Finding employers and jobs
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‘It wasn’t for very highfalutin ideals that I became a priest. It was almost by default … I couldn’t go to medical school … The easiest option was going to theological college.’
Desmond Tutu
Identifying jobs in the Public Sector tends to be straightforward and the programmes for entry into Teaching, Medical and Health roles, the Civil Service and Local Government Management programmes are all highly structured. The same is generally true for the largest Companies, the major Law firms, the City Banks and Finance companies, although there are more potential employers to research. However, if you want to consider organisations outside these areas, for example Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), then which are the best ways to find them and the job opportunities they are offering?
Desmond Tutu
Identifying jobs in the Public Sector tends to be straightforward and the programmes for entry into Teaching, Medical and Health roles, the Civil Service and Local Government Management programmes are all highly structured. The same is generally true for the largest Companies, the major Law firms, the City Banks and Finance companies, although there are more potential employers to research. However, if you want to consider organisations outside these areas, for example Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), then which are the best ways to find them and the job opportunities they are offering?
What might make it challenging?
- Knowing where to start, given there are so many organisations.
- Acknowledging that your focus on your studies will leave you only a limited amount of time to research a large number of organisations.
- Proceeding from finding an organisation that interests you to determining if they have any suitable jobs.
The clearer you are about what you are looking for, the less time consuming it should be. If you can start early, then you will be in a better position to decide when you want to invest time for research and make applications. However, inevitably there will be clashes of priorities and some students take a decision to defer their job search until after they graduate. If this is appealing to you, make sure you understand the timescale and financial implications – many organisations establish a fixed schedule for their recruitment.
Points to consider
- Which factors are you going to employ in your search and how are you going to assess their importance to you? For example, the size of prospective employers, the scope, location, reputation, values, stability, opportunity potential, maybe previous contacts.
- Should you focus all your attention on a few employers of a single type? Should you explore one or more alternatives?
- If you feel you face barriers to reaching your potential for any reason - e.g. social background, disability, age, gender and sexual orientation - then please take a look at our Reach website Reach is an online community designed for University of London students facing such barriers.
Things to do
- Read the help sheets (‘Job Hunting’, ‘Job Hunting on the Internet’ and ‘Refocusing your Job Hunt’) available in the Online publications section of the CareersGroup website.
- Access our directory of Organisations listed by business sector. These are organisations with whom we have had contact, either through events such as fairs, forums, presentations, visits or through the provision of information about graduate programmes.
- Search for organisations on Careers Tagged from The Careers Group. Tip: enter tags such as "employer" or "graduate recruiter"; you can combine the results with other tags such as a job title or industry/sector name.
- Visit the Careers and Employability Centre to refer to the Sector files and directories on job types and industry sectors and to collect booklets about the different sectors or jobs.
- Attend careers fairs, forums, employer presentations, networking events to gather information about organisations in the sectors that interest you. See King’s events list.
- Ensure you are up to speed with our ideas on Exploring job ideas and accessing Current Vacancies, as well as the other information available in the Students section.
