What's next? Looking at options for graduates

Guest contributor Niall Driver, Careers Adviser with the UCD Smurfit School of Business, finds that all is not doom and gloom for this year's graduates, and examines their potential courses of action.

As everyone will be aware the job prospects for graduates completing their exams this summer are not exactly looking very good and while there are always jobs available even in the deepest darkest recessions, they will be difficult to find and to secure. Those employers who are actively recruiting will have large numbers of suitable candidates to choose from so only the best prepared graduates will probably succeed.

It is probably wise to have other plans in place in case Plan A (landing a good job) fails.

While I don’t have a crystal ball, it seems likely that the current recession will last well into 2010. So the question is, how to make best use of your time in case a good job is hard to find?

Students might consider going travelling around the world for a year. Most graduate employers expect that young people will do this at some stage before they hit their late 20s. So doing it now, before you actually enter the workplace, is a good thing from the employers point of view – they will be reassured that you are unlikely to leave them to go off travelling 2 or 3 years into your career just when you are starting to make a real contribution to their businesses.

Taking a year out to do some voluntary work is also a good idea. Working in an orphanage in Peru or helping to save a rainforest or two is great experience to have on your CV. There are lots of volunteer organisations that would be glad to offer you a life-enhancing experience like this, which you would never ever forget.

Another option would be to look for internship or unpaid work in the area where you would like to start your career. You never know where these things might lead and what opportunities might come your way, and again you are adding valuable skills and experience to your CV.

Finally, if you are an undergraduate, you should probably give serious consideration to a postgraduate qualification.  From my vantage point at the Smurfit School, I can readily confirm that the long-term career prospects for those undertaking postgraduate studies remain excellent. Roughly 50% of Irish undergraduates now go on to further postgraduate studies at Masters, MBA or PhD levels, so having a Masters level degree is almost a basic requirement now for a good student to stand out from his peers.

As well as the benefits of studying a more specialised degree at 4th level, you also have the advantage of having that extra year’s maturity, extra skills development (through team based projects and formal presentations), and probably a greater focus on your own career options and choices. All these as a package will give you the edge over an undergraduate when it comes to recruitment time with employers.

There are a huge variety of postgraduate options now available for those with relevant undergraduate degrees who wish to specialise in an area (like Marketing, HR or Corporate Finance), or for those students who did a non-business undergraduate like Law, Science, Engineering or Arts and who want to specialise further in their undergraduate field, or add a postgraduate business degree to ‘round out’ their education.

If you have a non-business undergraduate degree, adding a postgraduate business course, such as a Higher Diploma in Business or Masters in Management, can make you very attractive to employers, and in many instances can make you even more attractive for a business role than a graduate with just a business degree.

There will be a graduate recruitment summer fair organised by GCI, the association of higher level careers advisers, in the RDS in Dublin on June 10th, where further information on all these options will be available. Contact Aisling Carroll at 01 6451 500 or aisling.carroll@groupgti.com for further information.

Click here to read about postgraduate course options in UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.