Making the grad
There’s only so much you can say about graduate schemes.
You spread your net as wide as you can, trawling the internet for any major company who might look as if they offer some sort of training scheme, and curse the day you decided to study anything other than engineering or chemistry.
Then, having knocked your list down to a mere two hundred or so, you begin the endless hours of filling out your GCSE results (if you can remember them), work experience and all the other insignificant little details of your life that stand between you and the pot of gold at the end of the recruitment cycle.
Test me on it
The pyramid travels steadily towards its point as offers to 'take our online tests' start to trickle in. You could waste hundreds of pounds at Waterstones on various ‘how to pass psychometric tests’ books, but every single one I picked up was absolute rubbish.
A better idea might be to complete an application for some schemes you have no intention of seriously applying for - Deloitte audit officer anyone? – in order to gain an idea of how hard online tests really are when they invite you to that stage.
In my experience, all you need to know is how to use percentages and be able to read. The verbal tests can all be boiled down to ‘does it actually say that in the passage’, and with percentages under your belt there is nothing to worry about. That’s about as much as I can say with any confidence.
What they want
Having spoken to a few people who run these schemes, it appears the key attributes in the final stages are:
- experience,
- adaptability,
- communication skills and
- presentation.
Showing leadership is the truly crucial element . Graduate schemes are mainly looking for high potential candidates to be the leading lights of the business in years to come. Trying to show them that that becoming a Wastewater manager has always been your childhood dream whilst not being a mouthy imbecile is the name of the game!
The odds aren’t good, but it seems to be a far better option than starting as tea boy and climbing the long and slippery ladder. I should have done engineering…
Written by Tom Kapella.
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