Okay...so I have got this far..but no one is noticing me?

If you have been able to find some kind of voluntary work then congratulations! As Tesco's says "every little helps".

It actually does help! Even the odd bit of ad-hoc work can show the ability to fit in a little extra work around your busy schedule. This ability shows excellent organisation skills and a team player. At this stage of the job-market-game, strong organisation and team player skills are essential as the jobs a graduate would primarily go into after University are within a team and with low responsibility.

In the last post, I discussed how a university student could get voluntary work within university societies. But, why bother with voluntary work? "What if I am in a position where I can get paid work within my chosen field, should I still bother?" Well my friend, you are one of a small percent who attain the chance to do so, so well done you!

As previously explained, short term placements and training in the right field for a graduate is extremely tough and can be just as competitive as a full time job. The competition is getting tougher by the year as more and more graduates pour out of university.

If you get a contract for a placement or training during uni, you are still competing against others for full time jobs at the end of your degree who might have a similar background as you, but with a bite. That bite could be a little bit of voluntary work or a project they have done in their spare time. It's unfortunately not enough these days to have one project under your belt.

Your CV needs to look so full of varied training, that the recruiter or future employer would be mad not to employ you.

"You've got the job, so when do you want to start?"

Some good news! I had an interview last week and I got the job. Hip hip hooray!

Three months of unemployment. Three months of continuously writing, improving my CV, writing covering letters, researching jobs, interviews, rejections, feedback, mock interviews.... and I dare say..the list goes on.

So I now have a foot in the door. I'm hoping that things will be easier for future employment and I hope that the job market will be more stable the next time I look for work.

My plan is to share with you my processes in finding work and help current and future graduates get their foot in the door in a graduate job in their chosen field(not call centres, retail or bar work).

My next few posts:
- Searching for work: How versatile do you have to be to find your future job?
- Get yourself noticed by recruiters and have things to put on your CV to look better
- Adapt your skills to match your dream career path

I hope to have these out in the next few weeks.

I am also still working on my piece about work experience, which I hope to have up for you all by early October.

H

What do you plan to do with your Philosophy degree... Article for TwitJobsGrad

“What do you plan to do with your philosophy degree – become a professional philosopher?”

When stating you have a Philosophy degree you can be greeted with a look of bewilderment from your family, friends and now recently for me, recruiters. From personal experience I believe the question they would rather ask (if they weren’t so polite) would be: “what can you do with a Philosophy degree?” You can do a lot and very little, so it would be acceptable to ask what the point is behind spending £9K to study it. Majority of the time it isn’t to become a professional philosopher.

Philosophy has had good press and bad press in the past and while it is classed as an arts degree, there seems to be a lack of knowledge on what Philosophy students actually study. We all have a good understanding of English and History subjects, but Philosophy seems a grey area where recruiters from my experience don’t seem to be sure of the skills of a Philosophy student. Regardless of the degree, I am sure that graduates have had to explain their reasons for the course, but I believe that those skills haven’t been doubted the ways I think mine have.

Our skills can include:

· Analytical, problem solving, research, independent thought

· Debating, communication (oral and written), organisation,

· Team work, working on initiative, attention to detail,

· Dealing with some of the most complex and daring thoughts in history

I think the last is crucial and completely missed when discussing Philosophy student’s skills. Our degree is one of the few disciplines that allow its students to handle some of the most controversial essays in history. Many of these papers have influenced and directed governments, religious belief, ethics and medicine. Philosophers were once greatly respected leaders and the Philosopher Plato stated that the state (country) should be ruled by Philosophers, as they are the most educated and knowledgeable (The Republic).

While an interesting and thought provoking idea, I don’t regard Philosophy as a more respectable subject, my only qualms being that the attitude towards modern Philosophy students can be misguided. From friends and people I have come across who have shown a curiosity in my studies, the attitude seems far from the ideas above of a Philosophy graduate. Instead the typical idea seems to be of drinking in pubs discussing conceptual ideas and generally just being very boring. I found some interesting articles in the University of Leeds Careers Centre on the general idea of Philosophy students by employers as being lazy about work because they think logic, time travel, anti-realism is interesting and normal work isn’t. Furthermore, if anyone has come in contact with a Philosophy student or graduate, they will know the degree involves very few contact hours. So from the outside perspective it looks as though our degree is easy. One of my Business friends came back from her day at University to proclaim she had a look in one of the Philosophy tutorial rooms to find us “just sitting around chatting”. She was mortified because she had never seen something look so easy and informal.

However I beg to differ as would many Philosophy graduates. We may have less than ten hours of contact a week yet we are still given a forty hour workload, therefore we are expected to organise our own time and develop our own learning techniques. The advantage over a science or mathematical based degree is that we aren’t given the information; we have to find it ourselves which gives Philosophy students a sense of independent learning and maturity.

This could and maybe should look desirable to an employer, but in researching what recruiters want at entry level for graduates they could possibly be excused for thinking Philosophy graduates would think they are above work. During my research for this piece I came across an interesting article called Advice for Philosophy Graduates[i] by Rob Farrow. What he drew on were the factors which would cause stress to a Philosophy graduate looking and entering the workplace. The section I found most interesting was he understood that at entry level a graduate isn’t expected to reason, question and discuss the mechanics of their new surroundings. Instead you are given your policies and procedures and that you are expected to follow.

“…[Philosophy graduates] often move from an environment which prizes critical and original thinking, ethical integrity and rationality to environments in which these are often considered problems. The culture of compliance that is so prevalent in the modern workplace can be a shock to the philosophy graduate who has been developing their independent thought.”

Nevertheless, I know that this problem of graduates feeling restless and unchallenged occurs right across the spectrum of degree disciplines. I recognise of course there may be other degree disciplines who receive prejudice when applying for jobs by recruiters, but I have specifically chosen Philosophy because this is my chosen subject and I know from experience that there seems to be a lack of understanding of what it involves. The point I am trying to make is whether recruiters do enough homework on their applicants as we do when we apply. Graduates put a lot of trust in the recruiters to make the right decision in whether to accept their application and I would imagine most graduates would expect the recruiter to have some understanding of their discipline. I believe a good number of graduates would believe they should not have their degrees discriminated against if the discipline has a bad or unusual reputation. Philosophy seems to be one of those subjects where the air hasn’t been completely cleared and I fear recruiters might not look deep enough to see what valuable employees we could be.

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http://philosophycompass.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/advice-for-philosophy-graduates/

In response to: How to Beat Stress if you’re a Philosophy Graduate http://philosophycompass.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/how-to-beat-stress-if-you%E2%80%99re-a-philosophy-graduate/

Some interesting finds...

In the past few days I have found some very interesting things...
Firstly, I was invited to take part in a debate hosted by GraduatesYorkshire about the social media affecting the recruitment process. There were a few questions raised; how does social media affect recruitment, does it have positive aspects like networking and what about the negatives. When having your background check, the recruiter could research you online via Google, Facebook or Twitter and could come across some incriminating information. Other questions included which were more useful, if any for networking your future employer and how these websites actually work. I find it very interesting and it seems the discussion has gone on for a few extra days.
Page can be found here: http://www.graduatesyorkshire.co.uk/graduates/blog/73

From this discussion I met some very interesting people, unfortunately too many to name here. Some were the advisers for graduates and recruiters, some were graduates who had found work and others were graduates like myself out of work and applying. Many of them I now follow on twitter and now following the advisers. What's more, ever since being involved in the debate I have gained a few followers each day, many based in Leeds and are recent graduates. Handy as I could always ask for some inspiration.

However what I have gained from the discussion was invaluable. One of my questions was about having two profiles on Facebook. Considering I have a belly dance profile picture where I am in a high-slit skirt and bra, might not be the best picture for my prospective employers to see me in what they would constitute as my underwear. I do a lot of networking on facebook and also on my twitter account for my dancing and I should probably separate the two. However, I had already planned to do this once I had my stage name sorted. I'm really not sure whether I can be bothered with a separate twitter account, considering I have got LinkedIn dedicated to employment. The other piece of information I found invaluable is networking for my future employer. Sounds pretty obvious considering I network my dancers, but honestly it wasn't that obvious to me about networking recruiters. Yesterday I saw a job advert for Millies and hopefully through engaging with them previously and saying I would like to work for them might give me some headway over my competitors. We'll see.

In conclusion, what I have learned from GradsYorkshire is to network, network, network and I guess considering I really don't have that much else to do, why not?