I have a friend in retail who earns over £100k and several more who earn well over the national averages. I think there is a member on these forums who earns close to £100k in a supermarket as well....
Securing a graduate job is just ridiculous
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I have a friend in retail who earns over £100k and several more who earn well over the national averages. I think there is a member on these forums who earns close to £100k in a supermarket as well....
99% of students live in a bubble thinking they will swan into a 25k a year job just as they have a degree....this is the real world...welcome to normality!
The world is harsh and you have to fight hard to get anywhere...it won't just fall on your lap. Get on with the job hunting and suck it up...
The world is harsh and you have to fight hard to get anywhere...it won't just fall on your lap. Get on with the job hunting and suck it up...
For a few exceptions, but when people usually say retail they mean for the majority - for those it's pretty much minimum wage - the mode income for retail or hospitality isn't good & a most of them receive little in the form of remuneration.
I feel really sorry for today's graduates, the grad job market was tough when I graduated in the late '90s but it's so, so much worse now. I agree that grad recruitment is a joke, I work for a software engineering company and basically you haven't got a hope today unless you have a 2:1 or above from a top 40 university - which would be fair enough if the sort of grads we were getting could write software and be useful to the company but no they all want to work in Marketing or HR or go straight into Project Management or Service Delivery Management without having a clue about what it is we actually do.
There's another side to that argument though, in that people fresh out of school/college are repeatedly told that without going to university they'll get nowhere, and that by going to university they will get the job they want easily.
It's not a good system, and pushes people into areas/going to university which just aren't for them, simply because they have to. These same people then end up in the situation you described when they finish university, wondering why they were told that they had to go.
physical labour is underpaid by a vast amount. Some of us would go loopy if we had to sit behind a desk all day.
Maybe, but pay grades are based on skills required to do the job, not effort.
It's quite widely accepted now - certainly in the professional circles I frequent - that:
A)Service Delivery Management is something you get to after 5-7-10 years of previous experience - variable based on exposure and competence.
B)The best SDMs started out on Service Desks, and then work their way up through other functions. So they actually understand what the hell is going on due to experience. The theory only takes you so far.
Whilst I'm also PRINCE2 Practitioner level, I wouldn't even consider being a Project Manager. Anyone fresh off the Uni boat who thinks they could do it without earning their stripes doing some PSO/Work package Mgmt first is having a laugh..... or they are 'Project Managers' in nothing other than job title.
Reality is, University isn't a guarantee of anything. When there is such huge choice, why would you consider anything other than the best you can get with as much experience as possible. For many roles, doing University at a later date to aid career progression is a far better path.
Edit - BCS seem to agree with me on the SDM bit - http://certifications.bcs.org/upload/pdf/service-mgt-careerpath-full.pdf
Soldato
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I feel this probably isn't the point at which I should point out I just graduated with an economics degree and have a job at one of the leading financial services firms....
Seriously, OP, it's not the hardest thing in the world to achieve. Realise that whilst you're getting rejected some people are being accepted, and are meeting the standards. This is going to be a bit of tough love, but whilst you might think its ridiculous trying to get a place, other people are managing to, and are meeting the standards required...
I'm also presuming you got a 2:1? Because if not, in your industry, there's no point even trying to apply for grad jobs.
kd
Seriously, OP, it's not the hardest thing in the world to achieve. Realise that whilst you're getting rejected some people are being accepted, and are meeting the standards. This is going to be a bit of tough love, but whilst you might think its ridiculous trying to get a place, other people are managing to, and are meeting the standards required...
I'm also presuming you got a 2:1? Because if not, in your industry, there's no point even trying to apply for grad jobs.
kd
Indeed, so many think they can just walk into well paid jobs just because they have been to uni, i see it all the time.
Probably because that used to be the case, it's not anymore but that's what they are still being told.
The majority of major retailers pay above minimum wage even for shop floor positions, Tesco for example. Hospitality is different, and in many cases is complicated by the way in which gratuities are accounted.
And it isn't the few exceptions....any supervisory position in a major supermarket will pay approaching average wages, and certainly significantly above minimum wage.
Not really, you just need to get yourself involved with things. At uni I founded a society, held various committee positions, and played a number of sports both for the university and for my college. I also went and got my football coaching qualification, and helped a local charity set a few basic IT systems up over a couple of evenings and weekends. Once you're at uni, those things are free to do if you're willing to put the time in.
All that said, getting a grad job is tough. I'd worked for 3 years and decided that what I was doing wasn't for me, so tried to move into law. It took me two years of applying for training contracts, and 7 weeks of unpaid leave and holiday on internships, before I got offered a contract. Worth it though
As others have said above, I was one of the students who expected to waltz into a decent job first time, and found it very difficult to accept that I couldn't. Second time around, I pulled my finger out and applied for internships, vacation schemes, whatever was going, and got to where I wanted to be.
My main suggestion for you is to be productive in your enforced "time off". A few friends and I started a student magazine while we were job hunting. It didn't end up going very far, but it was something to show that we'd all put some effort in while we were unemployed.
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Pfft come back when you have 200+ applications under your belt.
Took me 14 months and 216 applications to secure a graduate role. I worked 40 hrs a week in retail to be able to afford the travel expenses for the interviews I was offered and used all my holiday entitlement to take days off to attend.
It did pay off in the end as I start my new role in IT and Business Change for a large blue chip compan in september. I graduated with a degree in Environmental Science but had the qualities and skilla they were looking for but most importantly I could demonstrate them instead of just assuming everyone should know.
A degree does not mean you will walk into a job immediately after graduating.
/Salsa
Took me 14 months and 216 applications to secure a graduate role. I worked 40 hrs a week in retail to be able to afford the travel expenses for the interviews I was offered and used all my holiday entitlement to take days off to attend.
It did pay off in the end as I start my new role in IT and Business Change for a large blue chip compan in september. I graduated with a degree in Environmental Science but had the qualities and skilla they were looking for but most importantly I could demonstrate them instead of just assuming everyone should know.
A degree does not mean you will walk into a job immediately after graduating.
/Salsa
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It doesn't take a genius to realise that the more people going to University, the more graduates there are, the more competition there is, and the more employers are going to use other markers for differentiating between applicants.
As I said, Devaluation of a University Degree, it simply doesn't hold the significance it once did,basically because everyone and their dog has one.
Thanks for the feedback. And I completely understand that. Yes I have a 2:1 and work experience at BarCap and Citi, however the 2:1 isn't exactly from the most high profile university!
OP, try the Graduate Recruitment Bureau - www.grb.uk.com
I had some good experiences with them in the past - they tend to be geared towards finance and IT jobs in London (although that was a few years ago now so may have changed since then).
I had some good experiences with them in the past - they tend to be geared towards finance and IT jobs in London (although that was a few years ago now so may have changed since then).
I'd have to agree, although I still think good degrees from good universities still punch their weight in the job market. But maybe that's just me speaking from advantageous position because I've got an engineering degree and went into a market that pays well which also has a lack of engineers.....