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Job Seekers » Graduate Job Advice » First Graduate Job Stories

"My first graduate job wasn't exactly what I'd expected. I'd applied for loads of graduate schemes thinking it wouldn't be a massive problem that I didn't have any solid work experience under my hat. After all, they were looking for fresh grads, weren't they? Pretty quickly, I found that something about the combination of a Music degree and a sparse employment history was a significant turn-off for employers. So, after 4 depressing months of job searches and unemployment with nothing to show for it but a month's worth of travelling, some dole money and some tea stains on my degree certificate, I applied through the Future Jobs Fund. In case you missed it (it's been scrapped now), FJF was a government scheme designed to get young people into jobs. The deal was you got 6 months in a fairly menial role on minimum wage and support with writing job applications and generally developing. Also, you finally had that first notch on the CV.

I got an interview immediately after applying to FJF and was given the first job I went for - Community Funding Assistant at the local County Council. This entailed writing bids on behalf of the county and consulting with local charities to help them develop a fundraising strategy. Excited to have something to do, I launched into the job and got to grips with the world of Grant Funding. I got quite a bit of training and was given the chance to work with a huge range of people, including foreign representatives wishing to work on an international project with us. Apart from the minimum wage, I loved it. I was quickly offered more hours at a higher rate of pay and then offered an extended contract on "proper money", becoming a "Community Funding Officer". Through working with the details of project proposals and seeing all these start-up organisations plan their projects, the job also helped me find what I wanted to do - it got me fired up about business and finance. I'm now doing a one-day-a-week internship at an accountancy firm and trying to get my own start-up off the ground while applying to accountancy jobs across the country. So far I've found I've had a lot more interviews than before, and mostly the feedbacks been positive. No job yet, but it's early days."

BRIN, UNIVERSITY OF SURREY

"My first full-time job after graduating was plucking owls for a scientist. I did other things for her too, mostly involving the filing cabinets or weighing bags of soil, but it's the owls that stick in my mind. When that ended I walked straight into what could be called my first graduate job, working for a literary development charity.

The post is a fixed term contract so there was no interview, but I wouldn't have been offered it if I hadn't already worked with the charity as a volunteer. As they say, the most important interview is the one you haven't noticed starting.  The director needed an extra hand in the run up to the charity's annual literature festival, and with the other projects that the organisation manages. Those projects range from in-house publishing, organising writing workshops and education sessions for writers, to projects with partner organisations involving bigger budgets and commissioning writers to produce art and text to meet specific goals.

I stick my oar into all of that. I'm an odd-job man. The meat of the job has been administrating for the festival, going through publicists and agents to book writers and sorting out their publicity details. There's a lot of chasing people on the telephone. Around that I do whatever's needed: compiling mailing lists, booking accommodation, clearing old filing cabinets, steering projects with third parties during the director's absence, setting and striking our performance space for events, researching intellectual property law... anything. Mostly I'm a facilitator rather than a decision maker, but it's not drone work. Lately I've been working on a multi-organisation project to produce a children's book, which has given me a crash course in publishing law.

The work is challenging, varied and good fun. There's not much money in publicly funded arts, so the pay isn't good, and there's no budget for formal professional development - but I'm learning more on the job than I did from my degree, particularly about the landscape of the public arts sector in the North West. The ethos is very inclusive and veteran staff are always around to share their wisdom. If you fancy a job like mine, volunteer and make a good impression."

TIM, UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

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