Gearing up for final year 3 things you can (should!) do now towards your career plans University of Manchester Careers Blog

Gearing up for final year 3 things you can (should!) do now towards your career plans University of Manchester Careers Blog If you’re just about to start your final year and you’d like to get something sorted career-wise by the time you graduate, you might think there isn’t really much you can or need to do at this stage, but youd be wrong. You’ll be so busy with academic work once the semester starts that it’s all too easy to let the first semester slide by without thinking about your career after graduation, and yet its also a key time for graduate job applications.   So to make sure you don’t miss out on valuable opportunities for when you graduate, here are three suggestions for things you can do now to get prepared: Research your career options. If you’re not sure what you want to do and need some help, use the last few weeks of the vacation to do some careers research to try to get a bit more focussed. See our Explore your Options pages of the careers website and download our  I Don’t Know What I Want To Do guide. If you think you’d find it useful to talk to someone about your plans (even if it’s because you don’t have any yet!) you might want to book a guidance appointment with one of our careers consultants. Get in as quick as possible though, as we sometimes book up a couple of weeks or more in advance, and October is always our busiest month, so we usually have more limited availability during that time. If youre not around in Manchester over the summer, we offer telephone or Skype appointments. Draw up a list of organisations to target, check their recruitment timetables and apply early! If you already know what sort of job you want, start to identify specific employers to target. You can find out some good lists of employers for different sectors on graduate job sites like www.prospects.ac.uk, www.targetjobs.co.uk and www.insidecareers.co.uk. Then go directly to the employers’ websites and see if you can find out when applications open for their graduate jobs starting in September 2012. Get those dates in your diary. Believe it or not, some 2014 schemes, (e.g. some of the accountancy firms and banks) are already starting to open for applications. In general, our advice is to apply as early as possible when schemes open for applications â€" recruiters don’t tend to wait for their advertised closing dates before starting to recruit candidates, and it’s often a case of “when it’s full it’s full”. It is worth bearing in mind though that these graduate schemes wit h large organisations only represent a small percentage of   jobs that graduates go on to do. There are lots of other really interesting and challenging graduate jobs out there. More on alternatives to grad schemes in future blog posts, but why not check out our vacancies on CareersLink to get a flavour of the jobs we’re advertising right now for Manchester students and graduates. Take a hard look at your CV. If you don’t yet have a CV, now’s the time to start thinking about putting one together. Take a look at our CVs guide for advice and tips and to see some examples. Do you have good evidence of the sorts of skills employers tend to look for, e.g. teamwork, communication, organisation and problem solving? If you’ve had a position of responsibility in a student society or sports club or done some volunteering, organised an event or had a part-time or summer job, make sure you include these experiences on your CV and explain how they have enhanced your skills. Do you have any relevant work experience for the areas of work you might be applying for? If not, try to find out how important this is for the jobs and organisations you’re targeting. Sometimes, even a day or two of work shadowing will help and you might be able to squeeze something in even in your final year. Otherwise, you might want to consider doing a graduate internship when you finish you r degree to boost your employability. All Undergraduate Undergraduate-highlighted career planning career research careers Closing dates final year graduate schemes to do