Graduate Fog is the only website that provides graduates with careers and job-hunting advice that’s actually helpful to you in 2012. We also pride ourselves on running the most feisty, tells-it-like-it-is blog around.

We believe that traditional careers resources aimed at graduates simply aren’t good enough. During this recession their failures leave hundreds of thousands of graduates unprepared for the challenge of finding work in today’s tough, fast-changing jobs market. While we can’t create vacancies, stop the recession or give university careers advisers the slap round the chops they so desperately need, we can show you genius, relevant, up-to-date, practical ways to boost your chances of being one of graduates who does find a job this year.

What makes Graduate Fog different from other careers websites?

- Our quality content Everything you read on this website has been lovingly crafted to ensure that it answers the questions real graduates are actually asking about careers. We don’t do re-hashed, ancient, generic ‘careers’ content. The words you read on this site are not just there to fill space between job ads – they are the sole point of the website. We also understand how grim it can feel to be young and out of work – so this site has empathy and a sense of community you won’t find elsewhere.
- Our independence Graduate Fog represents the views of job-seeking graduates in the UK – and nobody else. We are not afraid to square up to those who you say are currently letting you down. In fact, bring it on. Graduate Fog is also not linked to any political party. If a new government initiative sucks, we’ll says so. And if it’s any good, we’ll say so. We hope to find kindly sponsors shortly but these companies will be screened for super-coolness – and a condition of signing up will be that they get zero say in the site’s editorial content. We also won’t work with companies that use unpaid interns.
Our community Job-seeking is a lonely old business – yet thousands of you are in the same boat. We’d love you to comment on articles and blog posts – to share your views, highs and lows with other graduate job-seekers out there. With over 14,000 visits a month (May 2012) Graduate Fog is already becoming a collective ‘voice’ on the issue of graduate unemployment. As our numbers continue to grow, we will be able to shout loud enough to pressure those in charge to work for a fairer deal for graduates – and to change the old-fashioned, ineffective ways things are currently done. Alone, you are one. Together, we are many!

What inspired Graduate Fog?

The fact that everybody else is doing such a rubbish job of providing graduates with the kind of career advice you’re crying out for. Honestly, we’ve peeked backstage and it’s a total shambles. Neither the universities nor the Government have grasped how tough it is to start your career during a recession, when you’re living back at home miles away from your friends, in £27,000 of debt – and your parents don’t have friends in high places who can fix you up with interviews. Perkily suggesting you ‘Use your contacts’ isn’t helpful when you don’t have any – and unpaid work experience won’t pay the rent. We think the universities should be doing much, much more to help you (after all, you’ve just paid them thousands of pounds for your degree) – and we’re suspicious of their cosy relationship with the supposedly ‘official’ graduate careers website Prospects, which we think is shockingly bad. There are few easy answers to your questions – but Graduate Fog says let’s start by getting real.

When did Graduate Fog launch?

In April 2010 – so we’re not box-fresh, but we’re not ancient either. Our tribe is growing fast – but we’d always like to have a few more Foggy friends. So, if you’d like to spread the love and beef up the gang’s numbers, please recommend the site to your friends via Facebook or Twitter. We have zero money for advertising so if this site is going to continue we need your help to make it grow. Thanks!

Who is behind Graduate Fog?

The website is run by Tanya de Grunwald, blogger, journalist and author of new book How to Get a Graduate Job in a Recession (published May 2012). Her first book - Dude, Where’s my Career? The Guide for Baffled Graduates (published June 2008) - sold 3,000 copies.

What qualifications does she have?

9 GCSEs, 3 A-levels and a 2:1 in Psychology (BA) from Durham University (class of 2000) – and no formal careers advice qualifications whatsoever. Plus, Tanya is only 32 years old. Yet thousands of graduates bought her first book, thousands more check into Graduate Fog every month and hundreds more have written to say her advice is more practical, helpful and usable than anything you’ve been offered by the supposedly qualified professionals. So she figures she must be doing something right.

Why should we trust her advice?

As well as receiving hundreds of emails from fans of her book and blog, Tanya’s advice and views have been featured in quality UK publications including the Guardian, the Times, the Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday, the Daily Mail, the Independent, the Sunday Telegraph, the Scotsman, the Sunday Express, The Week, New Scientist, GLAMOUR, the Bookseller and careers magazines Real World and GradJobs. For most of 2010, Tanya worked with GuardianJobs as their resident ‘graduate expert’ on their jobs forum, answering questions every day from job-hunting graduates. Tanya also gets emails from grateful parents of unemployed graduates (‘PUGs’), who say her advice is infinitely more helpful than the ‘patronising dross’ that was the Parent Motivators Guide from the government’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

Who isn’t a fan of Tanya’s work?

The only people who aren’t feeling the love – yet! – are Prospects and some university careers advisers. You can read about Tanya’s beef with Prospects here - and follow the latest on her fierce debate with the careers advisers here. While there are pockets of more visionary careers departments (including The Careers Group, University of London – with whom Tanya partnered on Dude?, and the University of Liverpool), the majority are defensive and weirdly shocked that anyone has dared to suggest that what they’re currently doing isn’t working. Well, it isn’t – and Graduate Fog isn’t afraid to keep saying it. Click here and here to read their outraged emails. We’re also unlikely to have many fans within David Cameron’s close circles of friends, as we have consistently criticised his government’s failure to help graduates into work, and their own use of unpaid interns (all wave to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt). Sir Philip Green hates us after we exposed Arcadia for using unpaid interns in their press office – ditto Simon Cowell, after we blew the whistle about unpaid interns working on X Factor. But frankly, we can live with that.

How to advertise on this site

If you work for a big company, love what Graduate Fog is doing and want to stuff fifties in our pockets, who are we to refuse? Contact us and we’ll talk.

How Graduate Fog is powered

If you’re wondering what makes us go, Graduate Fog runs on WordPress, uses the Arras Theme and is hosted by DreamHost. So now you know.

How to contact Graduate Fog

Love the site? Hate the site? Want to share your views? Drop Tanya a line to say hello.