Keep busy
Reconnect with friends
Pick carefully. If you've not found a job then make sure the friends you see haven't either. Seeing friends with careers lined up for them will be more than a little dispiriting, and steer well clear of anyone currently choosing between two job offers who claims they "really, really need your advice" (the consult-o-brag). If you are one of those people who has had a job lined up since Christmas, then this guide isn't really for you.
Hit the gym
Odds are one too many biscuit-fuelled all-nighters have taken a heavy toll on your precious BMI. Getting back in shape after six months spent squatting in libraries should be the graduate's first priority. Not only will you be more confident in job interviews, you'll be more likely to find part-time work as a model or personal trainer. Get buff enough and you may find you don't need that degree at all.
Start a blog
Blogs are like hairdressing salons: they stand or fall on the quality of the pun in the title, so choose well. Blogging about your area of interest is a great way to demonstrate a passion for your chosen career. Just be careful. Never get drunk and blog about how much you hate your ex. Potential employers will visit your blog, read that post and hire the ex instead. Happens all the time.
Read for pleasure
Remember what it was like to read a book just because you could? To get from start to finish without whipping out a highlighter, nabbing a quotation or inserting a Post-it note? Well then, here's some good news: that rare and outdated pleasure can be yours once again. It's not just reading that you're free to enjoy now either. Remember all that time you spent attending lectures because you had to? Now you can go to those lectures just because that's who you are.
Stay motivated
Get off Facebook
When you're hunting for jobs, your first urge each morning will be to hop on the big white book and see if anybody else has had an offer yet. Don't. Keeping tabs on the progress of fellow graduates may seem vital but it's really just a waste of your time. Would Usain Bolt be the fastest sprinter in the world if he turned round to check on his opponents all the time? No, of course not. If anything, he'd probably fall over. And that's Usain Bolt.
Choose a nemesis
Pick someone younger and more successful than you are and hate the living daylights out of them. Jack Whitehall is an obvious target, but the more obscure the nemesis the more rewarding the vendetta. Hating, for example, medical prodigy Akrit Jaswal – famous in India for performing surgery at the age of seven – should provide enough frustrated energy to propel even the weakest of candidates into a magic-circle law firm.
Keep your eyes on the prize
Create a collage of the lifestyle that awaits you when you finally land that graduate job. Take some scissors to a pile of upmarket catalogues and coat your walls in photos of woks, cafetieres and jars of pesto. Not only is this a great way to keep your spirits up, it will save you a fortune on wallpaper. If you're really feeling down try building yourself a papier-mache Vauxhall Astra.
Get the job
Dress to impress
Ever heard the phrase: "Dress for the job you want, not the job you have"? Well, it works. From 1958 to 1964, an anonymous Ohio bank clerk came to work every day in a spacesuit. People laughed, pointed and demanded to speak to his line manager. He laughed last. That bank clerk's name was Neil Armstrong.
Do the research
Above all, employers are looking for someone who's passionate about the company. Competition is fiercer than ever, so reading the Wikipedia page just won't cut it. Subscribing to industry magazines is a step in the right direction, but for real insider knowledge your best bet is to fish out those binoculars and take a trip to the firm's head office. All the most memorable telephone inquiries begin with the words: "I can see you."
Get networking
The seldom-appreciated truth about the job market is that it's not what you know or who you know. It's who knows that you know what you know. Look at the guy from Good Will Hunting. He was the smartest man in the world but he was working as a janitor. And why? Because while everyone else was out showing the world what they could do he was sitting in an Irish pub with Ben Affleck obsessing about being abused as a child. They might as well have called that film Bad Job Hunting.
Pimp your CV
Have you seen that clip-art image of a stick man using a rolled-up diploma as a surfboard? In more ways than one, that stick man is you, so let prospective employers know it and put that image right there by your name. Fonts, colours, glitter, Magic Eye – there are millions of ways to make a CV stand out without acquiring a single new marketable skill. So why bother?
Intern yourself
Where would Nick Clegg be today without internships? He would never have become deputy prime minister, that's for sure, and I think we can all agree that that would have been a shame for everyone. David Cameron has said it's fine to give an internship to a friend's child, so tell your parents to bite the bullet and spend more time hanging out with David Cameron. If they can't stand that, just ask them to buy you one. You should be able to pick up a two-week investment banking placement at auction for as little as £2,000.
Start a business
Ideas are money
All successful businesses began as ideas. Therefore, as philosophy graduates will have recognised, all ideas are potentially successful businesses. Hats for doors? That's a business. Spanish pens? That's a business. Remote-control hair? That could be the next Facebook. Who needs a social network when they can steer their own beard round the garden? Probably no one. All I'm saying is there was an episode of The Apprentice where they literally made money selling wood.
Make money
Sell your books
There's a tidy sum to be made by sticking those old textbooks up on eBay, and more still if you can take the time to forge the author's signature. A signed first edition copy of Mathematics for Economists can sell for upwards of £11.50. If there's no one willing to buy them you can always save some money by putting them to work as makeshift firelighters. As the old saying has it: first they burned the books, then they found long-term employment.
Go door to door
In the words of Heath Ledger's The Joker: "If you're good at something, never do it for free." You're good at critically assessing things, or doing physics, or whatever your degree was in, so hit the streets and find the people who are looking for those skills. There's bound to be someone in your area hoping to discuss the role of class in the writings of John Stuart Mill. You can answer that very very weird person's prayers. For a fee, of course.
Temp (temporarily)
Think of temping as like being a superhero. Wherever there is photocopying, you will be there. Wherever there is thirstiness, you will bring tea. Wherever there is illness, you will find short-term employment. You are above petty office rivalries, detached from gossip, not invited to post-work drinks. You appear only when needed and vanish long before anyone can learn your name. You are The Temp. At least until you find something better.
If all else fails
Apply for a master's
Sometimes the smartest decision you can make is to decide not to make a decision. Taking on a master's will give you at least another year to work out what you actually want to do with your life. Plus, once that's over you can apply for a PhD, staving off "the real world" almost indefinitely.
If you can't do that
Go travelling
Studying for a master's may be the more prestigious way out but taking a gap year has its own advantages. For one thing, it gives you a year-long amnesty from the question, "So what are you up to at the moment?" For another, when you return you'll have an arsenal of anecdotes with which to bore friends who whine-o-brag to you about their jobs. Spend your year abroad helping others and it might even look quite good on that CV. Which it'll have to, since by then there'll be another 150,000 graduates to compete with.
Oh, and finally
Don't worry
You'll be fine.
Source: Tom Meltzer, Guardian.co.uk, Sunday 17th July 2011
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