Scottish Graduate Fair

Yesterday I was away through in Glasgow for the Scottish Graduate Fair at the SECC. The event is aimed at final year student at university who are looking at what to be doing next. This generally come in anything from postgraduate education to graduate training, or volunteering to a plain ordinary job that utilises their skills. There were a variety of universities, companies and other training organisation there.

It was a case of finding the right booths with the people who are looking for what your current discipline is. The typical initial response was either, “sorry we don’t have any jobs in our business that you would be looking for”, or “great, your just the kind of person that we are looking for, here’s some more information”. You just have to keep hunting and you should find 4-12 different organisations with graduate schemes, or job opportunities that are suitable to you.

I’ll give a few examples of things that I found out:

  • According to recruiters, the careers service up here in Scotland is excellent, and you should make use of it!
  • Bloomberg take on Computer Science graduates who are strong in Java and (C or C++), for their programming departments. You need to have the C background so that you know about pointers and the way that memory works. Only 5-10% of their network is based on Java, the rest is some variation of C for speed.
  • You should tailor your CV for every company, just only give each company one CV. This is advice from several recruiters, and the careers service. You should target the CV/application for the specific skill set that the employer will be wanting.
  • If you want to go into an IT related business, participating voluntarily in an Open Source project such as OpenOffice.org can give you a large number of transferable skills and knowledge of project structures. Some organisations are already working to spread the word of Open Source software, and thus if you already know about that sort of stuff, will mean that you will be more likely to get a job through having greater experience.
  • Applying early could mean that you are more likely to get through.
  • It is better to do a good application for a few opportunities than a very poor job at hundreds of vacancies.
  • Be positive confident and give as much relevant information as possible.

Overall, I enjoyed the event, and would recommend any final year student to go along in the future.

Hopefully I will be able to remember to follow all the advice and get a job or graduate placement.

2 comments

  1. Hi Shaun,

    ScottishGraduate.com is the new website dedicated to helping under and post graduate students find employment and/or further their educational career. The student simply uploads their CV on to the site and browses through the listings, finding the job most suited to them. As an employer you have the ability to upload your company profile including your logo, website URL and company description.

    When you post a job on the site, say for example a job in advertising, our system searches our database of students and picks out any CVs under the advertising section. These students will be emailed with details of your job and you would also be e-mailed with a list of matching CVs. You also have a search facility that enables you to browse the full CV Database.

    .

    Currently we are making ties with all the major scottish universities which would give us direct access to there students and our new advertising campaign should
    bring increased interest to the site.
    If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me back.
    Regards, iain@scottishgraduate.com

    ScottishGraduate.com
    Your Future Ltd.
    room 14
    51 cleveland st
    St Andrews court
    Glasgow
    G3 7AY
    0141 243 2707

    we are currently looking for commission only online sales reps, we are offering 30% com . If you or any of your friends or colleagues are interested please contact richard on the above number or richard@scottishgraduate.com.

  2. I know that some parents have sponsored their graduate children on intensive job hunting and interview skills programmes such as the main one run by http://www.jobsforgrads.co.uk – the parent I spoke to said her son had found the coaching invaluable and it helped him get a job quickly with a top-3 UK bank.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.