Unemployable graduate

I am just gonna go on a rant now hope you don't mind.

I f****g hate everything. Hate my previous teachers, hate this f*****g university AND HATE MY F*****G DEGREE. I wasted 21 years of my live in school only to leave this degraded piece of **** university only to be unemployed and left with nothing. Why couldn't I just do an apprenticeship or try to get into an entry level role or a ****** warehouse and worked my way up??? I don't ****** know, because I was dumbass that's why. The education system is so f****d up that a lot of students leave school, sixth form or university and they end up doing sh!t jobs anyway. The reality is that there are plenty of smartasses these days who finish Cambridge, Imperial or any RG universities with great degrees and then when they finish they're all in competition with each other and it makes it impossible to actually get a job anywhere. Even graduate roles that do not require much experience are f****g impossible to get into because HR managers have 200 applications to look through and they're always gonna want someone who developed a f****g quantum machine. Why did I waste my time with this piece of s*** education only to realise that I never had a chance to get a grad job anyway because of the competition. A complete waste of my f****g time.

Something has to be done about this dumb education system. It should be much easier to get into a career that students want to get into. And to anyone who says BLAHBLAHBLAH, I DiD An InTeRnShIp and GoT oFfErred A job. Well, well done. But guess what, not everyone is going to be as lucky getting an internship in the first place because I tried and I know that some of my friends tried. The irony is that you need internship experience to get into graduate roles, but the funny thing is that internships are competitive themselves. I applied to 20 internships and didn't even get an interview for one of them. Absolute ****. It is very tough for graduates these days. For some graduate schemes you get like 100 applicants per place when they only have 2 positions available. It's f*****g insane.

You waste 3 years of your life and wasting a lot of money for a degree which you realise is absolutely sh!t. I wish UK was a f*****g communist country like Soviet Russia used to be. When my parents were young and they lived in Russia, they got an apartment for free and they got a job offer immediately after finishing education. These days, you finish education and you're left to rot in hell and the government doesn't give a sh!t about you apart from giving Universal Credit or Job Seekers Allowance. Instead of giving people sh!t loans or worthless piece of **** money how about you f*****g create better job opportunities for people who actually worked their a** off for a degree which they now realise is worthless because of the insane competition.

Apply for some Apprenticeships to get some experience

I'm not going to read the full rant, because I get the point from just the first paragraph. You are right about some things and wrong about others. There is an oversupply of graduates, because of easy-to-borrow student loans (by which I mean that you don't need any credit score whatsoever, to borrow £50K in student loans). That's a separate problem which none of us on this thread will fix, although on the point where you say "Instead of giving people sh!t loans or worthless piece of **** money"... nobody forces those students to take those loans.

I've been supervising some summer placement students & even graduates during the past few months in my job. We don't expect much from them. Just willingness to learn & ask questions, and for them to take initiative.

Most employers are realistic enough not to expect a prospective graduate whom they are paying £20-£30k a year, to have built a "quantum machine". They barely expect anything, in fact, in terms of knowledge & experience. They assess you far more by your personality in job interviews, than they do on your competence. They want to understand if you have a good work ethic, if you work well with others, if you are conscientious, if you learn from mistakes, if you are reliable, etc. It's not a coincidence though that people with those personality traits, will already have acquired a reasonable amount of experience, which will show on their CV.

What I am saying, is that it has a lot more to do with your attitude, than your experience, when you are starting out. The attitude that comes across from your post... isn't very good.

Several of those students I spoke with actually got offers from several employers, despite having relatively little experience. But they're so easy to work with, that it's really not surprising that they got several offers. They listen, they learn, they're punctual, and do what they said they would do, or at least have good reasons (instead of excuses) why they couldn't and they just need some help or extra training first.

What was your course?

I didn’t go to a particularly high ranking university (University of West England, Bristol) but I did well enough (I’ll admit a 2.2). Not a fantastic job afterwards but by no means unemployable as my first job was around 28-29k a year if you include night and weekend enhancements.

It’s not what you get but what you do with it. I was going to do a masters this year but I had a golden opportunity land in my lap about 2 weeks ago meaning I ended up deferring for a year (I was offered my healthcare professions council certificate as I need that to get into the high ranking jobs after being employed for around a year and a half at a hospital).

So, instead of ranting, it might be easier to seek advice from those in your profession for advice. 🙂

EDIT:
Before I forget, my degree was in Biomedical Science and I graduated shortly before the plague hit (2018). That being said, it took me around a little over a year to find a job as I went into teaching (PGCE course) but very quickly quit as it was horrible. So around 3 months after leaving the course, that’s when I found the job. 🙂

Hello,

I studied an engineering degree. I did manage to get a 2.1 which is alright, but even with a 2.1, you're not guaranteed any success. I have graduated last month and I am still unemployed. I am just about to rip my hair out because it's actually hard finding anything suitable and also because of the huge competition in some of the places. I am also thinking about doing a masters degree to upskill a little, but considering how much time and money I've wasted with my bachelors, I don't know if the masters degree is also worth it. Even with a STEM degree it's hard finding any work.

The problem is that there's too many graduates and not enough places for everyone. Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with the teaching course. I am going to be honest but I would also hate it because teaching is one of those jobs I would never want to do. I could maybe do it at sixth form or university, but never at primary school teaching or GCSE teaching. I don't really understand what excites teachers about explaining things to people who don't care and don't listen to them. I remember the horrible days at secondary school when I had my KS3 science teacher. It was absolute chaos.

Don't pay or borrow for an MSc. It is pointless and will add little unless the career you want to get into actually explicitly demands it.

Thank you for letting me know. I am interested in some software development roles. However, I have very little to no programming experience. That's why I thought that doing an MSc in computer science or computer engineering would be helpful.

The problem that I have is that most graduate software engineering jobs say that they want experience with C++ / C / Java or Python. When they say they want experience what kind of experience are they looking for. Are they looking for work experience or university experience? Also, a lot of them do ask for a BSc or MSc in computer science or related. I feel that aeronautics and astronautics is not really appropriate for these jobs which is why I was thinking of doing an MSc in computer science.

Unnecessary, especially for Computer Science.

Ignore the wishlist of languages and technologies on most job listings, especially for graduate positions. They are written by HR and they have no idea. What matters more is your knowledge and application of data structures and algorithms which you can learn online for free. The larger companies will test you on these using automated tests which you can practice by doing Leetcode/Hackerrank questions. The final round interviews will also be nearly identical but you'll have a software engineer probing you more on your solution. Typical stuff like time/space complexity.

None of this requires an MSc in CS - in fact, an MSc in CS will teach you nearly nothing relevant to pass the interview loop. The only potential benefit of doing one is having an extra summer to do an internship as an SWE, but that makes it a very expensive internship...

Conversion MScs are just a cash machine for universities, especially the weaker ones. They are just cashing out on the bandwagon.

P.S. With a degree in aeronautics you definitely have the brain required to self-teach the necessary skills and theory.

I actually have tried using Leetcode and I can do the easy questions, but I can't do the medium or hard questions because I have little to no understanding of something like linked lists. You also mentioned time and space complexity. I am fully aware that these things are taught in computer science but because I have not studied computer science I don't really know what's the best way to learn about all of this stuff. You say that it's 'Typical stuff', but I've not learnt it before.

Is there a good course that would allow me to quickly self teach all of this stuff.

Yh I think education is a scam, maybe in the old days it wasn't

I don't think it's a scam as such - students just need to be aware that a degree does not guarantee employment and they need to understand the studying is the least important part if all they want out of it is a job in industry. They need to have a laser focus on their career from day one and take any opportunity available e.g. insight weeks, career talks, practice psychometric tests.

Schools just don't tell their leavers this.