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Where do you guys look for grad jobs?

How come, in the middle of a recession, where seemingly anyone is after a job, we are having real problem recruiting the right people?!

I work in a small team doing market analysis in the agricultural industry. Okay, its maybe not the most exciting thing in the world, but the salary is good, we dont ask for experience, we dont ask for a 2.1 or indeed any degree at all, its nice 9-5 hours, a pretty rural location with a good team, and yet getting people is impossible.

We either get very few CVs which are of interest, or very few CVs in general! For 23k straight out of uni, in a technical role with plenty of further opportunities if you want them you would have though we could get more than 30 applicants, of whom 2 were good, and one of those turned us down. Maybe its the world 'agriculture' putting people off? But if it said 'shares' 'futures' or 'commodities' then I wonder if we would get more?

Anyway; so where do you guys look for jobs? Is it just campus career days, or is there somewhere Ive missed? Maybe

Reply 1

Smack

Volunteer Team

I look at:

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Websites of companies I'd like to work for;

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My university's careers database of vacancies;

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Careers websites like Gradcracker (engineering careers website);

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Word of mouth;

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The jobs section of my local paper.

Where does your company advertise? From what I've seen most students aren't particularly innovative when it comes to searching for graduate jobs; they get a copy of the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers or the Guardian 300, make some applications to a few of those companies, and then moan about the economy when they fail to get anything.

Reply 2

threeportdrift

Careers Forum Helper

Original post by Riderz

Anyway; so where do you guys look for jobs? Is it just campus career days, or is there somewhere Ive missed? Maybe

Take a look at the trouble I'm having getting people to look outside Monster and total jobs. FFS I had to explain what a company recruitment website was earlier today! I'm beginning to think that many people (not necessarily all) have been so spoon-fed with the 'here's the syllabus, here are the work sheets, here are past papers, here are model answers' type education that have lost any ability to think logically and creatively about job hunting.

TSR is slightly distorting, because it has certain themes and isn't necessarily a full spectrum of students and approaches to job hunting. It also has to be said that school and sometimes university careers advisers often seem to take the line of least resistance and do not encourage creative thinking about what careers to consider or where to look for jobs.

In the mean time have you tried The Royal Agricultural College?

http://rac.ac.uk/jobs-hr/job-vacancies/advertise-a-vacancy-to-our-students

Reply 3

nyxie

what the guy above said.

&

Also consider targeting/ approaching university departments with rural surveying/ agriculture studies/land economy. (e.g. University of Aberdeen) Not all these students necessarily want a direct career with agriculture but may at least want a job familiar to their subject. I did join honours with rural surveying (class 2011 at UoA), I realised I didn't want to be a surveyor at the end but would have a considered a role like the one you offer for the above reason.

My department lecturers used to be approached by local professionals/ companies and national trust type organisations if they had a role on offer quite often. So I assume it isn't breaking any rules, just another form of networking?

If by chance you are a Scottish based team, adopt an intern is part of an initiative that is also part of recruitment drive by the s govt. The name says intern but permanent positions are also available in this site. The rest of the UK may have something similar but I wouldn't know.

Hope this helps :smile:

Reply 4

Riderz

Original post by threeportdrift

In the mean time have you tried The Royal Agricultural College?

http://rac.ac.uk/jobs-hr/job-vacancies/advertise-a-vacancy-to-our-students

This is the thing, we do know the agricultural colleges, and do recruit from them, but only a very very small percentage of those students want to do something academic, and tbh, the ones who do go there arn't likely to be the most academic anyway. So the people who know about us either havent got the skills, or havent got the desire, to do the job we want from them. Nothing against people who go to agri colleges or uni, but they are often vocational or fairly specialist courses people do because they want to do rural surveying, or whatever, or because daddy has told them to go to uni for 3 years...

The people we want, and the people who would actually benefit from the company as well as the company benefiting from them, are those who have an interest in investment banking, in markets or in finance. Its these people who generally have no idea about us, or what we do, because 'city' people either have no exposure to the countryside, or no interest in it at face value. If they dug a little deeper and found that the job would set them up perfectly for a career in commodities trading or analyst positions for banks/hedge funds then they might be more keen, but we dont like to advertise that fact for obvious reasons! We want people to have a career with us, not try and move on asap.

Of course, this all has nothing to do with the fact that I want some nice attractive graduate in the office, rather than the empty desk there at the moment. :rolleyes:

Reply 5

threeportdrift

Careers Forum Helper

Original post by Riderz

.................

All fair points, although the RAC does get a few bright sparks coming through it :wink:

Who knows, maybe it will get a more diverse and academic student population when it gets to be the Royal Agricultural University.

Reply 6

chad_bro_chill

Original post by Riderz

The people we want, and the people who would actually benefit from the company as well as the company benefiting from them, are those who have an interest in investment banking, in markets or in finance. Its these people who generally have no idea about us, or what we do, because 'city' people either have no exposure to the countryside, or no interest in it at face value. If they dug a little deeper and found that the job would set them up perfectly for a career in commodities trading or analyst positions for banks/hedge funds then they might be more keen, but we dont like to advertise that fact for obvious reasons! We want people to have a career with us, not try and move on asap.

You pretty much answered your own question. From my experience, the people who are looking to get into finance/IB are very dedicated/persistent (sometimes to the point of stubbornness) and are reluctant to broaden their job search because for them getting a job with some big shot City bank is their dream and it will launch a great career... You might be able to tempt some of the IB rejects but anybody who truly has the potential to land a job with a bank right after uni would not turn down an offer to go work in the countryside for half of the salary.