NEW FIGURES SHOW A THIRD SEND ONE APPLICATION PER DAY – AND ONE IN SIX SENDS JUST FIVE PER MONTH
A survey has suggested that job-hunting graduates are sending out far fewer applications than might be expected.
New research from Totaljobs.com reveals that a third of graduates send 20 applications per month – that’s five per week, or one for each working day. And they are the industrious ones – one in six send out just five applications per month. If that’s true, what’s taking you so long?
Graduate Fog thinks this is fascinating – and we want to hear from you. Are employers asking for too much from applicants, with lengthy forms that take you hours of research and writing? Or do you struggle to find the motivation to send more than five per week, when so few employers even reply to acknowledge your application?
Do you find it takes you a day to double-check an application to ensure it’s word-perfect? Or are you working a day-job at the same time as job-hunting, and when you only have lunchbreaks, evenings and weekends, you find it hard to send more than five applications per week? How many applications have you sent out this week – and why wasn’t the number higher? Have your say below…
This kind of thing really riles me. We’re constantly being told to thoroughly research every company we apply to, tailor our applications to them and not take a ‘scattergun’ approach. The applications are often full of complicated and/or lengthy questions.
Law applications often ask about 6 different questions that require a mini essay for each answer and they want you to list every exam you’ve ever sat since the age of 15 and your entire work history. It’s extremely time consuming and they rarely set out the form in a way that allows you to simply copy and paste the info that’s going to be the same in every form. I usually end up spending around 5 hours on a law training contract application – how am I supposed to fit in multiple applications like that per week around working and volunteering full time and having a little time off from it all to restore my sanity?!
Even just finding jobs to apply for takes up so much time. Many jobs sites are utterly useless and come up with jobs that are completely irrelevant (I’ve actually had a search engine on a popular job website suggest a gym) instructor job in the other end of the country when I searched for law jobs near my city. Even jobs doing sales and waiting tables for big companies seem to have ridiculously long application forms. All that time and I usually don’t even get an automated ‘thank you for your application’ email never mind a response…
Why aren’t graduates applying for more jobs?
The reason that graduates aren’t applying for jobs is that, on grad schemes, if you do not match the exact specification they will reject you automatically, I have experience of this.
My experience, filled in a form for an IT grad scheme, got an e-mail 5 mins later thanking me for my application, but I was not suitable, rung up there HR department, and they said to me “if you don’t match the specification, you will get an automatic rejection, they also said that due to many graduates applying, they will only look at graduates that match what they want, this scheme wanted to know all of your education back to GCSE’s (can’t remember what company was)
The main reason that I think graduates aren’t applying for jobs, is that while we all spent all out years studying in university, the eastern Europeans seized there opportunity and took all of the low paid jobs and now do them so British people will never get a look in including graduates.
Graduates are not going to apply for the jobs that are left because they employers will reject graduates because they think that graduates will leave the company when a better job comes up, graduates also know that if an employer has an graduate or an eastern European, they will go for the latter as they are cheaper to pay.
The situation young people trying to follow particular career paths find themselves in is demoralizing. It wouldn’t surprise me if many are having mental breakdowns because that is how bad it has become. Yes, many people eventually end up with jobs and disappear off most official statistics, but it is not in their relevant field – aka underemployment. This is happening to everyone, but the young are in the worst position.
It isn’t about the number of applications you send, it’s the quality and whether you meet the recruitment criteria and have an aptitude in that area. In theory they are open to all, but in reality you are likely to be rejected for not being ‘to-specification’. There are all kinds of reasons why you might be rejected, but you will never find out precisely why because ‘they are unable to give individual feedback due to volume of applications’.
The so-called graduate jobs are the worst at providing any meaningful feedback and automatically reject you if you do not meet the precise criteria. That means hours of filling in tedious forms and explaining why you have chosen a specific firm, when the reality is that you have to apply to as many as possible just to be in with a slim chance. The time taken to apply versus the speed at which you can be rejected is demoralizing.
For non-graduate jobs you are also in a bad position if you have substantial irrelevant qualifications or lack of experience after a certain age. There is likely to be intense discrimination against those who have gaps on their CVs. If you leave out your qualifications then there is a great risk of being rejected just for the blank space, so you can’t win either way. We’re supposed to be ambitious and well-educated, but if you try to follow a career path and are unsuccessful in applying for relevant jobs you are discriminated against and if you leave out your qualifications you are discriminated against too.
Tanya ( I seem to be commenting on everything today ) this is very interesting because I am guilty as charged.
I have moments where I just feel so depressed I’ll be lucky to send one application, and then I’ll feel really motivated and apply A LOT, which leads to initial feedback like phone interviews, emails etc which gives you some hope. I recently had three job interviews in the space of two weeks, and all of them turned me down. Cue depression. You start to think that there is something wrong with you after all the rejection. Interviewers will say ”We were really impressed but…”…
But what? A thousand other people who were better than me applied and you were spoiled for choice? THAT’S why graduates aren’t applying, I think.
I applied for 95 jobs one fortnight when signing on, and have applied for hundreds in my time. A lot of that was jobsite vacancies of course.
But many application forms (which I also fill in) for fixed term contracts or permanent roles seem to have an exacting list of requirements that exclude me anyway.
And when I do fill in the ones I can, it can take over an hour to just put my previous jobs (they often insist on all of them and explaining gaps) so I can see why it could be difficult to fill in many of them a day – and this is admin roles I’m talking about, graduate scheme applications take far longer.
@Lola: I know what you mean about depression and applications going up and down. When signing on for most of last year, I always massively exceeded the minimum 6 a fortnight I was required to apply for though (typically applied for 30 a fortnight minimum) and have yet to hear of an approach other than a scatter-gun approach targeting admin (and the rare retail and other roles that have enough hours) likely to work any better in my circumstances.
Since pretty much all ways into politics-related careers seem to require money I don’t have (and rarely leads to paid work anyway), and I can’t afford to try and break into academia (another thing some have said I’d be suited for) what else can I do? I can think of some other things I may be OK at too, but not how I could earn more than my rent doing them.
I definitely think the expectation of sending multiple applications a day is unrealistic given the length of many application forms! In my final year of uni, I sent out around 40 applications in total over 4 months, so approx. 1 every week. It usually took me several days to complete one application, what with the need to manually input everything from my CV (and, infuriatingly, upload my CV on the next page!) and come up with grammatically correct, perfectly worded and somewhat original (but not too original) answers to the competency questions. Often, the total wordcount of all the open questions in one application was almost equivalent to an undergraduate essay! I definitely think some application forms are too long and demanding, which is especially frustrating as most applications are not even reviewed by an actual person.
I applied for 2 jobs (in higher ed) within a few days of each other last month. I got called for an interview one pretty quickly, I agreed/booked train tickets etc. Later the other university called me to ask me to come in 3 days later, that happened to be the exact day of the other interview. I apologised, explained about the other appointment, expressed my interest in the role and said would be happy to come next day or skype or something. They said they had trouble getting the panel together and that was the only day available.
I heard from them later saying they’d interviewed just 2 people for the 2 roles available, so of course they’d been filled. Annoyed is not the word. Fair recruitment practices? give me a break
Graduate application forms, and most application forms in general are too long and far too demanding. All the long questions take me minimum of two hours to research and complete if I want to be fully satisfied with my wording and answers, then the numerical and verbal and personality tests minimum 30 minutes each – all that to be rejected within a day, its pretty depressing. What happened to simply sending in a CV and covering letter? I wouldn’t mind the numerical and verbal tests so much if the actual applications weren’t so time consuming.
They simply take too long! Its demoralising to spend 2 hours on an application, only to be rejected as soon as you submitted, which happened to me last week. Usually its ridiculous ‘situational judgement’ tasks.
I run a London based Recruitment agency, I have 20 years experience in this industry and have worked for some impressive employers including James Caan (Dragon’s Den).
I have always found it hard to secure Graduates for the businesses I have run which is infuriating when I hear that they often struggle to get a job.
So to battle this I have now set this business up specifically to help Graduates secure positions within London based Recruitment and Sales roles.
We have totally simplified the process. You don’t need to fill out a lengthy application form, all you need to do is email us with a short cover letter and your CV, which we will then review and come back to you (often immediately).
Once we have spoken to you and assessed your suitability we will then invite you to our City office for a face-to-face Consultation. This is important as we work with over 60 companies looking to hire at this level and we only want you interviewing with businesses that are right for you.
We will then draw up a short-list of suitable companies and even secure the interviews on your behalf!! We then provide you with crucial interview coaching and secure a job offer with your preferred employer.
Couldn’t be more simple right??
If you are interested in working in the Recruitment or Sales industry in London, we have over 100 live vacancies and would be keen to hear from you.
Lastly, don’t think you need to wait until post Graduation to apply – we are working with Undergraduates now and securing them positions to start in Summer 2016.
Please apply to me directly at simon@esg-r.com and I will ensure one of my team get in touch.