Opinion | One in a thousand: The graduate job gamble in a ruthless market

By Maximillian Burnos, Second Year, Law and German

This piece aims to draw attention to the challenges faced by university graduates trying to find employment. With increasing competition for jobs and internships, and many graduates vying for a limited number of positions within a tight job market, it is more challenging than ever to secure employment after university.

Parents, teachers, and career advisors all said that a degree from a prestigious university would be the key to your career. If only! What they conveniently left out was the reality that the real challenge begins after you receive that shiny certificate. With new hiring processes, an insane amount of competition in just about every field, and the rise of AI, it’s no wonder that new graduates are struggling to put their degrees to use.

With an average of 140 applicants per graduate role (according to the Institute of Student Employer’s most recent Student Recruitment Survey), it’s no wonder that post-university morale is low. It seems to many new graduates that finding the next big break after graduation is nearly impossible. The days of ‘get a good degree in a competitive field from a prestigious university and you’ll be fine’ are long gone.

Having spoken to some of the new law graduates, I’ve learned that even those with first class degrees struggle with even getting to the interview stage at top law firms in London. Feeling overwhelmed with a sense of crushing defeat, these students who put their all into being accepted by a prestigious law school and then worked so hard to graduate with the best possible grade, are turning their backs on the corporate world, going into non-graduate, temporary positions: all their motivation has (rightfully so) been sucked away.

So, what’s changed since our parents’ day? One factor to consider is how hiring works these days. It has evolved from handing in your CV to the manager in an office block and walking out with a job, to a months-long process of forms, interview stages, assessments, and back to the interview stages. A process as Kafkaesque and impersonal as this does not make it easy to show off the real you, but rather an artificial persona that has to be reconstructed with every application.

A part of the reason for this can be attributed to one hiring practice in particular: automatic application sorting. If you look up guides on how to write CVs, one thing you will see is how best to cheat the system, or in this case, the software which either progresses or bins your application. Only then will it stand a chance of being seen by a human. This is about as impersonal as it gets and it is causing millions of rejection emails to be sent out, or worse yet, no email at all: nothing feels worse than ghosting, and being ghosted by an employer feels no different. AI has taken on the role of hiring managers, and if the computer says no to you, then you’ve lost the shot before you could even put your foot in the door and make your case.

It is no different when it comes to the jobs themselves. It is no secret that one of the greatest existential fears of AI is the replacement theory. AI is coming for jobs, from data science to software development, and what has this caused? A reduction, or in extreme cases, a complete eradication of various graduate schemes. The way the trends are looking, it is unlikely that this will stop.

Altogether, this has created the perfect storm of insane competition, all for entry-level and, for the most part, modestly paid positions. So, what can be done about it?

These challenges are great, but they’re not impossible to overcome. If this is what the hiring system has become, then we must adapt and continue to persevere in the face of these challenges. Networking with people in your desired field is a start, as they will have experienced this and they are best placed to share insider information. Internships are another option, and this time you’ll have your foot in the door, potentially putting you at an advantage over other candidates.

However, it is also important to remember that many are in the same boat, and eventually it will work out. All it takes is perseverance to ride out what feels like a hurricane, and one day, you’ll open the right door and be presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

So, while it may feel like graduate employment is a one in a thousand chance, determination will get you where you want to be, and that hard-earned degree will finally feel useful.