Graduate training schemes are a great introduction to the world of work, offering placements of up to two years with in-house training and salaries ranging from about £19,000 to more than £40,000. They can turbocharge a graduate’s career prospects and are available in sectors from banking and retail to engineering and the civil service.
But competition is fierce and the recruitment process can be gruelling. Adding to the challenge, students may be preparing for their final exams while applying for the schemes. To stand out from the crowd, candidates need to prepare, practise and do their research.
Practice makes perfect
First there’s the CV and covering letter or application form, followed by online psychometric tests, which could include aptitude tests for reasoning and cognitive abilities and a personality assessment. Candidates may then be invited to make an online video, answering a series of questions in a set time period. The next hurdle is attending an assessment centre where you might perform a group task with other candidates and give a presentation on a specialist topic. This may be followed by a final face-to-face interview, though given the current pandemic restrictions, assessment centres and interviews are mainly being conducted online this year.
Candidates should try to practise for each of these stages. Organisations running the schemes often provide software on their websites allowing applicants to practise video interviews, while practice aptitude tests can be found online. University careers services also provide resources and software for practising the different stages of the application.
For Trish Sharma, who studied computer science at Nottingham Trent University and won a place on Vodafone’s technology graduate training scheme, the assessment centre was the toughest part of the process.
“It’s the first time you are face-to-face with other candidates and company employees so you are out of your comfort zone,” she says. “That was definitely the most nerve-racking part.” She carried out three activities, a face-to-face interview, a group activity working in a team with other candidates to solve a problem, then an individual 10-minute presentation.
It pays to do your research
“I knew every single award that Aldi had won the year I was applying,” says William Smith, who got a place on the supermarket chain’s graduate programme and has become an area manager at the company. “Your learning needs to be massive when you apply. Don’t just look on the website, you need to look at news articles, at the market as a whole and at what people are saying about the company on Facebook and Twitter,” he adds. Employers say it quickly becomes clear during the interview process which candidates have done adequate research.
In preparation for the process, Smith spoke to Aldi managers at a jobs fair at the University of Leeds, where he was studying economics. He also buttonholed an executive in an Aldi store to find out about the company and its operations.
But preparation needs to go beyond background research. Graduate schemes often have lengthy application processes where candidates can be knocked out at any stage.
Know your own strengths
Sharma had already completed an internship at Vodafone – where she now works in the digital department – during her second year of college, which she thinks was invaluable in learning about the company and its values. “Find ways to show you are driven and outgoing and are keen to succeed,” she says.
Meanwhile, BT is hiring a slightly reduced number of graduates on its training scheme this year because of the pandemic, says Amy Caton, the work ready programme manager at BT. She adds that the qualities BT seeks from graduates are teamwork, communication skills, leadership, being analytical and a good problem solver, good organisation and time management and being an agile, adaptable person and a creative thinker. Candidates should reflect on how they can demonstrate these, drawing on diverse experience from work, clubs and leisure activities.
But she warns against trying to fake it. “Something we see at assessment centres is people not being themselves but trying to be a version of themselves that they think we want to see. It is a charade and it doesn’t do them any favours,” she says.
Precision targeting beats the scattergun
Where students often go wrong is adopting a scattergun approach to applications, says Chris Webb, senior employability adviser at Sheffield Hallam University. They apply for lots of different schemes without really understanding what the companies do or what the job entails rather than focusing on a few schemes and researching them in-depth. He adds that university careers services are an invaluable resource and offer a wealth of help, from checking CVs to giving advice on interviews and online assessments.
Meanwhile, Matt Kayoka-Ilunga, who is on the graduate scheme at law firm Irwin Mitchell, advises students and graduates to write down a list of 10 reasons why they want a particular graduate scheme or career path. “This will always be a handy list to go back to if there is a rejection or if you just need a reminder of why it is important to you,” he says.
While graduate schemes may attract hundreds of applications for every place, those who succeed tend to make use of the wide range of techniques and help available to increase their chances of getting accepted on a programme.
