What really helps get a graduate job now?

[billymean]

It seemed a lot easier back in my day.

What are "top" grad recruiters looking for now? It sounds like quite a lot are university blind. Do A Level grades still matter?

Clearly once one gets an interview it's about skills and competencies but what do grad recruiters or their algorithms filter candidates out or in for?

I’m wondering this too on behalf of DS. From several stories in the press these last few months there is clearly something wrong with recruitment at the moment. There seem to be loads of young graduates who are putting in application after application and getting rejection after rejection.

I think there's a big issue with the method of recruitment for all sorts of jobs now, graduate or otherwise.
So many applications don't seem to get through the algorithms.

Relatives of mine have applied for jobs they're certainly qualified for and haven't heard anything back from companies, but yet jobs are still advertised a couple months later.🤷‍♀️

Yes your last sentence TonTon is my concern.

What ARE the algorithms looking for?

Get as broad an experience as possible, volunteering, helping out in the local community, personal projects where you have learned new skills. Anything that will contribute to your CV.

We don't use algorithms for our graduate recruitment. If we don't offer an interview it's because there was an issue in their application or there were too many better candidates.

DS2 has just landed a grad job. He went to one assessment centre where there had been over 3000 applicants for several roles. 60 at the centre, 22 taken on. They took well over a month to get back to him.
Another centre where there had been over 1000 applicants, 17 put through to the centre, 3 taken on including DS.
He said both times they asked next to nothing about his degree or A levels and in addition to the usual team stuff they were mostly interested in his part time job and football refereeing!
He must have applied for 25-30 jobs. It's a soul destroying process.

What would constitute a better candidate for your firm? Any specifics as that would be really interesting.

How important are grades, degree, work experience etc?

What do you mean by better?

X post

I’d interview anyone who is a referee/ umpire. It demonstrates a lot of skills I’d be looking for.

Yes my dc’s work experience has been absolutely vital in getting their grad jobs. Internships yes but also a long and varied cv of part time and holiday jobs.

My daughter did volunteering and worked as a mentor whilst doing her degree as well as the usual hospitality. Like others have said, it's not just the qualification but the range of activities/ interests / experiences that build up the other soft, life skills that employers look for.

She also was prepared to do alternative jobs whilst looking for a grad job - she graduated as covid started, so not much choice at that stage as there were no grad jobs in her sector in 2020!

Work experience is the most important. A degree is great but I would hands down choose someone with relevant experience over someone with a degree. I work in the charity sector. I don’t even look at a levels.

specifically id like to see work experience relevant to my field and a cv tailored to the application e.g. if applying for a fundraising position then highlight fundraising experience in all roles in cv.

its catch 22 for new graduates when they can’t get a job which is why part time volunteering is vital if you can do it and start early so you get a few experiences under your belt.

And never, ever, use chat gpt to answer application questions. We check what stock answers are and discount any application using it.

Work experience and attitude are the most important when we recruit graduates. There’s loads of applicants with very similar degrees and masters, but what stands out is the ones who’ve had part time jobs whilst at school and university, and the ones who’ve had relevant work experience too. Attitude in the application and during interview is really important too, willingness to learn and do lots of aspects of the jobs, people who say yes and are enthusiastic instead of lots of graduates we are seeing nowadays that don’t want to put the extra effort in, don’t want to do the tests that are a bit boring, don’t want to put in the time leaning, don’t want to work in the office and learn from the team there.

I’d say that we don’t look at A levels either, a degree, masters and work experience is often a must in my company as there’s so many applicants, but we have been known to hire people without a masters if they have done an internship or other relevant work experience.

Absolutely the type of graduate we would hire.

Ds applied for loads over the last two years. He found once he'd got the knack of one eg situational judgement test for one company, he'd nail all SJs for all the others. Similarly there are only a few SJ, numeracy, logic, reasoning etc tests that grad schemes use so once you've done a few you get better each time. Like anything practice gets you further into the process. He was very lucky to be offered from his first assessment centre as well.

I think it is very much a numbers game. Looking on student room lots of grads take a couple of years to land something.

This sounds encouraging as my dc has built a very strong list of leadership positions and has done some interesting student jobs (only one internship so far though).

Football reffing on the CV too although that was a while ago.

Fingers crossed they will stand out.

Part time work is valuable.
By the time the grads get through to the final stage, the academics are a given - they have to have it otherwise they won't get through to that stage.
Then it's the softer skills that are important. It's usually competency based e.g. give me an example of when you have ... etc.

I vet cv's for our graduate program, I reject those that haven't answered all the questions, have used vague generic answers , have obviously copied and pasted, have asked for an unrealistic salary, poor spelling etc. We accept applicants with any degree, it doesn't have to be industry specific so I look for volunteering, work experience, D of E awards and the 'tone' of the application.
In the assessment centres participation is vital, it's amazing how many don't say anything, how they interact with the other applicants; do they dominate the conversation are they respectful of other opinions .We had one applicant who was very obviously talking on the phone to someone (virtual assessment) , another who kept yawning.

To be honest it depends on the job, for anything stem you need the right degree. Pure science is not valued as much as engineering we discovered. 2:1 is the magic number, 2:2 means it's an uphill struggle. Getting to the online assessment centre is not too difficult but keep missing out, the 2:2 is haunting...

Yes a 2:1 is a must for lots of jobs, there’s so many good graduate applicants that unless someone with a 2:2 really stands out then why would they get picked over the many applicants with 2:1s? We don’t tend to distinguish between 2:1s and 1sts, but we definitely do between 2:1s and 2:2s.

Work/life experience is what sets you apart in applying for grad jobs. Anyone can go to uni and get a degree in anything now so degree alone is not enough.

2:2 is fine for us.
As someone upthread said, do not use chatGPT (= automatic reject) in the application.
Work experience (paid or voluntary) really comes into its own during the interview. When candidates can use their experiences for answers to the competency Qs. In answer to an above post, these tend to be the ‘better’ candidates - just because it’s easier to assess suitability with varied answers, rather than the same repeated answers only drawing on education.