Career Change

Hi so I’ve studied ICT my whole life in GCSES, A-Levels and as a Degree. I graduated after leaving university in April this September. Although I’ve found looking for a postgraduate job hard to come by and ideally I would have wanted a postgraduate position as soon as possible because I want to stabilise myself more when it comes to money as well as for personal reasons because I do have aspirations to marry the girl I love in the long term and get out of retail. I have considered apprenticeships, especially within ICT, in particular for the position of a Digital Technician and IT Support Technician although of contacting training providers my degree overlaps, and to the extent means I’m overqualified and ineligible to do an Apprenticeship within IT 😕. I only wanted to do an Apprenticeship for the practical knowledge within an establishment this would have therefore look good on my CV and not because it’s a pay as you learn type of job. I’m now considering a career change because ideally I want to get into a job fast especially if it means having to do a apprenticeship in another subject before getting the job full time any advice or tips to how I go by picking a subject that I will find right for me and one that’s a stabilising career to pursue.

Thank you

Hi,
So you've graduated with a CS degree, tried applying for apprenticeships, got rejected and now considering a career change? No offence but it seems a bit silly to pivot so drastically because you couldn't get a job straight away. If you are passionate about ICT/CS then keep going and you'll lend yourself a job sooner or later, it's a matter of time and practise.

First of all, since you have graduated from a University that means at least a Bachelors degree, which is why you can't get into an apprenticeship, they are tailored for people with NVQ level 3 education. A Bachelors degree is NVQ level 6. You are way past an apprenticeship level. While what I also don't get is you say that you are ideally looking for a post graduate job. Post graduate jobs are for at least Masters level graduates, if not for Ph.D's sometimes.

What you need is a work placement (internship) or a graduate program. They are designed for someone with a Bachelor's degree (like you, if I understood correctly) and provide with a very good work experience while paying decent amount of money.
Take a look here - https://www.gradcracker.com/search/computing-technology/work-placements-internships
and here - https://www.gradcracker.com/search/computing-technology/graduate-jobs

As you may notice there are hundreds of opportunities open right now. FYI, most of the companies who hire for these jobs start taking applications in October-December and have the job start date in summer 2024.

What you need to do now is to work on your CV, get it reviewed by an employability and careers team at your Uni and start applying, while continuing improving your CV more and more and preparing for interviews.

Don't get discouraged by rejections either. From personal experience and from experience of people I know, the average success ratio for a STEM student is around 10%, i.e. if you apply for 20 jobs you may have 1 or 2 job offers. That's assuming your CV is good and you perform well on the interview, otherwise your chance goes down. Personally I applied for ~110 jobs when I was looking for an internship on my penultimate year and I've gotten about 5-7 offers, and then when looking for graduate jobs on my final year at Uni I applied to 30+ jobs and gotten around 3-5 job offers.

For the reference, I did Electrical Engineering, not CS but they are pretty close. I now work and employ interns and graduates, so I can see the picture from the other side of the fence.

Best of luck and don't give up. You only lose when you quit