Should I apply now, or wait University of Manchester Careers Blog

Should I apply now, or wait The main recruitment fairs have been and gone (just the Postgrad Study Fair on 20th November and the Law Fair on 19th November still to go), the employer campus events are starting to thin out, and the whole Get your career together NOW! frenzy is calming down a bit. What if you havent done anything yet? Should you still try and apply for jobs right now, to have something lined up for next autumn? Should you just wait and start to look next summer, because all the good jobs will surely have gone by now? Well, I wondered that too, so I had a look at what were currently advertising on CareersLink to find out. Last week, there were 850 ads for full-time jobs on CareersLink. Of those: 396 ads were for jobs starting next summer or autumn 454 ads were for jobs starting now, or soon. This also includes all the jobs where recruitment is ongoing. So, lots of jobs are still being advertised for next autumn start dates. If you want to get ahead, there is still time to apply for these graduate schemes. But what if you want to wait? Well, theres one more bit of info you need whos recruiting when? This shows the size of the organisations who are recruiting right now for jobs starting next summer/autumn. Small = under 250 employees Large = 250+ employees and there are a few where its not clear (as these organisations arent big household or industrial names, theyre more likely to be small than large). As you can see, a large majority of these start next year jobs are for large organisations, including a lot of the ones youve heard of. Few small organisations are going to recruit so far in advance. This the picture for ads for an immediate start date, or for jobs which start before next summer. There are still some large well-known recruiters advertising for immediate start jobs, including some, like Shell, who advertise their recruitment as being ongoing, all year round. However, most jobs are working for small organisations (the majority of these are organisations with fewer than 50 people). Many of these jobs with smaller organisations are fantastic, working with specialist or niche employers, where youll get to see more of what goes on in the whole organisation. Youre also less likely to be in some sort of training scheme youll be doing a job from day 1. So, if youre in your final year and thinking about whether to apply now or leave it until this time next year, you need to ask yourself: Do I want to work for a large well-known employer, possibly on a graduate scheme? If so, youve a far better chance if you apply now. . Am I aiming at starting with a smaller employer, in a specific job? If so, you can probably afford to wait until closer to when you want to start work but dont miss out on the 50 or so smaller recruiters who are also advertising a year in advance. All Postgrad-highlighted Postgraduate Closing dates job market jobs