Episode 112: How to get a graduate job you love in 2021

January 14, 2021 Podcast

A warm welcome to the first episode of the UK’s number one careers podcast for 2021. It might be cold outside but I have a special guest who will warm you up with his brilliant careers advice as we tackle the perennial issue of how to get a job you love, it is, of course, the one, the only, John Lees. In the show today we explore whether it is still realistic to expect to find a job you love, and how as a graduate you can find the right job and role out of the thousands of companies out there. We cover why speed is of the essence and why you need to take advantage of your confidence window when you start applying. We delve into how to understand your skills as a new graduate and how to make sure you aren’t overlooking your natural talents, and we also address the thorny issue of money, and just how important it should be in your search for a graduate job you love. And finally, we discuss why you should listen to your gut and not your parents as you look for a graduate job. As always, you can find a full transcript and links to everything we discuss, in the show notes, which today are at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/love2.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • If it is realistic to expect to find a job you love
  • How graduates can find the right job and role for them out of the thousands of companies out there
  • Why speed is of the essence when you start applying
  • Why you shouldn’t mistake rejection for feedback
  • How to understand your skills as a new graduate and not overlook your natural talents
  • How to factor the question of money into your search for a graduate job you love
  • Why viewing every role as a project is the secret to career success
  • Why you should listen to your gut and not your parents as you look for a graduate job

SELECTED LINKS INCLUDE:

Transcript – #112: How to get a graduate job you love in 2021

Announcer: Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, your home for weekly information and inspiration to help you get the graduate job of your dreams.

James Curran: Hello and welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each episode I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, graduate recruiters and career coaches who bring decades of experience into a byte size show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had when I graduated.

And a very warm welcome to you for the first episode of 2021, coming to you from a snowy locked down Leeds. It might be cold outside but I have a special guest who will warm you up with his brilliant careers advice as we tackle the perennial issue of How to Find a Job You Love, it is, of course, the one, the only, John Lees. In the show today we explore whether it is still realistic to expect to find a job you love, and how as a graduate you can find the right job and role out of the thousands of companies out there. We cover why speed is of the essence and why you need to take advantage of your confidence window when you start applying. We delve into how to understand your skills as a new graduate and how to make sure you aren’t overlooking your natural talents, and also address the thorny issue of money, and just how important it should be in your search for a graduate job you love. And finally, we discuss why you should listen to your gut and not your parents as you look for a graduate job. As always, you can find a full transcript and links to everything we discuss, in the show notes, which today are at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/love2. That’s love and the number2.

Before we start today let me tell you about my one-on-one coaching that I offer. This coaching is completely bespoke and tailored for exactly where you are in the graduate application process, from getting ready for video interviews, getting your CV ready, or getting you prepared and confident for an assessment centre. Now I could tell you about how great the coaching is but, I thought instead I would share from feedback from someone I’ve been helping recently.

Working with James was one of the best decisions I made this year! Through the coaching sessions, he helped me build my confidence and secure a place on a very competitive graduate scheme. He was encouraging, helpful, and went above and beyond to help me. I was more than prepared me for my application, interview and assessment centre and honestly if not for him I’m not sure if I would have achieved my place. It was definitely worth it! Going forward I would definitely recommend using this service if you want to gain insight on how to get a graduate scheme! You will not regret it. Go to www.graduatejobpodcast.com/coaching to find out more. Right, on with the show.

James: I’m pleased to welcome back to the show the careers legend, and author of more bestselling books than I’ve had hot dinners, who is back by popular demand for a record-breaking sixth time on the show. A very warm welcome to John Lees.

John Lees: Thanks James. It’s great to be with you.

James: It’s been nearly a year since you were on the show, John. What have you been up to over the last year?

John: I’m trying to piece together how to put out useful information to people who are looking for new jobs, and especially those who are interested in making a career change in a very, very strange economy. The current edition of How to Get a Job You’ll Love, actually, was submitted in February, and then I had to rewrite it in April because the market has changed so much in the first quarter of this year. We thought we’ve got to put something out completely different, so that was my biggest challenge of the year.

James: Today, we’re going to explore that latest edition of John’s bestselling book, How to Get a Job You Love, which you can find links to in the show notes over at graduatejobpodcast.com/love2, the number 2, that is. John, congratulations on the book. It was a cracker, and you’ve made it even better. It’s got more exercises, it’s got more links, and today, we’re going to delve into that one book. We’ll just barely scratch the surface of it because it’s got so much great advice on it, but we’ll make a start, all the less.

The book is titled “How to Get a Job You Love“, and in today’s COVID-ravaged job market, with fewer graduate jobs about, do you still think it’s realistic for people to expect to find a graduate job that they’re going to love? Should it not be maybe “How to Find a Job That You Won’t Hate Too Much”?

John: That might have been the alternative title. I still like the book title because it’s short words and it’s a great challenge for people. Sometimes, I’ve actually stood next to somebody picking it up off the shelf in a book shop or at an exhibition or something, and the kind of — you can see this conversation that goes on that says, “Do I really believe in this? Is this a crazy idea, is this outrageously idealistic?” and the original subtitle of the book, which has got lost along the way somewhere, but it’s a practical guide to managing your career, and I’m really interested in working between those two poles, because if you get people really excited about work and interested in the work which is a great match for them, and then give them practical tools to start to look for things in that direction, then things start to work.

It’s not the perfect job, and the advice is equally important right now because yes, these are strange times, and we’ve been through times of high unemployment before, and it does matter what we do for a living, because it takes up so much of our life and our day, and it matters what we put on our CV as well. That’s the other thing that people forget about is how to start to collect evidence, which looks good in 10 years’ time.

James: Completely, and on those you mentioned, it does take up such a huge part of your life, and it’s when you realize that you’re going to spend more time with your co-workers than you’re going to spend with your friends than you’re going to spend with your other half. It is important to find something that you enjoy doing, because otherwise, life is not going to be particularly happy if you’re unhappy at work all day long.

John: True.

James: Let’s, today, put ourselves in the position of a, maybe, final year student or very recent graduate, and I had a quick Google. There are nearly 4,000 companies in the UK that employ more than 500 people. There’s lots of companies out there, and that’s just ones that employ more than 500 people. How can a graduate find out which role and which company is going to be right for them?

John: That’s a sort of matching stage, isn’t it? It’s an important stage which is slightly different from, “How do I get in front of these people?” stage. The matching stage, the best way, pre-COVID, post-COVID, whatever, is always around checking in with people, trying to have conversations with people that know something about those organizations. Of course, the great gift to undergraduates and graduates is that there is an alumni organization now attached to nearly every institution of higher education. The lovely thing about alumni associations is it’s pre-contracted. Somebody’s already agreed to say yes to have a conversation with you. Reaching out to people who work in sectors that look interesting in organizations that seem to be at the right kind of area, that’s where you start. When we say, “The wrong company, but it’s going to be right for you,” don’t think of it as 100% right. Think of it as more like 70% right, a fairly healthy appropriate match for your interests, and your skills, and your areas of focus.

James: Definitely, and especially the alumni tool, which you can use on LinkedIn is such a crucial tool to use just to reach out to people and have those conversations as you mentioned. I’m working with one client at the moment who is looking for a training contract. They’ve been speaking to lots of alumni at different firms, and it is amazing the difference and the different feel you get from some firms – these are law firms, of course – whether they’re going to be quite dull, or really friendly, or really aggressive and long hours, and you’ve really got to be up for that type of work and environment. It does change on a firm-by-firm basis, and by having those conversations, as you mentioned, you can begin to just really understand which is going to be the right home for me and where am I going to excel and enjoy being at work. I like an example in the book, you talk about the jigsaw job exercise. Could you talk us through this one, and what it is, and how listeners can work through it?

John: Okay, well the idea behind this, and this really relates to what we’re talking about about matching yourself to opportunities in the world of work. The idea behind this is that rather than thinking in terms of job titles, and job titles can be immensely misleading because the same job title across three or four different organizations will often mean something completely different. Rather than going to the marketplace saying, “This is the job title I am searching for,” it’s good to talk about a mix of ingredients, and how do you get that mix, whether you can look at yourself, look at the issue of, “What kind of work would I like to do?” rather like somebody buying a jigsaw, but buying a jigsaw that isn’t in a box. It’s in a plastic bag, you bought it at a jumble sale, you have no idea what it shows, you have no idea what the final picture looks like.

What do you do? You piece it together, don’t you? You probably start with the edges, or the corners, or things that are identifiable, and you can do that yourself with your own career interests by just imagining what it feels like — just imagining the feeling, if you’d like, of being in a job which is relatively satisfying that you’ve been in it for a year and it’s still of interest to you, so it’s not just brand new, and then asking yourself questions like, “What’s around me? What’s the physical environment like?” because for some people, being in a busy office, or being in a metropolitan, or a mixed cultural setting, those are things that really matter.

Then, you can just extend your gaze from that in this virtual job that you’re describing. “Okay, what are the people like around me? What’s my boss like? What am I doing most of the time? What skills am I using? What kind of language am I using at work? What are the challenges? What have I got to look forward to?” I think you maybe got the idea that what you’re doing is building this like you would put together a jigsaw, letting go of the idea of what’s the whole thing called and starting to build up those ingredients. Have I described that in a way which makes sense?

James: That makes sense, and yeah, I think it’s a really powerful exercise to do. It’s just taking the time, and the energy, and the effort to actually sit down and to think about what type of role is going to suit me, and if you can do that thinking early on, it will save yourself a lot of trouble and hassle further down the line if you can actually put the effort in. Sadly though, few people do and just tend to want to get into sort of busy mode straight away and just start applying for stuff, and just —

John: Well, they do, yeah.

James: — get on with it.

John: They do, right, but unfortunately, that’s very counterproductive because if you’re not quite sure what you want to say to people, and you don’t know what you’re looking for, that’s a really poor combination because what tends to happen is you’ve put a lot of effort in aiming for jobs and you don’t get any response at all, and that actually has a very powerful effect on confidence. It’s a very typical thing I see with graduates is that they apply for quite high-level, quite exciting jobs in well-known organizations, and they just don’t get anywhere near the process. That has nothing to do with them. It’s just pure statistics in terms of what happens if 800 people are applying for the same role or internship. But, they take it as kind of a personal critique, and they trust their goals. You’ve seen it too, haven’t you?

The funny thing I say about the jigsaw exercise, it’s not just reflective. It’s also practical because it gets you to the point where if somebody says, “Well, tell me about you. Why should we be talking to you today?” you’re able to say the things that you know work really well for you. I enjoy working with these kinds of people, these are the kinds of skills that I love using, this is what I love to know about, this is how I can absorb things really quickly and hit the deck running,” so you start to develop a narrative as well. It’s not just inward-looking; it’s outward-facing as a way communicating your strengths.

James: Yeah, and you talk about confidence there, and it’s something we’ve talked about with previous episodes is the idea of the confidence window, and I think that’s a really important thing to keep in mind, and maybe just want to take a short moment just to explain the confidence window, just a bit more detail?

John: It’s an idea that I played with based on experience of working with clients for decades, really, and when you’re working with someone in the first stages of job search activity, their confidence tends to be quite high. It doesn’t matter how much the experience they’ve got. They’re just vaguely optimistic about their idea. “Well, I’ve got a CV, I can throw it out there, and get on with things, and I’ve got some ideas.” In that initial phase, they’re quite optimistic and quite positive about their own skills and experience, and of course, it doesn’t take much and it can be radio silence can convince people that their skills are not quite as good as they thought they were, or the market is much tougher than you imagined, and that’s what I mean by the window.

If you’re wasting time applying for jobs that you’ll never get near, or sending out a CV which really doesn’t explain anything very good about you, then that time is wasted in that confidence window where you are more likely to convey enthusiasm, and energy, and positivity than if you get anywhere near an organization.

James: Yeah, and as we’ve talked about in the past, rejection isn’t feedback. Feedback is feedback. I really liked that phrase.

John: It’s true, isn’t it?

James: Yeah, and I do think with client I coach where, as you said, they’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the beginning, and it’s just making sure the initial period where they do have that confidence, we’re putting in high-quality applications so that they don’t get bumped back, and they don’t then get into that spiral where they do lose confidence. It’s, as you talked about, making sure that their CVs are really conveying their unique selling points and ticking off the things they need to tick off from the job spec, and going to get them through to the next stage of the process, which is so important.

Let’s move on then. We’ve touched upon skills. What would you suggest is the best way for people to begin to understand what their skills are as they come to the end of their time at university or just after university?

John: The obvious starting point is to think about skills which might be attractive to an organization. I say that very deliberately because most graduate CVs I look at, and I don’t do a lot of work with brand-new graduates, as you know, James, but occasionally for family and friends, or somebody that’s maybe just two years into a career. I’ll have a look at what is effectively a CV from a relatively recent graduate. What they tend to do is to major on things that have been recent experiences, which is largely about learning. The first thing about skills is if you’ve done anything which looks like work, whether that’s volunteering, or being an intern, or even teamwork, or organizational work, or communication work as part of your studies, then that’s the stuff to foreground in a CV.

That’s the first point. The second is this is kind of a two-part thing, really, because I think, to some extent, you can’t complete degree-level studies without using quite a wide range of skills, and without starting to understand what comes easily, and where you can get results, and what feels like a good experience. That’s worth analysing to think, “Well, what about should we be doing?” and it’s about analysing things, it’s about expressing complicated ideas in simple language, is it about working well in teams? And then find and energize where you’re getting that down on paper. Not just listing those skills, but demonstrating why those skills are important to you and what you’ll achieve with them. This is a narrative that comes alongside them.

I think also, in all fairness, because of limited exposure to the world at work that most graduates would say is their experience, then there has to be some sense of potential as well, so, “I think I’m good at this, but I learn fast, and I’d love to have exposure to this environment, or this technology, or this kind of working environment.” It’s that willingness to try things out, and it’s probably true to say that we’ve become much more secure, I think, about our skill set, having been in the world of work for maybe 10 years, because you’ve tried different things. That was a wonderful advantage of the old-fashioned graduate training programs was that people were cycled around organizations, and through that, they kind of discovered where they would sit comfortably and what their skills really were.

It’s a question of looking at what you’ve done that relates to work in any way, including any work that you’ve done. Even Saturday jobs, holiday jobs you did when you were younger, fine, put those in as well and talk about where you’ve made the difference, and secondly, translate anything that you’ve done in your studies which is skill-based into language which an employer will find interesting.

James: Definitely, and it’s that point about demonstrating the skills, not just having a laundry list of listing off all the amazing skills that you think you’ve got. It’s about being able to demonstrate where you’ve developed them, whether it’s in university societies, whether it’s in work experience, as you mentioned, but just being clear about where you can show your communication skills. Was it when you’ve been — the time you were showing prospective students around the campus or your department? Was it the leadership skills you’ve developed through your team sport at university? It’s being really clear about where you can demonstrate, not just listing them out and just leaving them hanging there.

A key thing as well is ask your friends what your skills or what they think your skills are, because often, if it’s something that’s just really natural and it’s just part of who you are, you can find with the clients I coach that they can really easily overlook them. This morning, I was speaking to one client who is a native-level speaker in French and also fluent in Spanish. But, since the French is sort of native and it’s just the skills that they’ve got, I think it’s really easy to downplay it. For you, it just comes so naturally. You’ve grown up speaking two languages, and it’s just a part of who you are. But, from an employer’s perspective, that’s an amazing skill set to have is to be fluent in three languages: English, French, and Spanish. You need to be really shouting it from the rooftops, and making sure that it’s really clear and prominent, and making sure that you’re really highlighting it in the interviews. It’s just sometimes that awareness can come better from other people looking in than it can coming from yourself looking out.

John: I agree with that, and it’s often hidden away in the last line of page 2 where somebody’s done some amazing youth work, or done a Duke of Edinburgh Award, or something like that, and it’s hidden so deep in the document, you think, “Hang on a minute, this is brilliant. Why were you not talking about this earlier?” Actually, they can do it because, occasionally, I’ve gone back to my old university and somebody stood me in the corner and said, “Would you look at people’s CVs?” and I don’t really want to do a full CV edit with somebody, but what I tend to do is just say, “Alright, give me your CV. Let’s put it facedown. Now, tell me why I would recommend you to an organization? What about you do I need to know?” and they tell me the most amazing stuff. They tell me about what they really enjoy doing, and these amazing projects, and all this extracurricular activity, and those amazing trips they’ve been on that they’ve organized, and then I turn the CV over, and I say, “Where do I find this in the first 30 words?” and it’s never there. You’ve had the same experience?

James: Oh, completely.

John: So, we can think for ourselves.

James: I think it’s such a valuable exercise, and that’s one I think I took from your career master class when I did it many years ago. The coaching master class, John, you talked about it there, and yeah, it’s such a brilliant exercise. You’re completely right. People, the things that they’ll tell you about, their unique selling points, often aren’t reflected in the CV, so listeners, definitely take that away, and have a think. Look at your own CV and think, “What are the three things I want to be pulling out from here that are really going to impress the recruiter?” and see if, as John mentioned, are they in the first 30 words of the CV? I’d probably bet they’re not, so it’s definitely something to be thinking about.

Let’s move on, John, then. One aspect that graduates definitely think about, especially they’re coming out now with ever-greater amounts of student debt, is they want to start repaying that as quickly as possible. Money makes the world go round, and it also does drive graduate job decisions, and the starting salaries for firms can really range from probably not much lower than bottom 20s. If you’re going into investment bank or law with some really aggressive American firm, you’re really looking at sort of 50+. All graduates seem to know about the one low-cost German supermarket that tries to lure grads in with an Audi A4 and 44k starting salary, which does turn a lot of heads, and I’m sure drive a lot of applications, but it’s a really tough scheme with very, very, very long working hours. When you’re thinking about getting a graduate job you love, where should money come into the equation?

John: That’s an important question, isn’t it? Because, I think what happens is we tend to polarize the world into jobs that pay well and jobs that are interesting or fun, and I really always encourage people to look for a good compromise. At every stage of life, career coaches meet people who say, “Listen, I really need to get back into work quickly, but it also matters to me what I do,” and that’s a statement not of desperation, but it’s a statement of a reasonable compromise. Don’t take anything, but take something that adds to your skill set, gives you useful experience, something you can talk about with interest and enthusiasm in 10 years’ time when you’re in front of an interviewer.

It also changes the way you present yourself because rather than saying, “I’m very flexible, I could do anything,” you’re starting to say, “I’m really looking for an opportunity which provides me with this learning experience.” Yes, it may not be very well-paid, and a lot of starter jobs are not at the moment, but at least if you’re getting other good elements in the deal and you’ve got some control over it — by control, I simply mean choice that you can say to someone, “I took it for a good reason. I knew I’d be paid at a relatively low level for the first couple of years,” or, “I know it would give me exposure to that sector or that organization.” Don’t trash everything just in order to meet financial demands and goals, which are also very important.

James: Of my experience with starting graduate schemes and friends on different graduate schemes or maybe not on graduate schemes, there’s probably quite a big divergence of salaries when we all started working, but five, 10 years down the line, it really just all converges and people tend to be on similar amounts. What you start on is not going to be where you’ll finish on further down in your career. I really like, in your book, you break down the word “career”, which comes, apparently, from the Latin “carrus”, a wheeled vehicle a bit like a chariot or a carriage. If you think about your career in that term, as a wheeled vehicle, then it’s a vehicle that’s going to take you to different places at different times, and sometimes those roads will be straight, and sometimes they might be a bit more windy. As you said, if you’re getting that experience and it’s something that you’re interested in, however it’s a low starting salary or not, if you’re doing something you enjoy, that you’re good at, then rewards will quickly follow what you’re doing.

John: What you’re learning is also important. The trap I do see some people get stuck in their 20s, having left university, is that they tend to carry on doing the same kind of work that they were doing in vocations, and typically things like bio work and so on. I know the hospitality industry’s been hammered, so there’s less of that work around as well. There is a slight danger if you continue in that mode, then that’s what your CV represents is somebody who’s stuck in doing kind of holiday jobs. It is sometimes worth the extra effort to say, “How can I now get some experience which starts to shape up a more structured career where I’m more likely to move into slightly senior or at least better-paid positions, start to work my way up kind of ladder?”

James: Every role you get is going to teach you more about what you want and what you don’t want. One of the clients I’m working with completed a year as part of his course of working in Central London for a big government department, and flew on from that. He really enjoyed the work, the work was amazing, but he realized, actually, that Central London wasn’t the place for him. He didn’t like the commute, and much prefers looking for working in somewhere just outside London, so that’s where he’s been applying. He can talk honestly about why that is a place that he wants to be. Also, from the work, he picked out the aspects that he really enjoyed and bits that he didn’t, and that’s really helped focus and narrow down his job search not only location-wise, but also the specifics of the type of work he’s looking for with the big graduate schemes, making it more client-focused, and the bits that he really enjoyed from that client aspect.

Everything you do, no matter what the work is, have a really careful think about, “What do I like about this, what do I not like about it?” and just keep on heading in the direction of the things of more of what you like and less of what you don’t like.

John: I like that idea, and it actually relates to what an awful lot of people are learning to do now in their careers, which is to treat roles as a series of projects, because no organization has any idea what it’s going to be like in 12 months’ time from now. You can’t plan a 10-year career anywhere. But, if you think, “Right, what am I doing for the next six months? What will I add to my CV? How am I going to talk about this? How am I going to go about the decision-making process, by which I mean I took this role because, and then I moved on because?” and that’s a project mind-set that starts to change the way people talk about themselves and the way they present to organizations.

James: Completely, and as you mentioned, the company you start your graduate career with is not going to be where you retire. You’re going to go through many different companies, many different industries, many different careers. See it as they step in the process. You’re not going to be the 40 years later, I would extremely doubt. I think the project mind-set is a really important one.

Time is running away with us, John, so maybe one last question before we wrap up today. I like in the book how you talk about letting other people shape where we want to go in our careers, and you give a couple of vignettes of different stories from career coaches where parents have maybe suggested to their kids that they should look for a humbler job or, “It’s not about what you want to do. It’s about what you can do,” and from the clients I coach, depending on the client, they do have a lot of pressure from their parents, “Take the first thing you get offered.” Negatively, outside influences can really drag people down. What would you suggest that they can do to help combat this?

John: That’s, strangely enough, the precise topic I was talking about very recently. I’ve been doing a series of webinars with an organization called Careershifters, and the specific topic has been job hunting and career change in the COVID marketplace, and the first element I dealt with for the people changing careers was expectations of other people. When I’m working with a client, I’m always listening and I’m asking myself, “Who is leaning over the client’s shoulder? Who is influencing them at home?” and it’s such a powerful influence.

I talked about my client, Jill, who has friends and family who print off job ads from the internet, and put them in front of her and say, “This is a bit perfect for you,” but that’s the problem is this is the kind of job that Jill was doing 10 years ago, and it would bore her stupid. It’s tremendous pressure, so if you’re under that kind of pressure, if you’re listening to this podcast, and you’re under that kind of pressure, my advice is think about who else you can talk to. Parents can be great supporters, but they are also partly reflecting the way the job market was 20 years ago, and certainly older generations beyond that definitely don’t have an understanding of what the world of work is like, and also they’re frightened on your behalf. The advice to, “Take anything, just take an ordinary job, don’t be too fussy,” that comes from fear, doesn’t it? Fear of people being left out.

It’s also good to put in your corner people who are positive-minded, who will remind you what you’re good at, and keep encouraging you to open doors, and try things out, go and look at other things, go and have that conversation, pick up that phone to the alumni member. You need people like that as well.

James: Yeah, 100%, and I did have this with one client. What I did was I came up with podcast episode, episode 95, “A Parent’s Guide to Helping Their Child to Get a Graduate Job”. If your parents are giving you pressure, then send this episode to them because I tell them, in no uncertain terms, that they need to focus their attention and energy in a positive way, and don’t panic, not get on top of you, and realize that your career is not their career, which is often one aspect of people wanting to relive their unfulfilled career aspirations through their kids.

John: Totally. I couldn’t agree more. I must listen to that. I had a client who said, “I think I’d love to be a teacher, but both of my parents are teachers, and they’ve really put me off.” I said, “Well listen, your parents are in their 50s, at the end of their teaching career, and they’re worn out. You need to talk to 21-year-olds who’ve just started teaching and find out what their experience is,” so you’ve got to talk to the right generation.

James: Definitely, and both my parents are teachers, and they told me, in no uncertain terms, not to be a teacher. I guess maybe that’s why I took the podcast route as opposed to the formal teacher route. Great advice there, as always, John. Time is ticking away. John, what is the best way that people get in touch with you and the work that you do?

John: Sure, you can find me on www.johnleescareers.com, and as I said, I’m also doing a lot of work with the organization Careershifters, who’ve put out some great blogs and some great material. Just Google my name against Careershifters, and you should have access to some of the recent webinars that we’ve been doing as well. Incidentally, Careershifters have also been the media partner for the new edition of How to Get a Job You Love, which is featured on the cover, and it includes a free career change test for every book reader. That’s some type of resource that you might like to get people to think about.

James: Excellent, and I will link to everything that you’ve mentioned there in the show notes, which people can find at graduatejobpodcast.com/love, and then the number 2. I’ll also link to the other episodes where John has been on the show dispensing his careers wisdom. John, thank you so much for joining us on the Graduate Job Podcast.

John: Thank you.

James: Many thanks again to the always brilliant John Lees. If you are uncertain about which direction you want to go in your career, then How to Find a Job You Love is the book you need to read, check it out in the shownotes, there is a reason that it has been republished umpteen times, and that reason is that it is great. And once you have read Johns book and know what graduate schemes you want to apply to, give me a shout and I can help you with all aspects of the application. From getting your CV and cover letter right, through to one on one coaching for the video interviews and assessment centres so that you can walk in confident that you will perform at your best. You only get one shot each year to apply for the big graduate schemes, so you need to make sure that you are properly prepared and ready! I also offer a completely free 30-minute coaching session with me where we can go over your applications, or do mock interview practice, or whatever you want to focus on. It’s completely free, so take advantage of it, again, find the details in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/love2. I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly; I hope you use it and apply it. See you next week.