What does the recruitment cycle look like for Early Careers students

by Kira Hughes, MiM Career Lead

As an Early Careers student, your experience of the recruitment cycle will vary largely depending on your sector and geography interests, as well as the size of organisation you want to be a part of and role you want to take on. There are, broadly speaking, 2 main routes to employment after your programme:

1. Structured graduate recruitment

This tends to be associated with the larger, well-known, global organisations that are looking to recruit Early Careers talent onto structured training programmes. Think bulge bracket Investment Banks, Consulting firms, as well as Tech and Consumer Goods giants – and they’re likely to have such a programme. Due to their notoriety, they can be some of the most competitive programmes to secure, and their recruitment processes can kick-off as early as August, especially in the UK and Asian countries. This is why we front-load as much of our careers activity as possible, to ensure that anyone wanting to apply to these schemes is able to do so competitively. The recruitment process you’ll experience is likely to consist of the following stages:

  • Application or CV and Cover Letter submission;
  • Online tests (verbal & numerical reasoning and situational judgement tests);
  • Interviews which could be either recorded or face-to-face;
  • Assessment Centres which involve a range of exercises including group case studies, presentations, role-plays and interviews.

We make sure that our careers curriculum covers all of these aspects so that you can feel prepared and able to give your best performance throughout each stage.

2. Direct hire recruitment

There is a whole host of fantastic opportunities that don’t fall into the above structured, early graduate recruitment process. You might consciously be seeking an opportunity that offers you more flexibility, greater responsibility and a steeper learning path within a fast-paced, early-stage start-up or a more niche market, such as FinTech or Venture Capital. Such positions will be advertised later on in the year as they are more likely to openly recruit at the point of need and have more flexible recruitment processes.

However, the key to uncovering these rich and exciting opportunities is through networking and developing your sector knowledge. As such, you will want to engage in this early on in order to afford the time needed to build those solid relationships and help yourself stand out from others. So even if you’re not engaging in recruitment processes in the autumn term you’re likely to be investing time in attending coffee chats and industry specific events that will develop your networks and knowledge further. A large part of our careers programme is dedicated to developing the tools for effective networking, for example, workshops that focus on crafting a compelling story for different career conversations, how to network and standout from the crowd at larger-scale events, as well as how to network online and get the most out of LinkedIn.

Whether your aim is to join a structured graduate recruitment programme or secure a more niche, tailor-made role within a targeted company, the Career Centre will support you throughout the process.

The recruitment cycle for our Early Careers students will be as varied as the roles, sectors and geographies you have an interest in (see the most recent Employment Reports for the MiM and MFA 2017 classes), but that’s what makes it an exciting challenge!

 

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