There is currently a vicious circle in the job market, where by employers are looking for candidates with experience and not willing to give the basic training. This leaves recent graduates with very few options with regards to finding work place experience.
Its easy to see why employers are not willing to offer the initial experience and why employing a candidate with the workplace experience would be the obvious choice but how can candidates get that first step on the ladder and that all important line on their CV.
Well the obvious choices are, work for nothing/reduced rate or try get some freelance work.
Its not all bad news, there are some larger companies who are willing to take on graduates and offer them the initial support to help them get settled in a new working environment but these positions are highly sort after, so an impressive CV is essential.
A very popular route now tends to be the ‘work for free’ on a trial basis, with the hope of getting a full time position at the end of it all. This way, an employer has the opportunity to ‘try before you buy’ and get a feel for personal characteristics and work ethics. This route is being encouraged by a lot of big companies such as Google and the UK government. They are even offering companies monetary incentives to take on recent graduates and offer them training.
I would say the most important place to start when seeking employment for the first time is networking. There is a saying,
It’s not what you know, its who you know.
Getting to know people in this day and age is fairly straightforward. Simply being a connection on LinkedIn can be a foot in the backdoor and can allow you to get information on new positions before anyone else, and offer a medium of contact with a decision maker. These small steps can be a real indicator of personal indicators and an impressive online presence can land you a dream job.