Mann, der sich auf 270 Stellen beworben hat, Tendenz steigend, sagt, dass die LBC-Unterstützung für Absolventen „so gut wie nichts“ ist
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/graduate-jobs-applied-270-roles-ai-5HjdZP5_2/
Von tylerthe-theatre
Mann, der sich auf 270 Stellen beworben hat, Tendenz steigend, sagt, dass die LBC-Unterstützung für Absolventen „so gut wie nichts“ ist
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/graduate-jobs-applied-270-roles-ai-5HjdZP5_2/
Von tylerthe-theatre
35 Kommentare
As a recruiter I always feel two ways about these stories.
Firstly, yes the numbers are massively stacked against you. 300-400 applications a role and I deal regularly with people where the feedback is just… yes you could have done the job. And yet they probably weren’t even in the top ten.
That being said, if you take that 300-400 and narrow it down to the number of people who actually read the spec, tailored their CV to it, and included some kind of letter or paragraph outlining their specific suitability, you are soon amongst dozens, rather than hundreds, of candidates.
These days you can very easily shoot off the same CV for 50 jobs in an afternoon. So pure numbers say nothing about your job search.
That being said it sounds like this guy has been very proactive, attending events and trying to network. It’s a sad situation for many graduates.
He’s got to pump those numbers up. 270 since October 2024, thats rookie numbers. Im at 250 since Febuary and im being deliberatley gentle and thoughtful about it to try and keep my medication doses down.
I personally believe a major issue for anyone looking for a job, whether a „skilled“ or „unskilled“ position (terms I hate as all jobs require a skill of some kind), is simply the amount of people applying for the role. The article touches on this and also the subject of the article does mention that employers in the field he is looking to gain employment in, are preferring people with industry experience as well as the necessary qualifications.
This person has seemingly been in education up until 2024 when the applications commenced and if I were to play [devil’s advocate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xm8kW1sXWs) I would gleam from the article that he has not sought employment outside his preferred field during this time with the exception of being an Army reservist.
This could potentially be holding him back too as as much as employers will be looking for industry experience, they will also be looking at general work experience. If a person has gone school to college to university and then nowhere else then it may be an advantage to seek work *anywhere* in the mean time.
Personally if I’d applied to lots of jobs and failed at the competency test stage, I’m not sure I’d be running to the press about it.
It’s one thing if you’ve got well qualified candidates not being able to get hired, but if you’re failing screening tests that’s almost certainly a you problem.
Yes we need more high skilled jobs, but we also need high skilled individuals to fill them.
Number never reveal the full picture. I could be applying 270 jobs to only at top investment or tech firm to be management trainee and obviously I will get rejected becuase I am not from wealthy family or didn’t get a 1st from oxbridge.
Yep the combination of an anti-business government and AI is the perfect storm. My field especially has been broken by AI. It’s unclear if a junior software developer would ever gain the necessary skills given that AI can now be used to do most things.
Need to take some responsibility. 0 out of 270 looks like mindless spamming.
I feel like we need to develop stronger school > trades pipelines, rather than just sending everyone off to uni and letting them compete for the same jobs.
A lot of schools only focus on preparing students for uni. But the trades – builders, plumbers, electricians – are in constant short supply with an ageing workforce.
I also think employers using AI to screen job applications should be banned. Like wth? AI can be faulty and it feels disrespectful when the applicant has made a real effort into their application, it deserves to be seen by a human.
the support for everyone in the job market is next to nothing,
The problem I’m facing in my industry is that graduates are struggling with fundamentals and thinking for themselves. If ChatGPT can’t answer it they just stand there and wait for someone else to answer.
We don’t want AI to replace your job but if you rely on it so heavily then why wouldn’t we?
I’m not struggling with someone with a degree, I’m struggling to find someone with competence that can adapt.
Had the same experience. But soon learned there is sadly no god-given right to being given a grad job just for having a degree, there are too many of us around now. Took a minimum wage retail job for a bit but within a year a really fulfilling career role came up. It just didn’t happen at the point of graduating.
if you’re applying for 270 jobs there’s no way you’re tailoring your cv for each role, writing a decent cover letter etc.
If you can’t find a job, lower your expectations. I went from day rate of £330 in financial services to working in a milk factory (agency) on minimum wage. Throw ego out the door and keep earning – it ain’t permanent and continuity of employment displays a better attitude, IMO. Edit: graduates need to assess the economy and job prospects before they commit to years of qualifications. The amount of masters qualified individuals I worked alongside in entry level call centre jobs when I was a young person was ridiculous – I earned more than them, despite leaving school at 16 because I had no student debt. Still made it to £330 a day in financial services; why? Cause attitude counts. And from the ashes of COVID and working in a milk factory, I’m now in a permanent role earning £45k per year. Keep going and don’t stop – it’s your livelihood, fight for it.
Does he have unlimited right to work? He says he’s part of the reservists but possibly you can be Commonwealth and be a reservist. So it is a bit racist based on the name but if he’s needing sponsorship in a tight jobs market he’s going to find it a lot harder.
Info needed: What degree? What classification? What university?
My first post-grad job was working in a minimum wage job on a call centre where no one else had a degree. It was very humbling. The reality is that they need to start a job somewhere and then keep applying potentially over the months and years to get what they want. Just having a call centre job on my CV for over a year was enough to get me job interviews for my desired career direction. It’s definitely rough out there don’t get me wrong, but to some extent graduates need to understand the market is terrible right now with the AI focus, and retail / call centres still need humans to speak to humans.
Because I was a maths grad I only applied for 2 jobs before I got one.
The maths bit is important because it meant didn’t apply for jobs where:
• They were advertised on linked in (too popular)
• They listed any amount of experience I didn’t have (too easy to filter me out)
• They were a well known company (again popular)
Apply through a recruiter for a grad job and you’ll get one quick because they have a huge vested interest in matching you up with a job that actually wants to hire people like you.
TLDR : stop applying for so many jobs and start applying for jobs with a smaller pool of applicants and a much higher chance of getting it.
I’m glad I did a sandwich year/industry placement, it massively helped with skills and experience. All my friends on the course who did one got a guaranteed job waiting for them after graduating.
Other friends who opted not to really struggled after graduating and some ended up doing low level support roles.
It feels like someone sold him a dream that was just that, a dream. Having a degree does not put you ahead anymore when everyone has a degree as well.
Welcome to adult world I guess.
This isn’t a graduate problem. I was fired from two jobs in the last two years. It took me 200 applications the first time and 300 applications the second to find another job. I’m 35 and in senior management. I ended up being referred for the job I have now by somebody who didn’t even know I was out of work. It was frustrating that pure luck and not effort on my part got my career back on track. It really is about who you know.
Hot take, we scrap CVs in their current form and everyone gets the same layout much like a passport. Name, accreditations, primary skills, operating location, last 3 previous jobs.
You apply for a job, companies can immediately sort by degree level and skill requirements. Any irrelevant applications are never seen, even if they are the first to apply.
Jobs listed should have controlled opening and closing times. Kind of like an eBay bidding time limit. That way youre not accidentally applying to a job where the role was filled months ago and the listing is still live.
Who actually has support in getting a job?
This isn’t exclusive to graduates, and they shouldn’t be seen as an edge case when they are now ten a penny.
Degrees aren’t a meal ticket, this expectation only serves as a hindrance. They’ve been sold down the river.
I know a lot of people hate this concept but I wrote my overall CV myself with every qualification, experience, and skill that I have along with a bunch of ’scenarios‘ that I’ve been in for it to add based on the specific job (most jobs in the same field ask similar questions so it’s pretty easy). I then uploaded the job applications I wanted to apply to and got it to cut, alter, and add things to the overall CV specifically tailored for each job. It outputed multiple unique CV’s for me to send to each potential employer. It worked remarkably well and is the method I used to get my current job in IT.
As someone who has been hiring for the last 6 months and been unable to fill the vacancy due to the quality of applicants, maybe it’s time to start looking within. If you’ve applied for that many, something’s not right with how you’re presenting yourself.
270 jobs since October 2024?
That’s not even 1 a day. Absolute clowns who go to the media to moan about not being able to find a job, it’s always turns out they are not even doing the bare minimum and expect a job to fall in their lap.
Guarantee they write half baked applications or one click apply for 30 minutes every week or so then go back to living the same life they did during university.
I have 17 years experience in my field. I’ve applied to over 150 jobs over the past year and the only thing I’ve managed to get is massively underpaid grunt work significantly below my level of experience.
The sad fact is when going to university is normal, it’s no longer a desired commodity that makes you stand out from your peers.
Something like 38% of 18 year olds in the Uk are going to uni. Only 7% are on an apprenticeship scheme
When I was at school, my teachers all pushed me and everyone else towards academia, and trade schools were looked at disdainfully,with high levels of snobbery from teachers towards apprenticeships.
People ended up getting degrees in things almost entirely useless in the real world and then struggled post education, wondering why company’s werent interested in their 2:1 in oceanography.
The one guy I know who got a trade, who we all thought was nuts for getting an apprenticeship at 16, making cups of tea for £2 an hour ended up owning his own property at 23 and several before he turned 30
The advice i would give to anyone now, Ignore your teachers, because they have spent their entire lives in academia and are heavily biased towards that, instead find out what no one else is doing then train for that niche yourself
Both electricians and plumbers are in high demand currently for instance
Companies are not going to create additional grad roles just because there are more grads.
It’s rough out there, and the recruiter’s point about tailored apps vs. spray-and-pray is spot on, but even when you do everything right, you’re still fighting an algorithm and a stack of 400 other desperate grads. The system is fundamentally broken when “network and attend events” is the advice, yet those events are just more unpaid labour for people already running on fumes. And let’s be real, measuring your worth by application count is a race to the bottom that just burns you out faster. We need actual structural support, not just tips on how to play a rigged game better.
The government needs to do something for fresh workers. Employers do not want to hire them because they are a burden who will flee as soon as they get experience. Which means not enough time to capitalise on an investment. You may as well hire an experienced worker in the first place. Without tax incentives this will always be the case.
Reduce employers NI for employees with less than £100k lifetime earnings for example (tapered up to £150k). That means employers can get a return on fresh workers without needing to underpay them once they get the experience. Fresh workers will naturally get priority in many cases under those circumstances.
As I’m in sales I struggle with these sorts of debates as there are SO many ways you can cut through the noise but I also understand that unless you’re in sales, this is all a bit alien and us Brit’s never want to be seen as too ‚pushy‘.
But if you’ve sent out THAT many applications and got nada?
Start with 30 job postings that your experience aligns with most and:
-cold call and LinkedIn message the hiring manager
-cold call and LinkedIn message potential team members (as they might get a referral bonus if they put your CV forward and you get hired)
– cold call and LinkedIn message your potential manager
No response? Call the main line, try and get past the GK ie ‚calling about x position‘
Reach out to (e.g graduate specific) recruitment agencies and connect with them
If the role has an office or a shop- literally GO THERE with a CV and try and speak to the HM.
Yes it’s old school but I’m not even 30 and did this for my first job at 21 (got the interview booked then and there after they read through my cv and we had a quick chat- job offer within 2 weeks) so it DOES still land and I can guarantee you hardly anyone else is doing this.
Worst case scenario they still say no.
Best case you cut through the noise and actually score an interview
those that recognise a bit of grit, taking the initiative and thinking outside the box will love that you’ve done just that
those sort of skills are sought after by almost any hiring manager for any job but are super hard to prove on a simple interview
so by showing them you have that, you will be viewed favourably as a candidate right from the very start.
Also- you might need to accept that your first job isn’t in the field you want.
You just need a year or so in a job with relevant enough responsibilities- doesn’t have to be your dream job lol as you’ll be surprised how many people will only apply to what they want vs what they can realistically get
At some point it needs to be accepted that there are simply too many graduates. That will involve job losses, departments and sometimes full institutes shutting down etc., but until there’s a willingness to allow the bubble to deflate then it’s going to stay the same.
It may take you quite some time and plenty of applications to get the job you want. But it does not take that long to get ‚any‘ job.
If he hasn’t had a job at all since leaving Uni then that is going to be working against him. Getting some minimum wage role shows you are doing something while applying.
It used to be a case of going to work in a local shop but that can be more difficult now. You can get a provisional CSCS card and go and work on a construction site or get a forklift license. There is always bar work and my local wants more staff all of the time. None of these are career choices for most people but they are a job where the barrier to entry is low.
If I was out of a job and getting no luck in my preferred career I would be looking at something temporary to plug the gap. Even if I didn’t like it I would not be sitting there for 18 months applying for three jobs a week.
Everything’s too automated so employers don’t always get to see your CV as it’s automation system kicked it out, not to mention too many people applying to jobs so it’s even then your chances are slim
The companies sometimes keep listings up despite filling them so you’re applying for a non starter it’s a mess of a market no matter if you’re a graduate or have years of work experience
> He told LBC: “It’s quite demoralising. For some of the roles I apply for I am basically the exact poster boy for the role, yet somehow they’ll always find someone better. Probably someone who has industry experience which further compounds the issue for graduates, who are just getting their foot in the door.
> “After a certain point you start to question ‘am I the problem?’ yet I have to remember that there are thousands of graduates across the country who face the exact same issue. I’m lucky that I’m an army reservist so I’m still keeping busy but I do feel terrible for those who are completely not in education, employment or training. It must be soul-crushing.”
It would be interesting to have some context on this guy’s CV because poster boy to me would imply top of the class attainment through school, a top degree from a top uni, multiple successful internships, living & breathing something relevant to the jobs he’s applying to as a hobby …. I’m not saying that’s essential but it is what makes a „poster boy“.
He mentioned his lack of industry experience, which suggests no internships, that straight away makes things more difficult when competing with people who do have that.
And I’m not 100% sure what kind of jobs he’s applying to but when he gets asked in interviews what he’s being doing during his employment gap saying „I’m keeping busy as an army reservist“ probably isn’t what the employer wants to hear.