Concise Career Guides
18
Creative Job Hunting and
Networking in a Difficult
Economic Climate
The graduate job market
The graduate job market has been going
through rapid change for a number of years
and recent recession and economic uncertainty
world-wide has made employment markets
more unpredictable and often difficult to break
into. There has been more than a ten-fold
increase since 1960 in the numbers of UK
graduates. At the same time, jobs themselves
have changed, with many more being offered
on part-time or temporary contracts. Far fewer
people will spend all their working lives in one
career, let alone with one employer.
Individuals will need to take greater charge
of their own career development. Building
a portfolio of skills and experience through
paid and voluntary employment, personal
life experiences (e.g. hobbies, travel, and
extracurricular activities) and further study will
be the key to success in this market.
This guide looks at job-hunting strategies you
can adopt in this new and challenging world.
If there is one single message here, it is that
success will go to those who are realistic,
flexible and prepared to look at all the options.
What are your options?
If you are graduating shortly, or already have
your degree, then your main choices are:
• A traditional graduate job (tgj).
• A new graduate job (ngj).
• A job where a degree is not required or
advantageous (such jobs are sometimes
perhaps a bit disparagingly called
MacJobs).
• A period of work experience or internship,
usually short-term for a few weeks or
months, may be paid or unpaid.
• Self-employment or freelance work
(although self employment usually requires
some financial independence or backing
and both these options, though expanding,
are not commonly undertaken by graduates
directly after a degree.)
• A full-time post-graduate course to enhance
your skills before you enter the job market.
• Part-time study to enhance your skills and
knowledge, perhaps combined with part-
time or full-time work.
• Voluntary work that will improve your
confidence and skills and your chances of
getting a job.
• Time out, e.g. to travel abroad or raise a
family.
If you have decided to look for a job then the
rest of this guide investigates in more detail
the job market that exists on graduation.
Other Concise Careers Guides in this series
look at the equally important issues of how
you can market yourself effectively on paper
(CVs and application forms), or at interview
and assessment centres and at the other
options listed above, i.e. self-employment and
postgraduate study.
Employability & Careers Service
Centre for Learning Support and Development
 Concise Career Guides
Traditional Graduate Jobs (TGJs)
What are traditional graduate jobs? Graduate
jobs have traditionally been “graduate
traineeships” or “graduate schemes” in
management or the professions and are mostly
(but not exclusively) offered by large private
companies, utility companies or public sector
organisations like the NHS or Civil Service.
Fast track management schemes (like the Civil
Service Fast Stream for example) would also
belong to this group.
What are the advantages?
Formal training is given, normally to a very
high standard and there may be an opportunity
to work in different departments within
the company and so gain wider business
knowledge. The starting pay is often higher
than in the new graduate jobs. These jobs
have high status and kudos and tend to be well
regarded by friends, relatives and graduates
themselves.
What are the pitfalls?
One problem is that many of these jobs are
extremely competitive and very hard to get.
Many companies will only consider graduates
with a 2.1 or 1st class honours degree. Some
will also reject you if you have poor A-level
grades.
Some companies may be more likely to
consider younger graduates in preference
to older graduates, although with age
discrimination legislation having been in
place since 2006, this has encouraged some
organisations to examine their attitude to older
applicants and realise the value of a more
mature recruit. Companies will not only “cherry
pick” the most academic graduates, they will
also try to find those with the best transferable
and interpersonal skills. The fact that there are
many more people entering higher education
than a decade ago, plus the reduction in
the number of vacancies as a result of the
economic climate, means that competition for
these jobs has grown even more intense.
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These are jobs where rewards are high but a
lot is demanded in return. Hours worked are
usually long and may exceed what is formally
asked for in the job description. Some jobs
require geographical mobility both within the
UK and overseas. For some of these jobs, you
may have to apply well in advance (sometimes
before Christmas of your final year). Getting in
often involves sitting psychometric tests and
attending an assessment centre, as well as
filling in paper or online application forms and
attending an interview.
Where can you look for this
kind of job?
• The two main graduate directories – the
Graduate Prospects Directory and Hobson’s
Graduate Employment and Training (GET)
Directory - are both essential reading.
These are published every autumn and
are available free of charge from the
Employability & Careers Service resource
room on the ground floor of Technopark.
Both directories are also available online:
• www.prospects.ac.uk/graduate_
employers.htm
• www.get.hobsons.co.uk/
• Graduate Prospects also has an excellent
website at www.prospects.ac.uk and our
Concise Careers Guide to what you can find
on the website is available in print from the
Employability & Careers Service or from our
website. The website includes hundreds of
detailed occupational profiles for different
graduate jobs and each one has a section
on typical employers and where they may
advertise their vacancies. The direct link is
www.prospects.ac.uk/links/occupations.
• Prospects Graduate is an online digital
magazine with immediate vacancies,
accessed from the home page of the
Graduate Prospects website.
• Prospects Finalist is aimed at students in
their final year and is published in paper
format and online four times a year.
 Creative Job Hunting and Networking in a Difficult Economic Climate
• The Target (GTI) Guides cover specialist
areas of graduate employment and the
website www.targetjobs.co.uk also lists
vacancies suitable for graduates. Printed
copies of the Target Guides are available
free from the Employability & Careers
Service.
• Other websites that focus on vacancies for
new graduates:
• www.milkround.com
• www.insidecareers.com
• www.get.hobsons.co.uk
• www.graduate-jobs.com
• www.wikijob.co.uk
• www.thegraduate.co.uk
• www.reed.co.uk/graduate
• Additional sources of vacancy information
include the local, national and technical
press, magazines and journals, recruitment
and careers fairs. All large companies
(and many smaller ones) have websites
with sections devoted to graduate
recruitment and many use online application
procedures.
What is the future of these jobs?
Large companies in recent years have been
subject to a number of market forces including:
• Globalisation of markets
• Downsizing and de-layering of middle
management
• Acquisitions and mergers
• And most recently, the recession and credit
crunch
The likely outcome of all this is that a smaller
number of graduates will be offered high
rewards to do jobs that are very demanding,
given early responsibility and chances for
career enhancement.
New Graduate Jobs (NGJ’s).
What are new graduate jobs?
Some jobs have become broader and more
diversified, with people doing a lot more than
before, aided by the revolution in IT. Some of
these jobs did not exist 10 or 20 years ago.
While some of these jobs may be with large
employers, many are with small to medium
sized employers (SMEs). A number of these
new jobs are administrative in nature but
some have evolved from technician roles that
previously might have gone to “bright” school
leavers rather than graduates.
What is an SME?
The Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills (BIS) defines an SME as an organisation
with between 1 and 250 employees.
What are the advantages?
New graduate jobs may be easier to get.
There is normally less competition than for
traditional graduate jobs. The employer is more
likely to consider the right candidate even if
that person does not have a 2.1 or a 1st or
a string of high grade A levels. For many of
these jobs employers will not use assessment
centres or psychometric tests, although they
will still want evidence of good people skills
like communication and teamwork as well as
personal skills like problem solving and time
management.
There may be greater variety of work in an
SME. With some of these jobs it could be
easier to balance work with other demands and
interests in life, like family commitments. Many
of these jobs require good IT skills.
What are the pitfalls?
On the whole these jobs are likely to pay less
than traditional graduate jobs. There should
be opportunities to develop your skills and
experience but they may lack the formal training
element of traditional graduate jobs. These jobs
may lack the status and kudos of traditional
graduate jobs, but they can nevertheless be
challenging and rewarding.
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 Concise Career Guides
Where do I look for a new
graduate job?
Our own LSBU online JobShop and website
www.lsbu.ac.uk/clsd/careers has details of all
jobs and work experience opportunities notified
to us by employers. The JobShop database
advertises full-time, part-time, voluntary and
temporary positions, as well as industrial
placements and internships. In order to get the
password to register for the JobShop you will
need to bring your CV to a Quick Query session
with a Careers Adviser who can check it for you
and offer advice on improvements if necessary.
Times of sessions appear on our website.
These new graduate jobs are much more likely
to be advertised locally than nationally. Try the
local press, e.g. South London Press and the
free papers The Metro, and Evening Standard,
or any that are published where you live. You
can access a range of national and regional
newspapers via the Paperboy website –
www.thepaperboy.com/uk. Jobcentre Plus is
a government agency which advertises jobs at
all levels and which is free to employers and
jobseekers. Its offices are found in major high
streets and it also publishes job-hunting advice
and vacancy details online at
www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk New graduate
jobs (and sometimes even traditional graduate
jobs) may be found by contacting recruitment
agencies and the website of the Recruitment
and Employment Confederation
www.rec.uk.com has an option to search for
recruitment agencies that handle different types
of job. The REC website also has information
about the London labour market.
Possible companies to contact speculatively
can be found either in the paper directories or
using the searchable websites of organisations
like Thomson’s www.thomsonlocal.com or
Yellow Pages www.yell.co.uk.
In the future there is little doubt that more
graduates will begin their careers in these new
areas of the graduate job market.
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MacJobs
What are MacJobs?
For current purposes MacJobs can be defined
as jobs for which the possession of a degree
is neither a requirement nor confers any kind
of advantage. These are also jobs where
there may be little automatic progression to
more senior roles and responsibilities and little
chance to define the parameters of your own
role.
Advantages of MacJobs
A MacJob is still a job! From a prospective
employer’s point of view, that may be better
than taking on someone who is actually
unemployed and may have forgotten what it
is like to work. MacJobs may be low in status
but many still develop competencies like
teamwork and customer service skills that are
wanted by employers with “proper” graduate
jobs. MacJobs are comparatively easy to get –
indeed many students work part-time in these
kinds of jobs during their time at university. For
this reason some students may opt for this kind
of job in the transition period from university
to work. If you are working part-time, then a
MacJob might be combined with other things
(e.g. voluntary work, freelancing, further part-
time study) to create a portfolio of work and self
development activities. Portfolio working has
already become much more common than it
used to be in the past.
What are the pitfalls?
These jobs are not high in kudos or status.
If you are working full-time it may be easy to
get into a rut and neglect your job hunting and
longer-term career goals. Stay too long in these
jobs after graduating and it may become hard
to convince graduate recruiters that you are
capable of taking on more responsibility.
 Creative Job Hunting and Networking in a Difficult Economic Climate
What is the future of these jobs?
In spite of some predictions to the contrary,
MacJobs seem to be with us for the foreseeable
future, especially in service sectors of the
economy such as hospitality, catering, retail etc.
Where do you look for MacJobs?
Many (but not all) of these jobs are temporary
or part-time in nature. Employability & Careers
Service advertises part-time and temporary
jobs, not necessarily requiring a degree,
through our online JobShop www.lsbu.ac.uk/
clsd/careers. You can use the JobShop whilst
you are a student here and for up to two years
after you graduate. Other sources for this kind
of work include local newspapers and your
local jobcentre. Details of how to access local
newspapers and Jobcentre Plus, as well as
how to register for the LSBU JobShop, are
given above.
Graduate Internships and Work
Experience
A recent trend for new graduates coming on to
the job market in difficult economic conditions
with little or no relevant work experience has
been to consider undertaking a short internship
or period of work experience to learn more
about their selected industry or career. A
number of organisations have set up internship
schemes, including the Government initiated
Graduate Talent Pool. These opportunities may
be paid or unpaid and may last anything from
a few weeks to a number of months. Useful
websites for internships:
• Graduate Talent Pool
• www.graduatetalentpool.direct.gov.uk
• Enternships
• www.enternships.com/
• Adab Trust
• www.adab-trust.org/
• Step Enterprises
• www.step.org.uk
• Knowledgedock
• www.knowledgedock.com/en/students/
student_placements/
Whatever type of work you are seeking,
understanding the value of creative job hunting
and networking is very important.
Creative Job Hunting and
Networking
It is estimated that about 65% of job vacancies
are never advertised because employers
already have a pool of CVs from suitable
applicants, they ask their own staff to spread
the word that there are vacancies available,
or they advertise the job internally within the
company, or they promote a current member of
staff.
Creative job hunting is an umbrella term
for a number of job hunting techniques
that are designed to tap into some of these
opportunities. It can take many forms and the
main ones are described below.
Speculative applications
Making a speculative application means
contacting a company that you have
researched, and would like to work for, but who
may not be advertising vacancies at that time.
There are different ways to do this:
• You could send them a good CV and
covering letter by post explaining your
interest. It is essential that you focus
your covering letter specifically on that
organisation so it is obvious that you know
who they are and what they do. A generic
letter that you might send to all employers
won’t necessarily be effective.
• Try to mention something about yourself
that is different and that will interest them,
e.g. details of an individual project or
dissertation that might have some business
interest for them. This is potentially your
USP (Unique Selling Point).
• If possible, find out the name of a member
of staff to whom you can address your
letter so that it doesn’t disappear into a
postal system and be passed around an
organisation aimlessly. If you don’t have
a named person, try addressing it to the
Graduate Recruitment Manager.
5
 Concise Career Guides
• You can do the same via email but because
it is very easy to delete an unwanted email,
it may be better to try an alternative method
of contacting the company first and then
asking if you can email your CV.
• You could phone them – but if you do it is
a good idea to prepare a “script” first that
outlines how you are going to introduce
yourself and describe your background and
skills to them.
• You could visit the organisation and try to
talk to someone but it can be extremely
difficult to get past a reception or security
desk (if you do this it is very important to
tell someone where you have gone). You
can, of course, use these approaches in
combination. Reading industry-specific
publications or websites for your area of
interest is a good way to keep in touch
with what is going on in your field, but it
can also give you some leads for making
contact with different organisations. So
for example, you might read in Computer
Weekly about a company that has been
awarded the contract to manage a
government department’s IT system. This
then prompts you to write to that company
with your CV, saying that you have read this
piece of news in the computing press, and
asking if this new contract means they are
recruiting additional staff. Using searchable
online business directories to find details of
companies or organisations is often a good
way of identifying employers for speculative
approaches. Some are mentioned above,
others may include:
• Kelly’s Directories
(business to business suppliers)
• www.kellysearch.co.uk
• Kompass
(manufacturing and service industries)
• www.kompass.co.uk
• LexisNexis Butterworth
• www.lexisnexis.co.uk
• Mint (UK company information)
• http://mintportal.bvdep.com/
• FAME (UK company information)
• http://fame.bvdep.com
6
Links to a wide range of suitable industry-
specific directories can be found on the
Graduate Prospects website also:
• www.prospects.ac.uk/industries.htm
• www.prospects.ac.uk/links/occupations
Networking
Networking means actively seeking and
maintaining contacts with people who might be
able to help you in your chosen career. Once
you find one person, even if they can’t help you
themselves, they may be able to suggest others
to add to your “network”.
You should use all aspects of your life to
identify your potential networking contacts.
They may be approached formally or informally,
in writing by letter or email or verbally via
telephone or meeting face-to-face, using your
lecturers, colleagues, former employers, fellow
students, friends, casual acquaintances or
relatives initially to gain a name or contact
details. Networking opportunities may come
from a variety of sources:
• Temporary or part-time work where you can
enhance your skills and industry knowledge
as well as meeting people in the sort of job
you’d like for yourself
• Voluntary work – can be used to
demonstrate commitment as well as
developing skills and knowledge.
• Professional bodies – joining an appropriate
one is often a very worthwhile investment
of time and money as these organisations
may offer regional meetings, workshops,
training events, conferences or seminars,
websites with discussion groups or forums,
professional blogs or wikis. Any opportunity
to meet people (in person or online) in your
chosen industry or profession should be
grasped wherever possible and professional
bodies can give you those opportunities.
• Online networking - recent increased
usage of social and business networking
sites like Facebook (www.facebook.
com), Twitter (www.twitter.com), Linkedin
(www.linkedin.com) and Viadeo (www.
viadeo.com) have had both a positive
and a negative impact for jobseekers. On
the positive side, you can search for and
 Creative Job Hunting and Networking in a Difficult Economic Climate
make contact with people who may be
able to help you to find a job by providing
information and insight into their own career
and job success or by alerting you to a
vacancy that may be coming up in their
organisation. On the negative side, some
graduates have been refused jobs because
detrimental personal information about them
has been discovered online. When setting
up any online presence, do be aware of the
“digital footprint” that you are generating
that can be investigated by recruiters or
prospective colleagues.
• Careers or recruitment fairs or any
sort of exhibition where employers are
gathered together are a chance for you
to speak directly to representatives from
organisations for which you’d like to work.
You may be able to get names and contact
details for other people in their organisation
who can help you.
Let all the contacts in your network know what
your plans are and that you are actively seeking
a job so they will let you know as soon as they
hear of a vacancy. If you make an application
to an organisation on the strength of a
suggestion from a contact, always mention that
you have spoken to that individual and been
recommended to apply. This shows you have
been doing your research and as a result your
application may have more chance of being
read.
Job shadowing
Job shadowing means asking an employer if
you can come in for a short time (typically half
a day or a day) to observe somebody doing
the job you are interested in. This is a good
way to get a foot in the door of large graduate
recruiters and a way of researching more
advanced professions where voluntary work
might be very difficult to obtain and may not
give you any real insight into the job anyway.
Information interviewing
This is similar to job shadowing but involves
interviewing the person doing the job to find out
more about them and their role. So you should
have a list of questions like these:
• How did you get your first break?
• What do you like/dislike about your
chosen profession?
• What are your tips for those looking for
work in this field?
These questions could also be put to
contacts you might make via online networks.
Information interviewing shouldn’t be attempted
until you have researched the occupation
thoroughly first.
Voluntary work
There are parts of the graduate job market
where offering to spend some time working
for nothing is very common and occasionally
almost obligatory, e.g. some media jobs, many
“caring” professions, environmental careers and
of course, charities and voluntary agencies rely
heavily on volunteers for a variety of roles.
In other parts of the job market, employers
may be quite suspicious of an offer to “work
for nothing”. Are you just desperate and
hoping someone will show you what to do? In
these instances job shadowing or information
interviewing may be better opening alternatives.
Any opportunity to undertake voluntary work
should be viewed as a way to develop your
transferable skills and gain experience as well
as providing some assistance or support to
individuals or organisations.
LSBU advertises voluntary work opportunities
on the JobShop website. For wider voluntary
opportunities there is a section of the Graduate
Prospects website that advertises available
positions and gives advice about how to find
voluntary work - www.prospects.ac.uk/
sectors.htm > Charities and voluntary work.
Alternatively, both the Do-it
(www.do-it.org.uk) and the Volunteering
England (www.volunteering.org.uk) websites
are helpful too.
See our Concise Careers Guide on Voluntary
Work for more information.
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Creative Job Hunting and Networking in a Difficult Economic Climate
Self employment
The ultimate in creative job hunting is to set
up your own business. The Employability
& Careers Service has information on self
employment and we will be happy to talk over
your plans with you and refer you on to more
specialist help where this is appropriate. You
will also find useful information on:
www.prospects.ac.uk/self_employment.htm
The AGCAS video/DVD “Can I Have a
Few Minutes of Your Time?” is an excellent
introduction to networking techniques (available
to watch in the Employability & Careers
Service). Other useful websites:
• The National Council for Graduate
Entrepreneurship
www.ncge.com
• Business Link
www.businesslink.gov.uk
• Shell livewire
www.shell-livewire.org
• Students in Free Enterprise
www.sife.org
Coping with unemployment
If you do find yourself unemployed after you
complete your course at London South Bank
University then it is important to keep the
following things in mind:
1. You are not alone. Many graduates from
all universities go through periods of
unemployment, temporary work or do
“fill-in” jobs to pay off loans etc. Research
has shown it can take up to a year for a
graduate to find the job they are really
looking for.
2. You can use all the services of the
Employability & Careers Service for up to
two years after you graduate. This means
using us as part of your job-hunting strategy.
Even if you have left London you can still
access our website www.lsbu.ac.uk/clsd/
careers and use our online careers advice
service. Or you may qualify for help from
Location: Ground Floor, Technopark
Opening hours: Monday - Friday 09:00 - 17:00
(19:00 on Wednesdays during term-time)
Tel: 020 7815 6710/6431
Email: careers@lsbu.ac.uk
Website: www.lsbu.ac.uk/clsd/careers
a university careers service in the town or
city you have moved to under the “mutual
aid” scheme. Details of all university careers
services can be found on www.prospects.
ac.uk/links/careersservices.
3. If you are a home student, you should
register for work with JobCentre Plus
as soon as you are eligible. This is not
only to claim those benefits to which you
are entitled, it also means that later on,
if you need it, you will become eligible
for Government schemes to help the
unemployed such as those offered under
the “New Deal” for job seekers
(see www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk and
www.newdeal.gov.uk for details).
4. If you are making lots of applications
without success then it is important to ask
some perhaps painful questions as to why
this might be the case. Are your career
plans and the employers you are targeting
realistic ones, given your own academic
past and classification of degree? Could
you improve the quality of your application
forms, CVs and covering letters? Is it
how you do at interviews or assessment
centres that is letting you down? Would it
be better to make fewer applications but
to companies you have researched more
thoroughly? Would more study, either full-
time or part-time, update your skills and
hence improve your chances? Would part-
time or temporary jobs develop the skills
needed for your longer-term ambitions?
5. One aspect of being employed or a student
is that there is an external framework and
structure to your daily activities. While you
are job-seeking you will have to structure
your life yourself. Set short and long-term
goals for contacting employers and maintain
a balance of other activities such as evening
classes, sports and your social life.
For details of all our services please see our
website.
Last update by: Margaret Holbrough
Date: August 2010