Graduate schemes - in late 20s/early 30s

[househunter24]

Morning all!
I have an undergraduate and postgraduate degree and am considering a career change (aged 29). Is it possible to get on a graduate scheme even though I 'graduated' 8 / 6 years ago?

When I was on a grad scheme many years ago, we had a career changer in the cohort, so depending on the scheme - yes.

Yes. Although is your experience and degree transferable? If you want a career change is your cv what an employer might want in a new area of work? It must depend on what the work is.

Depends in what field and what sort of companies you're targeting. Any colour?

I recruit for a very competitive graduate scheme. We have taken on a number of career change people - oldest was late 30s I think.

They generally do extraordinarily well at the assessment days.

It is almost as if being involved in a massive project that was derailed by Covid is a better way of showing how you dealt with adversity than the time that the committee of the university tiddly wink club fell out!

(Not that the 21 year olds are not fabulous - they are just to get that far. But life experience matters.)

The 21 year olds will work longer for you maybe? It’s hardly fair comparing experience of a mature person to that of a 21 year old. Surely some weighting should be put in place? It is of course the reason why so few 18 year olds get degree apprenticeship jobs! Older employees mostly get them. Which always seems unfair and not what most people think apprenticeships were for.

I think that employing anyone other than the best candidates would be both immoral and a breach of employment law. Not to mention very silly as I am one of the people who has to manage the new graduates so I want the best.

There are a lot more early 20 somethings than 37 year olds starting work as “new graduates” in our company as the vast majority of applicants are early 20s. But the fact remains that often - not always but often - if there is an older candidate at the assessment centre then they will shine.

Grad schemes love candidates with some real full-time work experience. They require way less hand holding and hit the ground much faster. I used to run one at a blue-chip and by far our highest performing graduate hire was 32.

@Mumofteenandtween and @DreadPirateRobots thank you so much - you have given me a lot of hope!

There are sometimes limits on how recently you gained your degree in order to be eligible for schemes, though - so do check the T&C's when you apply. But age in itself is not an issue.

I can easily see why older candidates are better and less effort. None the less, demoralizing for recent grads and their aspirations.

Er, schemes are still very much dominated by early-twenties people. And if they don't get a grad job first go-round, as long as they find some kind of employment then they're the experienced candidate the next year. They're not being deprived of anything.

They won’t get 15 years worth of experience in a non grad job for a year.