Graduating from a prestigious university and getting outstanding academic results are just the first of many challenges a higher-education student must take before landing a full-time job. Unemployment amongst graduates is considered one of the main reasons for low life-satisfaction and high levels of anxiety amongst graduates, according to HESA (Graduates’ subjective wellbeing | HESA. 2020).
Graduate/placement programmes are one of the most wanted and competitive positions as the average employer receives around 60 applications for each vacancy, therefore companies and recruiters make have a very structured and thorough application process to filter the vast number of applications (Graduate schemes 2021 | Prospects.ac.uk. 2021). Whilst there are many resources online, most of university students do not have any experience in job applications and can perceive the application process as very daunting. Furthermore, many of the online resources are not free which impacts students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
The scope of this project will focus on creating a web application that prepares students for the application process of graduate schemes and will focus on competency-based interview questions, providing guidance to create their own answers using the STAR approach and saving the materials in their profile. It will further enable tracking job applications and their stages as the typical graduate student often needs to track 10+ positions at once.
The web application could be further extended to provide a unified resource that would be free to students to practice and find reliable resources for the different stages of a typical graduate job application process, which are: •Cover Letter and CV writing •Aptitude tests •Competency based interview questions •Presentation techniques •Technical Interview questions.
In conclusion, such tool is expected to increase the employability amongst Cardiff University students and provide and equal opportunity for students from diverse backgrounds to practice their job-application skills.
References: Graduate schemes 2021 | Prospects.ac.uk. 2021. Available at: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/careers-advice/getting-a-job/graduate-schemes [Accessed: 2 May 2021]. Graduates’ subjective wellbeing | HESA. 2020. Available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/graduates/subjective-wellbeing [Accessed: 2 May 2021].