profile connected with other profiles that are of interest to you, and sorting out your CV, and getting some kind of work experience going, whether it’s voluntary or paid, all of those things will start to improve your own mental approach to your career as well as your actual situation.

James: That’s brilliant advice, and as Tristram said, always just keep moving forward and it will help. You might not realize it at the moment, but everything you’ve been learning, even low-paid job, or what you might deem as a low-paid sort of menial job will still be picking up brilliant team-working skills or different skills you can bring to the fore later on in interviews and the likes. So, that’s really good advice.

Korin: Absolutely.

James: Moving on to our weekly staple questions, looking forward to seeing your responses here, let’s start with the first question, what one book would you recommend to our listeners that they need to be grabbing on Amazon?

Tristram: Obviously, you want to be buying our book because it’s the most important book to buy of all. But, if you were going to buy a second book after, then actually, I really enjoy a book by John Grisham, the thriller writer, and it’s called “The Associate”, and it’s about graduate recruitment, basically, and he writes about lawyers, and it’s about a guy who graduates and goes to work in a large-scale legal firm.

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It’s pretty critical, actually, of that kind of world, but he gives some really good insights into the way sort of early career works if you’re working in a really big blue-chip graduate recruitment sort of context. I mean, it’s a good read, and there’s a murder and a mystery in it as well. But, actually, if you’re a graduate and you’re thinking about going on a graduate recruitment scheme, then have a look at The Associate by John Grisham.

James: That’s a new one for me. That’s one I’ll definitely check out. And links to that book will be in the show notes, listeners, so you’ll be able to check it out there. Korin, what would your top book recommendation be?

Korin: Mine is a little less directly related to career, but it’s a book called “Wonder” by R.J. Palacio. I’m not sure I’m pronouncing that right. Palacio? Wonder is a book about a young boy called August, who has a facial disfigurement and it’s about how he and his friends experience, basically, middle school, and I think they’re in middle school on their way to high school.

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It’s something we can all relate to, being in school and whatnot, and the difficulties of transitioning to school, and what it really was for me, it was a book about remembering to be kind, and I think any book that reminds me that you should be a better person is good, and I guess I would relate it to careers by simply saying that nobody every complains about James, “Gosh, he’s so kind. It’s really annoying.” So, being kind at work is not a bad thing, and I would recommend this book because it would remind you of the importance of that in my hand work.

Tristram: You have to remember that Korin is Canadian, so kindness is highly prized.

Korin: Too right.

James: I’ve not come across that, Korin, so that’s one I’ll check out. That sounds really good. So, moving on to the next question. What one internet resource would you point our listeners to?

Korin: I’ll go first, if you’d like, Trist. So, I’m going to be a little bit dull here and bang on about something I’ve already talked about, but I would like students to go back to their university websites, to the career service websites that they had at university, and have a look and see what service is available to them. If they’re current students, then look at that. If they’re graduates, then look at the alumni services.

At the moment, we’re just about to enter into the last collection of data for destination stage for students before we start a new survey. So, higher education, every university has to get information about where their students wind up after they graduate, and we’re just about to enter into a last phase of this particular survey, and a lot of universities will be offering additional support right now because they’re going to need to live with the stats from this particular day for a while. So, they really want them to look good.

If you are somebody who’s just graduated, this is a super time to go look at your university website and find out what are they offering for alumni, have they got jobs that are exclusively on offer for me, have they got events, have they got a support network, have they got a careers consultant who is devoted to them? If you’re a current student, then obviously, you should be looking at that anyway, and if you’ve graduated a little while ago, don’t fear. There will still be services. Many universities offer lifetime careers advice to their graduates. So, I would say that would be the website I would like students and graduates to be going back to to try and really benefit from.

Tristram: In terms of websites, there’s millions and millions of careers websites out there, and almost all of them have got some value. One of the things I think is if you are stuck, then absolutely, head over to the Google and ask the question, and you’ll almost certainly find some resources that are useful to you.

The one that I’d recommend that I would think is a really good site is the ICould site. ICould is basically collection of video stories told by people about their careers. It’s about their whole careers rather than just a job. So, they talk about, “Well, I did this, and I did that, and that didn’t work out, and so then I moved on and I did something else.” So, you get a sense of people’s whole career, and I think that’s a really useful resource because I think when you just look at a single occupation, it can sometimes make you feel that you’re going to do that forever and you’re making a permanent choice.

The ICould site really tells you how careers actually work, and it’s also a really good sort of lay market information as well as the videos that draw in a lot of statistic that will tell you how much particular occupations earn, and what qualifications they need, and all that kind of stuff as well. I think the ICould sites are really useful ones, and if people haven’t looked at it, it’s well worth the look.

James: Brilliant. That’s not what I’ve come across, but that sounds brilliant. I think graduates probably underestimate just how nonlinear most careers are. People moving from one job to something in a completely unrelated field, and then going on from there. So, that would be a really worthwhile one for checking out. Korin, I completely agree with career services. All this help and resources are all available for each university, so listeners, make sure you do utilize them. It’s going to help so much in the long run, so definitely worth checking out. Final question, then, today, what one tip would you give our listeners that they can implement today to help them on their job search?

Korin: I guess it depends where they’re at in their job search. Let me come back to that. I was thinking.

Tristram: I think my tip is to remember that you have a career and that your career needs some attention and effort, and I think when I’m talking about career, I see career as being the individual’s passage through life, learning, and work. It’s not just getting a job, and then getting promoted, and then getting promoted again. I think what we’re trying to do, and this is why I like the ICould site, and I think it’s what we’re trying to do in the book as well is to take quite a broad view of career and recognize that there are lots of things you can do.

But, I suppose the thing that we’re really saying is that, actually, you’ve got some responsibility for that and you need to take some proactive time to develop your career. Actually, if you do that, there’s lots and lots of things you can do which will be useful to you. So, I think my tip would be remember you have a career and devote some time to working on it and improving it.

Korin: I think I’d probably talk about getting experience. That’s the thing that most of the students and graduates I see have the most trouble with. Either they don’t recognize the experience they have, or they just haven’t had enough experience to really reflect on the things that make them happy, challenged, and satisfied with work. So, things like joining societies, doing volunteer work, or offering to do research within your department. There’s a lot of things you can do while you’re at university, which will give you experience, which then means you can do some of that reflective thinking about the things that you like and that you’re good at.

James: That’s wise, wise advice from both of you, and definitely one I wish I had whilst I was applying for work, so thank you for those. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you both on the show today. What’s the best way that listeners can get in touch with you and the work that you do?

Tristram: I’m not too difficult to find on the internet if you put my name in. But, my blog is adventures in career development, and I’m also on Twitter and so on. So, very happy to talk to people through that. But, yeah the book is available from Amazon, and from the top of my website, and so on. Anyway, there’s plenty of ways to find me, I think.

Korin: I’m not quite as obvious as Tristram, but you can find me. Certainly, I think the best way would be to connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m always happy to connect with new people on LinkedIn, and would be very happy to hear from anyone who wanted to talk to me about careers or their job applications.

James: Links to all of the things we talked about, so Twitter handles and their LinkedIn profiles would be available in the show notes at GraduateJobPodcast.com/Handbook. Tristram, Korin, thank you so much for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast.

Tristram: Thank you.

Korin: Thank you for having us.

James: There you go, many thanks again to Tristam and Korin for their time. I really enjoyed that episode, it was lots of fun to record, and I know there are tons of things for your to take away from it to help you as you look for a graduate job. I do recommend that you get your hands on a copy of the book, as you certainly won’t be disappointed. Buy a copy through the links to Amazon in the shownotes over at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/handbook, and help to support the show, as Amazon pay a minute commission to me if you do so, it doesn’t cost you anything but helps to keep the lights on here with the show. As I mentioned at the beginning though Trotman publishing have kindly provided me with a couple of copies to giveaway to you my brilliant listeners. All you have to do is email me at hello@graduatejobpodcast.com and I will pick 2 lucky listeners out of the hat on the 31st of May. It doesn’t matter where you are listening as I’ll pop it in the post anywhere around the world. You’ve got to be in it to win it so send me a mail to hello@graduatejobpodcast.com.  Finally shout out to Nawaf who reached out for coaching help as he applies for a year in industry. Good luck buddy, hope it is going well. If you would like some one to one coaching help with getting a job or an internship then do drop me a line, again at hello@graduatejobpodcast.com. I love the coaching and working with on applications and interviews, although I can’t physically help everyone due to the number of hours in the day, which is why I have been working on my step by step course to getting a graduate job. Stay tuned for more information, as I’ll be looking to launch it in the summer ahead of the milkround this year. It’s going to be a goodie!

So that is just about everything. Do join me episode week when I speak with former guest Corinne Mills as we explore her new book Career Coach. All that remains to say is I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly, I hope you use it, and apply it. See you next week.