Finding the perfect career for you, selling yourself as the perfect candidate, or even knowing what you want to do in the future can be overwhelming and stressful, especially whilst you’re juggling university work as well. I have been no exception to this anxiety throughout my university experience. But, against all odds, I’ve managed to secure myself a graduate role (and a decently paying one at that!) by using and abusing the Careers Service at UoM. The service is something I used the most on my pursuit of the perfect career, so I’ll be talking about my favourite features that helped me find my dream job.

Knowing what career I wanted to go into was first of all daunting, and so many of us don’t really know what we want to do with our degree, or even if we want to use it at all. This is why I found the ‘Which Career’ section of the Careers Service really beneficial. It has a lot of starting points, from whether you have no idea what career you want to go into, or if you have an idea of what you want to do but don’t know what to look for. It has plenty of resources on how to collate your professional skills, and how your personality and ethic can find you a career which resonates with you as a person. And if things are feeling particularly bleak, the Service can help you boost your confidence with different informational videos and helplines.

So, I’ve decided what career I want to pursue- perfect- but now I have to find vacancies. Luckily, the University had me covered on that front too! CareerConnect was basically my best friend for 4 months whilst I was looking for my graduate job. It’s the best job search interface I’ve used, and I can say that with confidence after becoming acquainted with several different job searching engines over my university career. Whether you’re looking for a job, an industrial placement, or a summer internship, CareerConnect has you sorted. The filtering options are incredibly cohesive, and since the University is well-renowned, a lot of prominent companies post opportunities at their companies on CareerConnect. The feature of CareerConnect that helped me the most was their option to opt into getting emails to update me on new posted vacancies. You can opt into receiving notifications weekly, monthly, or if you’re desperate to find a job like me- daily! This really helped me feel like I was staying ahead of the curve and applying for every single opportunity that came my way.

The final part of my careers journey was learning how to sell myself to employers. I used to be terrible at communicating the skills that I gained throughout my university experience, and writing a good CV wasn’t anything we were ever taught at school, so my basis for writing a CV has been poor at best. Luckily the University has a nifty tool called CareerSet which can help you immediately if you need some fixes on grammar and continuity. But if that doesn’t work for you, the university has videos which can help you collate your skills or provide you with a template to help you sell yourself in your chosen field. And it works! I can say with confidence that my CV was terrible before I started using the CV service, but it helped me understand why my own experiences were desirable for employers to hear.

There you have it, my experience in using the Career Services at UoM. In the face of the ever-frightening job market, it had helped me do the one thing I was so scared about post-university- getting a grad job. If you’re a little hopeless like I was and don’t know where to start, I would 100% recommend giving the Service a go and see if it has something to offer you. And who knows? Maybe you’ll end up with the job of your dreams too!

Written by Zoe, current BSc Environmental Management student at The University of Manchester

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