4 Ways To Improve Your Employment Prospects As A Graduate
Employability has changed since the pandemic meaning employers have had to find new, innovative ways for students and graduates to carry out work experience. An ever-increasing number of employers now run virtual work experience schemes, enabling students and graduates to gain essential experience from home. While nothing replaces real, on-the-job experience there are still a number of things you can do to improve your employment prospects as a graduate! Check out our top tips to give your CV a boost, build confidence and develop your network…
Find a hobby
Starting a hobby demonstrates initiative and a passion for learning. It’ll also help you occupy that tricky ‘hobbies and interests’ section of a CV or application form. There are a variety of options for you to consider, for example, you could:
- learn a coding language
- get outside and figure out how to plant and grow
- take up an instrument
- start a book club
- teach yourself a new skill such as painting, sewing, crafting
- take up photography
Short courses
There’s no better way to improve your graduate employability than by embarking on a short course to improve your skills. Short, online courses are available in a range of subjects, so if you want to learn how to use a certain piece of software, discover what’s involved in a particular role or brush up on soft skills there will be a course for you.
But if you’re not sure which course to take, remember it doesn’t have to be related to your career. Any course taken demonstrates to employers your initiative, drive and organisational skills. To find out more about free training courses in Stockport for adults, visit our Training Resources.
Online presence
Take a look at your social channels and ask yourself if they’re employer-friendly. Employers do look at a candidate’s social media channels to gauge whether they’d be a good fit for the job/company. Tidy up your social channels by adjusting your privacy settings and if you don’t want recruiters to be able to see your profiles make sure they’re set to private.
To improve your presence:
- Follow organisations and professional bodies of interest to keep up to date with the latest news and developments.
- Like, comment and interact with employers and peers.
- When posting, include relevant hashtags to ensure your posts are seen by the right people.
- Think about setting up separate work accounts
Give your CV a facelift
If your CV could do with a bit of love, now’s the time to do it!
Spend time casting a critical eye over your CV. Does it contain unnecessary or inaccurate information? Is it formatted correctly? Does it include all your skill and experience? Could your personal statement do with a rewrite? Keep an extra eye out for errors or typos.
If you take up any of these employability-boosting activities, don’t forget to add the skills and experiences to your CV.
Whilst the jobs market remains competitive for those finishing University, these quick tips to improve your employment prospects as a graduate are a great place to start. Once you’ve boosted your confidence (and hopefully your CV too), you can use local job boards like EmployGM to search for vacancies, search for upcoming job fairs and events, or if you’re not in any form of full-time education or employment use the Job Centre to access links to local employers and pre-employment courses.
