Episode 122: How to get a graduate job with a start-up, with Jumpstart

October 3, 2021 Podcast

For episode 122 of the Graduate Job Podcast I have a brilliant episode for you that is going to open your eyes to the graduate opportunities that are available to you with start-ups, as I am joined on the show by Kabir Bali co-founder of Jumpstart. Jumpstart has set up an innovative graduate scheme where you can apply to start-up firms with venture capital funding who are looking for great graduates, and as well as finding amazing roles with Jumpstart you also get the graduate scheme experience of a month of training and development, and also the social side of joining with a cohort of other people. And in today’s episode, we delve into Jumpstart more generally and how you can apply. We go through the types of start-up firms that they work with, what they look for in candidates and how you can stand out at each stage of the process. We discuss how you can improve your CV, why you need to show not tell with it, and why you should definitely talk about any side hustles or university societies that you’ve been a part of. We also cover why you can expect at least £25k in each role, and normally some equity to boot as well. It’s an informative episode and no matter the type of graduate job you have thought about applying to, from start-ups to global giants, it’s an episode that you arent going to want to miss. As always you can find a full transcript including all of the show notes and links to everything, we discuss at https://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/jumpstart/.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • Who Jumpstart are and how you can apply
  • The training and development you can expect with the Jumpstart programme
  • How the application process works
  • What they look for in candidates
  • Why you need to show not tell with your CV
  • How to impress in your interviews with start-ups
  • Why talking about your side hustles is so important when you apply
  • Why you can expect at least a salary of £25k and normally equity as well

SELECTED LINKS INCLUDE:

Transcript 122 – How to get a graduate job with a start-up, with Jumpstart

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, graduate recruiters and career coaches who bring decades of experience into a byte size show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had when I graduated.

Hello and welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, and today I have a brilliant episode for you that is going to open your eyes to the graduate opportunities that are available to you with start-ups, as today I am joined on the show by Kabir Bali co-founder of Jumpstart. Jumpstart has set up an innovative graduate scheme where you can apply to start-up firms with venture capital funding who are looking for great graduates, and as well as finding amazing roles with Jumpstart you also get the graduate scheme experience of a month of training and development, and also the social side of joining with a cohort of other people. And in today’s episode, we delve into Jumpstart more generally and how you can apply. We go through the types of start-up firms that they work with, what they look for in candidates and how you can stand out at each stage of the process. We discuss how you can improve your CV, why you need to show not tell with it, and why you should definitely talk about any side hustles or university societies that you’ve been a part of. We also cover why you can expect at least £25k in each role, and normally some equity to boot as well. It’s an informative episode and no matter the type of graduate job you have thought about applying to, from start-ups to global giants, it’s an episode that you arent going to want to miss. As always you can find a full transcript including all of the show notes and links to everything, we discuss at https://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/jumpstart/.

Now before we get into the show today let me tell you about my brilliant online course cunningly titled How to Get a Graduate Job which is OPEN again for new members who want to turbocharge their hunt for a graduate job this year. 7 people joined the course last year and I’m extremely proud to say that they ALL got graduate jobs, with most of them as you will have heard from the previous episodes with Sibrah, Saffy, Jack, Callum and Athavan getting multiple offers. The course works, check out episodes 115 – 119 to hear for yourself. You might be wondering what is included, well it is yours truly boiling down my nearly 20 years of graduate recruitment experience and 122 episodes of the show into 14 hours of video tutorial content across 8 modules 23 video tutorials. This course will completely change how you look at the application process, from how you research companies, to how you apply, to how you approach, prep and conduct yourself in video interviews and assessment centres. I take you through every, and I mean every aspect of the application process, if you need to know it to get a graduate job it is in there. At the moment I’m offering £300 of 1-2-1 coaching with yours truly for you to use as you see fit. Of course, this is in addition to the 14 hours of video tutorial content, handouts and cheat sheets galore, private members Facebook group, and weekly webinars which I run every Tuesday evening at 19.30. If you want proof it works, listen to my episode 115-119 with the previous course members …it worked for them and it will work for you too. That’s www.howtogetagraduatejob.com, and I look forward to you joining me in the course soon. Right, lets crack on with my chat with Kabir.

James Curran: I am very pleased to welcome to this show today, Kabir Bali, co-founder of Jumpstart, the innovative graduate scheme helping graduates get jobs with startups. Kabir, welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast.

Kabir Bali: Thank you James. It’s a pleasure to be here.

James: Today, we’re going to go into detail about Jumpstart and just how you work and how listeners will be able to get involved and get some of those much sought-after jobs with innovative startup companies. Before we do, do you want to maybe just give the listeners a very brief introduction to yourself and to Jumpstart?

Kabir: Yeah, absolutely James. I think it’s always helpful to start with a why before the what. A bit about me, I graduated in 2015 along with my co-founder Matthew, then slept walked slightly into a career in management consulting for four or five years before starting Jumpstart back in May of last year mid-pandemic. I think, for us, really the reason for doing so actually was born out of our own experience as graduates in 2015. Matthew and I both felt that once we graduated or as we were gearing up for our graduation in our final year, university career services and society at large and friends and family were very much telling us, “Okay great, you’re about to graduate. Now, you’ve got to pick a grad scheme to join,” and that’s one of three or four options. One is finance, consulting, banking, accounting.

Obviously, there’s a few others, but it was very much the corporate route we’ve seen as the way you should go. There’s a mentality that you need to get that blue tick on your CV before you go off and do something potentially more interesting and more innovative. We always thought that was a slightly myopic way of looking at the world, and there must be a way we can actually get into those slightly more interesting roles earlier on. That was the first thing we saw, or we experienced ourselves and thought, “Maybe this isn’t the best way of doing things. There must be a better way of allowing graduates to access other opportunities.”

The second thing I think we saw, actually when we started our careers in consulting, was that a lot of the work that we were doing, while it was interesting and we were working with smart people was we’re looking towards the startup ecosystem, and the business models, and the ideas that that world throws up, and not copying, but appropriating those ideas slightly and advising our clients to potentially take them on, which was interesting for three or four years, but felt like a slightly fraudulent activity, in some ways.

It made us think, “Why do we have this world where even the consulting firms that we’re supposed to go into are telling us that the startup world is where the most exciting ideas, the most exciting businesses are growing and being scaled, and developing are, yet graduates just can’t access that world?” It’s very opaque, it’s quite network-driven, there’s no standard application process in the way there is for grad schemes, or the Big 4, or MBB, for example. Why not create something where graduates can work in those super-interesting roles and companies, but actually do it in a much more transparent way?

That was the first iteration of the idea, but then we realized what the problem really is that startups, A, don’t have the time to necessarily train and support graduates, and on the other flip side of that, graduates really enjoy the fact that, in a grad scheme, you are with a cohort of other people, you get training, you get support, you get that kind of structure and growth that’s laid out before you. Why don’t we actually combine almost the best of two worlds? Combine the benefits of a traditional grad scheme, so the training, the support, the mentorship, that feeling of being a part of a cohort that I just mentioned, and combining that would actually allow you to work at a startup and providing that opportunity in a much more transparent way that exists now, which is, in a nutshell, what Jumpstart does, which I’m happy to go into more details about now as well.

James: I’m sure it sounds like an amazing opportunity. Graduate schemes, as you said, can be brilliant opportunities, but they’re not right for everybody. People who maybe don’t need that more structured progression, who want to get involved in the beginning, who want to work across a lot of different areas, which is the opportunities you can get with a startup, especially when you’re getting in at the beginning, you’re not going to have that flexibility at some of the big graduate schemes. We’ll dive in today, and everything related to Jumpstart and how you can apply. Do you want to kick off with just going through some of the types of companies that you work with, some of the startups?

Kabir: Just before that, it’s probably worth me explaining exactly how the program works just because I appreciate people don’t necessarily know about the company. I might start with that, and then I’ll answer your next question, if that’s okay.

James: Of course, go for it.

Kabir: The program itself is really split into two parts. The first part is the actual four-week program we run which is quite intense, which is a full-time activity thereabouts, and then the second part is the part that we’re growing now, which is the ongoing community and support. To start with the first one, the program itself. We run a cohort every couple of months or so where we’ll pick between 20 or 30 graduates, and that cohort is essentially a four-week program. Week 1 is what we call the startup spotlight. What we do is actually reach out to our startup partners. We now work with over 200 startups, and we actually select the top 40 or so to come in and pitch to our graduates, so kind of flipping the traditional job on its head. In that week, you’ll hear from 40 different founders telling you about the company, a little bit about the role they’re looking for, and then have an opportunity to ask them some questions, so we have some 15-minute segments.

The reason we do that is because it’s actually very difficult to understand what a startup is all about from a simple job description. Often, the role is quite vague, particularly if you’re going as a graduate, and it really helps to hear from a founder to explain their vision, to understand what they’re like, what the culture of the company is all about, and I guess their mission as well. That’s why we run that week, and at the end of the week, appearing from various founders, you are able to actually then select three or four companies at the end, which you want to basically be considered for an interview.

That’s the end of week 1, and then week 2 is actually focused on training. We have a week of training, which really has two purposes. The first one is to get you ready for day 1 of your job, so we call it the university to work conversion course, and then part 2 of the training week is to get you ready for those interviews with those three or four startups you’ve selected, and then week 3 and 4 is really focused around interviewing at those companies. We actually facilitate that process ourselves. You don’t have to worry about scheduling or rearranging interviews. We help you with all of that stuff. We also give you one-on-one support. If you want to practice interview questions or have some questions about how you should prepare, we prepare you for that as well. We’ve overseen probably over 400, 500 startup interviews with our various grads, so we have a pretty good idea of how you should do that. We basically give you all the tools you need to succeed, and then at the end of that four-week process, essentially, you get an offer from one of those startups.

In our last cohort, we had about 20 grads. I think 11 of them had offers from at least one startup, so often there’s a choice on the table. That’s really the purpose of the first part of the program, that four-week process, is you get a role, you’re trained up, you’re ready to go. Part 2 of Jumpstart is really about the ongoing support that we offer. Once you actually start your role, there are two things that we can offer you. One is a mentorship scheme, so once you’ve actually started your role, we connect you up with a mentor in your industry. Let’s say you’re working in an operations role with a startup, we’ll connect you up with someone who’s got three- or four-years’ experience. We’re calling them Jumpstart Pros who can basically talk to you on a semi-regular basis about your career, how you should be developing, also provide you with some training and support. We also give you a training budget if you do want to do additional courses via Jumpstart.

The second thing we do is offer the social side of being part of a graduate community. We now have 70-odd grads as part of the community, and we run events every four to five weeks, some of them social. We had our summer party last Friday where everyone came along and did a bit of pasta-making, and we went to a bar afterwards, which was great, great fun. We also do semi-networking professional-type events as well. We did one about eight weeks ago, actually, with two HR leads from a couple of well-known startups on how to ask for a raise. If you’re six months into your graduate career at a startup, how do you position yourself and promote yourself well, what benchmarking can you do on your salary, what other things can you do to prepare yourself for that conversation, which is one that I think, obviously, graduates are very keen to know about. Those are the kinds of events that we run both from a social and professional point of view.

In terms of your actual question, James, apologies for not going into that until just now, in terms of the startup we work with, we really focus on relatively early-stage startups, so they’re normally between 15 and 30 people, but crucially have just raised at least one or two rounds of venture capital funding, or institutional funding. For those who don’t know what that means, venture capital companies are basically institutions that finance startups in the same way that banks would do that for larger companies. What that means is they’re, A, financially-viable, so they’re able to actually sustain a graduate in a well-paid role, but also looking to grow super-fast. Often, VC companies will be looking to invest in a startup so they can grow fast and get those returns. That’s actually a really exciting place for a graduate because you can grow with the company. Those are the types of companies that we focus on.

James: It all sounds amazing. I know, as a listener, one of the questions they might be asking is, “Is this going to cost me anything?”

Kabir: Yeah of course. That’s a question we get asked a lot. The answer is absolutely no. This program is all about allowing graduates to access those careers that are not there at the moment. All the cost is on the startup. The startup basically pays for the placement of the graduate as well as the training and the support that we provide. I think it’s also important to say that we are actually quite different from traditional recruiters in a couple of ways.

Firstly, we actually charge a fixed fee. A lot of recruiters will charge a percentage of graduate salary, which is obviously terrible for the graduate because it means the higher the company wants to pay them in terms of a salary, the more goes to the recruiter. We charge a fixed fee, so actually as a result, our graduates have paid a lot more than traditional industry rate within startups, and that’s going up and up all the time, and we want to try and push that even further if we can. The second thing is we actually only get paid if the graduate stays in their role for three months or more. We’re pretty incentivized to make sure that you get a role that suits you, and it means that we’re basically completely aligned with the graduate in terms of intentions as well.

James: Listeners, there is nothing to lose, and a horde of brilliant startup companies just waiting for you out there. Let’s go through the application process that people need to go through to apply for you. What does that look like for when they apply initially for you to get on the Jumpstart scheme?

Kabir: We try to make our application process as streamlined as possible. There are three stages. There’s the first stage, which is literally just registering on the website with your CV. It takes literally about 30 seconds. We want to make that as easy as possible. We know that a lot of other recruitment processes are quite long in terms of questions that they ask you, so we streamline that for just a CV upload. If you’re through with the CV screen and I can talk in more details about what we look for in our CV screen in a minute, but the second stage is a written submission, so we ask you to answer a few questions, which are basically designed to test your quantitative and qualitative abilities. If you’re through that stage, there’s a final interview with either myself, Matthew, or our founder’s associate, Charlie, which lasts around 45 minutes. It’s a three-step process, relatively quick, and that’s how it works.

James: How do people tend to let themselves down at this stage? What separates the candidates who might not make it through to the ones that sail through the process?

Kabir: In terms of the CV side of things we’re actually quite data-heavy. We look at a lot of the information from interview performance and relate that back to how we looked at CVs, and again, how people can also perform in startups. We have a lot of data around that, and one of the really interesting things that we found is that work experience is actually not particularly important when it comes to having an effect on interview performance and startup performance. I think there’s probably a lot of reasons for this, but what we actually found is extracurricular activities at university or outside of university, so charity work, or running societies, and events at university, running your own businesses or side hustles, these are actually much better indications of success in a startup, I think, partly because, in a startup, that is the kind of person that they want, someone who’s very proactive, able to create and run projects on their own accord without too much support from the outside.

That’s something we look at a lot, and I think people, generally, when they’re uploading CVs, there’s an expectation that work experience is important. We do look at that, but actually for us, extracurricular activity is even more important. If you are applying, I would encourage you to make that as prominent as possible, and especially if you’ve founded your own society or you have your own side hustle. Those are things that we really value because that does show that you have that entrepreneurial proactive streak, which startups do look for. That’s the first thing on a CV side of things.

In terms of the interview, I think what I would say in general is that people, often when they’re answering questions, they talk a lot about their skills and how they’re very enthusiastic, and a lot of words describing what they’re like rather than actual actions. I would encourage people to be more action-oriented because those actions and your achievements are going to speak for themselves rather than you talking about all the skills that you’ve learned and what kind of person you are.

James: I know from speaking to the graduate recruiters at Capgemini with my episode with them, they explicitly said that they really wanted to see, as you said, people’s side hustles. I know that some candidates are almost reticent to put that down thinking it will be seen as a negative, but no, as you said, it’s such a positive thing to be able to get you off the ground, get it working. It was interesting. I was looking through your website, and some of the people that you’ve showcased from the initial applications who’ve gone on to work at startups, each of them, I noticed, had some sort of side hustle at university where they started businesses, and started events and things. The skills that you generate when you do activities like that just really stand you in great stead, so make sure you are bringing them to the fore through the application process. Do you maybe want to go into a little bit more detail about what the training looks like for when people get through the initial stage before they start the applications to the companies, or the pitches to the companies?

Kabir: The training actually was born out of our own research that we did. We did a big research project last summer where we interviewed and surveyed, I think, over 200 startups, and basically asked them, “If you’ve hired a grad in the past, what things do you wish they had known before they started and what do you wish they had been taught?” Actually, we thought they might be quite role-specific, so depending whether you’re going into marketing, or analysis, or operations, there might be some quite specific skills they would like you to have, but actually the overwhelming message from that exercise was startups are willing, or companies, in general, are willing to train you on the role that you’ve been brought in to do as a graduate, because as a graduate, you’re not expected to actually know anything because that’s the role of the company, to help you understand how you can be good at marketing, and what skills you need to develop, and all that sort of thing.

There are certain general principles, and I guess attributes that startups are really keen that everyone they have, as a graduate, was getting equipped with, and that’s basically what the course is all about. As I said, it’s basically a university-to-work conversion course. There are four modules that came out of that exercise we did with the startup sets. The four modules are communication skills, problem-solving, analysis, and being a productive employee, which I’ll explain in a second. Those are really the four modules that we focus on in the training.

To explain this in a bit more detail, communication, this is all the different ways you communicate in the workplace of how to better write emails, communicate over the phone, communicate in meetings, facilitate meetings, everything where you’re actually having to speak or communicate with another person in writing or on the phone. We try and help you navigate that in our training, and we do it in a quite practical way. Our philosophy is very much that you learn by doing. We’ll speak about a topic for a few minutes but we’ll then quickly get our grads to go off and do an exercise where they’ll, for example, have to set up a roleplay type meeting, for example, or reply to an email as if they were in a work situation, and then we give them feedback.

That’s the best way, I think, people generally learn, and then to follow that through with the other three modules: in terms of analysis, that might seem like something which only business analysts or STEM graduates should be good at. Actually, we think it’s a general skill that all graduates should be good at no matter what degree you did. We teach you the basics of how to deal with a spreadsheet, we give people courses before we actually start to help you get up-to-speed with some of the formulae, but we actually then put that to practice with real-live data. What we found often with analysis courses online is they present you with nice, clean information which you can react to on the course, but we present you with real-life data examples that you can work through, analyse, and present back, and methods for how you can do that. That’s the second module.

The third is around problem-solving. From our consulting backgrounds, how can we give you some frameworks and tools to help you break down the complex problems you’re given as a graduate into manageable parts? Startups are a very complicated beast. There’s often lots of problems that are mixed together and ambiguous and it’s really important you, as a graduate, are able to really understand what the root problem is that you’re trying to solve and go out and solve that rather than be side-tracked. We give you some quite practical tasks to work on that will help hone those skills.

The fourth one that I mentioned was being a productive employee. This is really focused on a couple of things. First, how do you prioritize effectively? In a startup, you have a long list of things to do that will probably be impossible to actually finish. How do you prioritize effectively? We give you a task where you have to actually do that quite practically. Secondly, how do you actually deal with feedback and grow in terms of your skills? This is one of the areas in a startup you don’t get quite as much support as you would in a corporate where there’s often a very formalized feedback process. How can you own that process in terms of getting feedback from a manager and regular sessions and work on that and have actionable things that you can do as a result of that to improve? We give you some templates and some ideas for how you can do that and actually bring in a few of our previous grads to help with that.

I said four modules. There is actually a fifth one, which is getting interview-ready. Obviously, after the training, you’ll do your interviews with the startups. We have a whole day where we basically practice the various interview questions you’ll be given. We bring our previous grads in to come in and help and facilitate one-on-one clinics so you can actually get a lot of rich feedback on how you’re doing in terms of your interview technique, both in terms of what you say but also how you say it. This is obviously something we have a lot of experience overseeing, so we’re able to impart quite a lot of knowledge in that respect.

Before you finish the training, we have, on the last day, a case study which brings together all the previous four modules that I mentioned apart from interview training where you can actually work on those in a case study with another pair or a partner in a pair, and you present back to the group as well. It’s a very practical course, which I think we’re quite sure it gives a lot of basic skills which our grads have found useful.

James: What advice would you give to listeners for the actual interview stage when they’re speaking to the startups themselves? How can they impress at this stage?

Kabir: We have a whole interview day on this. I’ll try and synthesize the key points. The one thing that I’ve found that’s been a slight problem with our grads is, often, they’re highly-accomplished, they’ve achieved a lot in their short careers, but it’s how do you actually convey your excitement for the company in the role as much as possible? Often, our grads are talking about their skills and how they match up for it, but really, as a startup, as opposed to a corporate, you’re really concerned about, “Is this person going to stay the course?” because if you’re one of 400 people in a big consulting firm, if you leave after three and a half months, frankly, the consulting firm doesn’t mind too much. That’s probably part of the business in some ways. Whereas in a startup, if you’re one of 20 people, or one of 10 people and you leave after three months, that’s a big issue for them.

For them, it’s really important to find people who are committed to the cause. Often, you’ll get questions like, “Where do you see yourself in three to five years?” or, “What is your long-term career ambitions?” and making sure you prepare for those questions, and even if you don’t want to stay there forever, you’re honest about it and can frame it in a way that you’re genuinely committed to the cause and committed to actually making a real fist of working in that company, that’s really important. I think that comes through from doing things like researching the company, going on the founder’s LinkedIn, seeing if they’ve been on any podcasts, listen to those. Those are the sort of things where you can show your enthusiasm and interests in the company rather than just saying that you really want to work at this company, which is fine, but not the most engaging way of exhibiting those skills.

James: Just in terms of location then, do most of the companies tend to be based in London or have you got a geographical spread around the UK?

Kabir: Most are based in London. What I would say is that’s a slightly academic point at the moment. Most startups are working in a hybrid structure, so some days from home, some days in the office. Also, a number of grads, obviously, who’ve just finished their degree, are probably still living at home or living at university. Startups are quite flexible about you working from home for a period of time before then potentially moving to London or even coming down to London every couple of days, every fortnight or so at the start anyway. It’s mainly in London, but there is quite a lot of room for manoeuvre there in terms of hybrid working. There are actually a handful of startups, I’d probably say around 10, 15 percent who operate on a remote-first basis, so you can basically work from anywhere in the world: a beach in Thailand, or in Spain, or in England, the UK, or whatever, and you can still basically work full-time for that company. There are a few in that position as well.

James: Why pay expensive rent living in London when you can get a nice, cheap accommodation somewhere warm with the sunshine, and with good internet, and work from there? That sounds like a plan, and as we talked about earlier, the difference between big graduate schemes and startups is you do tend to find they are more flexible and open to different ways of working than the big corporate behemoths which are a bit more set in stone. Let’s talk cold hard cash. What sort of starting salaries could people be expecting if they were to get an offer?

Kabir: We only work with startups that offer at least 25K minimum as a salary. We appreciate that’s actually still not that competitive if you’re living in London, so in terms of our average salary from the program, that’s about 28, 29K. Our ambition is to actually have it up to 30-plus, and I think that will be the case over the next few cohorts as we embed our position within the startup ecosystem. I would say that’s the starting salary. A couple other points on that is startups that we work with will often or, in almost all circumstances, offer equity, so shares in the business as you are obviously joining that at a relatively early stage. These obviously vary in terms of value, but they tend to be between 5 and 10 thousand pounds in terms of value.

The only thing around that is you won’t be able to access those straight away. It often takes a few years for you to access the full value of the shares because the startups want to obviously incentivize you to stay on as much as possible. Obviously, that value will increase as the startup grows and gets valued at higher members and prices. That can actually grow quite quickly as well. In terms of a total package, we’re looking at between 34, 35K-plus.

James: If you get yourself in a unicorn nice and early, you could be laughing all the way to the bank. That’s good. Final question on the application. What would you say separates the candidates that blow the startups away from those who maybe don’t end up with many offers or any offers at all?

Kabir: There’s one thing I missed on the salary point is that, actually, the other thing about startups is you can grow in terms of your position quite quickly, so we’ve had a number of grads who, three to four months into their career at that company, have done really well and have been promoted pretty quickly. Although the salary probably doesn’t match up with investment banking expectations, the growth is actually a lot quicker, so a number of grads have been promoted multiple times over a six to nine-month period. That’s the one thing I’d like to say just on that, and then just to answer your question about who stands out. Was it the interview process with startups or post?

James: From the candidates that do really well and get five or six offers versus those who maybe don’t get any offers, what would you say is a main difference between them?

Kabir: The first thing we say is that very, very few of our grads don’t get any offers. In terms of our last cohort, I think more than half had more than one offer. That’s just the first thing I would say. In terms of those who do really well, I think there’s a couple of points. One is that they just go above and beyond in terms of preparation and showing their interest in the company.

As I said before, the people, who really do the research on the founders and going on LinkedIn and looking at what they’ve been up to, looking at the company, coming up with some really interesting questions about the business and what they do, I think, is a really good way of showing ownership. Because, if you were to interview and you ask some really interesting questions about a business model of a company. Let’s say it’s a kind of e-commerce company and you said, “I looked at the website. I’ve noticed that they have three or four competitors in the space, having done my research. What’s your strategy for mitigating issues around that?” That’s the sort of question which I think really stands out to founders as opposed to, “What’s the most exciting thing about your job?” or questions which are obviously templated. That’s one thing I would say where the people who do really well will stand out.

I think the other is just making sure you are going for roles that not only, in terms of the startup, meet your expectations, but actually meet your strengths. Sometimes, we’ll have grads who’ll want to apply for companies through us that are maybe not suited to what their skills are. If it’s a very quantitative role and you haven’t had any quantitative experience or you haven’t done a standard degree of that skill, it’s going to be a bit harder for you to demonstrate those skills. Just being a bit more realistic and pragmatic about where your strengths lie, but I think it’s just that motivation and enthusiasm is the main thing which separates the people who get lots of offers from people who get maybe one offer.

James: Final question before we move to the weekly staple questions. What would you say to someone who’s in two minds about whether to apply to one of the big graduate schemes or to go for a career with a startup? What would you say to convince them down the startup route?

Kabir: I wouldn’t try and convince them one way or the other. I would just say to them, with Jumpstart, there is no obligation for you. If you have an offer from a corporate, and you’re not sure about it, and you want to see what else is out there, you can apply to the program, you can hear from the startups, and if none of them meet your expectations, then you’re free to drop out. Obviously, we’d rather you didn’t, but that’s your choice.

Actually, we’ve had a number of people who’ve done the program who’ve had offers from corporates who’ve actually said they want to see what’s out there in the startup world who have been pretty transfixed by the options we’ve had and have ended up going and actually working at the startup instead of the corporate offer. They had, I think, three of the grads, and our most recent cohort did that. I would say that was the first thing. You don’t necessarily have to make a choice. You can see what’s out there and then apply either way.

The other thing I would say is people who are considering, “Well, the corporate career is obviously more traditional, it’s going to give me that and kind of bolster my CV, and then I can go off and do my own thing,” that does make sense to an extent. What I would say is I think the world has changed slightly. If you go into a startup and you work in an early-stage tech company, and you spend a couple years there, there’s a lot of consulting firms out there, or banks, or VC companies which would be looking to hire people with those experiences. Actually, in some ways, it can open up a lot more doors. If you’re not sure where you want to go, but you like the idea of a startup and you could potentially think about going down the consulting route in the future, actually working in a startup can be quite a good way of actually getting into a consulting program.

As I say, in my own career and the company that I was at, there was a tendency to build out these venturing teams where they’re looking to build new ventures for corporates. The people who have those skills are the people who worked in startups. They’re not necessarily people who are management consultants. If you are the sort of person that’s had that experience working in a startup and building and scaling a company, those are skills that big consulting firms, the McKinseys and BCGs of this world with BCG Digital Ventures are looking for the people with those skills where you can actually apply them. In some ways, this choice is not as difficult as it might seem because actually working in a startup can lead to just as many opportunities as working in a corporate. That’s one thing I would say.

The last thing I would say on this is that the key thing with a startup compared to a corporate is the growth trajectory is just so much quicker. For example, I was working in consulting, and I spent about six months until I was allowed to talk to a client and actually be in front of a client. My growth prospects in terms of promotion was quite rigid. It was we do two years of the grad scheme, then you become a consultant, and then in a year, you become senior consultant. In a startup, particularly early stage, if you do well, you can grow unbelievably fast. I can think of a couple of grads in our program who’ve joined companies in early stage.

I’ll just give you an example of Weezy, which some of you might have heard of, which is the big e-commerce grocery startup. A number of our grads joined there when it was 15, 20 people. It’s now over 200, and some of those grads are now running teams of interns of other grads aged 22. You will not get an option to do that working in a graduate program. That growth and ability to grow with the company is very, very unique to a startup, and if you want that in your career, then I think there is only one option, really.

James: Listeners, if you’re interested more in the pros and cons of startups, check out episode 82, which is the pros and cons of a graduate scheme. We compare going into a graduate scheme versus going into smaller startup companies. Check that one out, episode 82. You’ll find all of the show notes and everything that we’ve discussed today over at GraduateJobPodcast.com/Jumpstart where you’ll find a full transcript and all of the links from today. Moving onto the weekly staple questions, I’m interested for your responses here. Question number 1, what book would you point listeners towards?

Kabir: I was deliberating about this a bit, whether to go through a more functional business-oriented book or a less functional one. I’ve chosen one somewhere in the middle. It’s called Subscribed, and it’s by Tien Tzuo, who was, I think, the former CEO of Zuora. It’s really about how the world is changing from a product-led economy to a service-led economy and how the subscription model, so the model that Uber, the Netflix’s of this world use as the dominant way of providing those services and how the economy has changed, and actually what that means for the future as well. I think it’s just a very practical explanation of what happens. It lacks the jargon and fluff that some of these other books have, so I’d really recommend you to check that out if you’re interested in how the economy has changed from a business model perspective and what subscription services mean for that.

James: That’s not one I’ve come across myself, so I look forward to reading that. Links will be over in the show notes at GraduateJobPodcast.com/Jumpstart. The next question. Which internet resource would you point listeners towards?

Kabir: There is a venture capitalist or ex-venture-capitalist called Benedict Evans who’s very active on Twitter and also has a newsletter which I think you can sign up from his website, which I can provide you, James, with. I really think it’s an excellent resource for two reasons. One is that, actually, he’s obviously very knowledgeable about the world of tech, and how it’s changing, and all of that sort of stuff, which obviously a lot of people are.

More importantly, I think he has quite a critical lens on some of the tropes which get put out there. Even in good publications like the Economist or FT, often you’ll hear these vague statements like “AI is changing the world”, and AI is doing this, and we should get rid of big tech because it’s bad. There’s a lot of generalist terms which get thrown around, and I think he really interrogates those in a way that are actually super-interesting and gets below the surface-level discussions that people have.

For example, one of his newsletters is on why actually breaking up big tech is a lot more complicated than people think, and actually why it may not be the right answer, and what are the previous iterations of antitrust policy that have happened over the last several years which can be useful and even looking at things like what is a platform versus an aggregator and what these things actually mean in a lot more detail and in-depth. I think if you’re a graduate, particularly looking at getting below the surface of these concepts which are actually quite complicated, but are often discussed in quite a service-level way, it’s a really good way of doing that.

James: That sounds fascinating, and again, all great things to be able to name-drop in just to show your background knowledge when you get to the interview stage is always really going to impress with the different interviews you’re going to have. Final question today. What one tip would you give listeners that they can implement today to help them on their job search?

Kabir: It’s probably building on a theme that I’ve been talking about quite a lot, so apologies if it appears repetitive, but it’s really my main advice would be, “Show, don’t tell.” I’ve probably looked at a thousand CVs over the last six months to a year, and the amount of CVs that contain lots of information about how, “I’m an ambitious individual,” or, “I love doing this,” or, “I’m incredibly enthusiastic,” and there’s lots of words around all these things that you say you are, which are all great, but actually the thing which would show me that more than anything else would be, “At university, I started this society which had double its members in two years, and as a result, had X as much cash as it did before.”

That, for me, is a much shorter way of explaining the same point that you are an ambitious, enthusiastic, driven individual. Show, don’t tell both in your written applications, so when you’re doing your CV or any other written applications, but interview as well. If you’re saying something about yourself and you can’t bring up a point of evidence to back it up, then don’t say it because it just doesn’t resonate in the same way.

James: Brilliant, and great advice, and a good place for us to finish the interview on. Listeners, if you just make that one tweak with your CV, you will notice instant changes in the results that you’re getting. Great advice there, Kabir. What is the best way that people can find out more about you and about Jumpstart?

Kabir: In terms of me, I’m very happy to talk to people on LinkedIn if you reach out, so please do reach out to me on LinkedIn. Just search for Kabir Bali. I think that should come up fairly easy up on that form. You can also reach me by email at kabir@jumpstart-uk.com. That’s K-A-B-I-R@jumpstart-uk.com. In terms of Jumpstart itself, you can go to our website, which is www.jumpstart-uk.com, and you can then see, on that page, a bit more about us and how we work some case studies, and there’s a fairly easy route in terms of applying from there as well. We also have a LinkedIn page, so just search Jumpstart-UK on LinkedIn, and you should be able to find us there. We also have an Instagram, which is, again, Jumpstart-UK.

James: All of those links that Kabir just mentioned will be over in the show notes, so don’t worry about frantically scribbling them down. You can find them in the show notes at GraduateJobPodcast.com/Jumpstart. Kabir, thank you so much for joining me on the GraduateJobPodcast.

Kabir: No problem at all, James. Thank you for having me. It was a real pleasure to be here.

James: There we go, many thanks again to Kabir. Now what a brilliant opportunity that is, so many graduates are interested in working for a start-up, but up until now there hasn’t been a graduate scheme where they can easily apply to them, well there is now. And as Kabir mentioned the experience and the responsibility you will gain working in a start-up could be hugely different to a more traditional graduate scheme. If you aren’t sure about the pros and cons of a graduate scheme, or if a smaller smart-up is going to be right for you, check out the shownotes at graduatejobpodcast/jumpstart for links to episode 82 where I go through it in detail for the pros and cons of a graduate scheme. But what have you got to lose from applying to Jumpstart? As Kabir said, you can go through the process, see the firms and what they have to offer and then make the decision yourself, and you never know you could find yourself at a hot young start-up that everyone is talking about.

If you are set on a big graduate scheme though then you should be starting to get your applications in as they go live, and if so, do you want to be basking in the warm glow of multiple graduate job offers in 6 months, in the envious position of being able to choose between different job offers, then if so you need to sign up for my brilliant online course How To Get a Graduate Job. The first members are already in and have been loving the course content and also the weekly members-only webinars we are running each Tuesday night at 19.30, where I coach the group with their applications and provide feedback, support and help. Don’t take my words for how great the course is, listen to episodes 115 – 119 with Sibrah, Saffy, Jack, Callum and Athavan where they all talk about how great the How To Get a Graduate Job course is and the multiple offers they received as a result. Getting a graduate job doesn’t have to be a solo activity, get expert help with my course and completely change the way you approach applying for graduate jobs, from the initial application to the video interviews and the assessment centre, and all stages in between. Go to www.howtogetagraduatejob.com to find out more, and take advantage of the 4 hours of one on one coaching with yours truly that comes with the course if you sign up now. That’s www.howtogetagraduatejob.com. That’s everything from the episode today, I hope you enjoyed it, but more importantly, I hope you use it and apply it. See you next week.