5 Lessons From My First Year as a Graduate

This blog post is a bit of a continuation to a blog post I wrote back in last September on things I’d learned as a graduate in the tech industry. It’s now been a year since I finished university, and to say it’s been eventful would be an understatement. For the first 23 years of my life, I always knew exactly what would come next. What schools I wanted to go to, and how those would prep me for the life I’d planned on having since I was 15.

But you know what they say about the best laid plans. And no amount of to-do lists and timelines I wrote up before I graduated could prepare me for the realities of graduate life. The seemingly endless job search, the jealousy over the success of coursemates, the days when you just want to give up, spend the day in the Primark animal onesie of your choosing and watch Friends reruns. However tough those days are, I know from personal experience that you come out on the other side of them a stronger adult human. So to cheer up any of you new and not so new grads as much as myself, I thought I’d take a minute to reflect on the things I’ve learnt this past year.

It’s easy to give into despair

The graduate blues are real. I was lucky enough to find employment just a few weeks after graduation (I say I was lucky, but really it took months applying — some of them while writing my dissertation), but in the two month limbo between my last exam and graduation ceremony, I was feeling a little lost.

After three months of daily job applications and countless rejections, I was just about to give in and take a job at a call centre because you know, money. And you might have to take a call centre job or go work in retail, and feel like a failure who will never do anything with their degree. But I have just the trick for that — or something that works for me at least.

Go on LinkedIn (and if you don’t have an account, go make one now!) and search a company you’d love to work for or search by the job title of your dreams. If you view the profiles of the people who come up in the search results, you’re likely to find that while some got a coveted graduate position at a really cool company right after graduation, many more worked at Tesco, or as an admin assistant, or did something completely different before they got to where they are now.

It can be hard to remember that how you spend the first few years of your likely 40+ year career don’t have to define it all.

You should use the resources available to you

This is so important. I think a lot of grads aren’t aware of the services available to them which can really help them find their first career job.

First of all, I am so very grateful for everything my university’s careers service did for me, and I met up with their consultants about six times during my time at university, to get advice on everything from finding a summer job to writing a CV and choosing the line of work I wanted to go into after graduation. Edinburgh University’s annual Creative and Cultural Careers Festival was what made me decide to go into marketing, and I wouldn’t have gotten my first job as a graduate if it wasn’t for the internship offered in collaboration with the company, my university and Santander as part of their Santander Fellowship scheme.

Secondly, recruiters can be an immense help in the application process. It’s literally their job to find work for you, and their services are completely free for the job seeker. If you give a call to one or send over your CV, they can put it forward for one of the positions they’re currently trying to fill, give you advice on interviews and CVs, or keep you in mind for any positions that come up — you might even snag an interview request before the role is advertised online. And from personal experience, if a recruiter is putting you forward for a role, you’re more likely to get an interview, as employers respect their opinions.

Be prepared to make some new friends

Whether you’re moving back home after university, setting off to experience a new city, or, like me, staying in your university town, your social life is most likely going to take a hit. Going back to your hometown, you’ll probably find many of your old friends no longer live there. If you are moving to a new city, you may know no one at all. And even if you stay in the place you went to university, not many others necessarily do.

Being from Finland, I knew precisely 0 people in Edinburgh when I moved here almost five years ago. Being a naturally introverted person who most enjoys small group settings or one on one time with a select few friends, this made forming new friendships tough. And by the time I graduated, most friendships I’d accumulated through my time at university had either fizzled out or my friends had moved elsewhere.

Making new friends as an adult is in some ways quite difficult, but at the same time, the increased confidence age has given me has made it much easier in other ways. Over the last year I’ve put a concerted effort into meeting new people, and am happy to say I have made some great new friends. But this all does take work, and you might find yourself quite lonely initially. You can look forward to a full blog on the subject from me soon because I feel you, girl.

Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward

I left a full-time, permanent job after nine months without a new job lined up. And I’m not going to lie, that was kind of terrifying, but it was necessary. The idea of not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from is scary, and recruiters and hiring managers are going to want to know why you took this step. However, with time it became clear that my role was no longer right for me, and searching for a new job while doing some freelancing would be the best use of my time.

Whatever decision you make, own it. Whatever mistake you make, own it. Sometimes you need to take what on the surface level at least seems like a step backwards to get to where you want to be, but what counts is how you handle it. It’s not about doing all the right things, but not being so terrified of failure that it holds you back.

I was in the very fortunate position to have some freelance work offered to me when I quit and have a fiancé who’s happy to pay a slightly larger part of our bills and groceries until I have a new full-time gig. You obviously have to take financial responsibility for any decisions you take, but as long as that’s the case, make the decisions that are right for you. It’s scary, but also pretty damn empowering. Meanwhile, there will be no more Pret lunches for me until my next regular paycheck (cue the world’s smallest violin playing).

You’re not alone

There are literally thousands of people in the same position as you. While there will always be that infuriating person from your course who lands your dream job right after graduation and is able to go on amazing beach holidays with their 12 closest friends, for most, graduate life is less smooth, with numerous disappointments and false starts. Cheerful, isn’t it? But it will get better. You’re bound to experience ups and downs in your post-university life, but just like your immune system did after every Fresher’s Week, you get stronger with time.