I remember getting rejection emails the same day as my seminars and sitting through the whole thing as though nothing had happened. Final year has a way of demanding that you push things aside before you have had a chance to process them and job applications sit right in the middle of that.
I was studying full time, working part time within the university and applying for graduate roles across the same weeks.
More demanding than it actually looks like
It was manageable in theory, but the problem was that I treated applications as something I would get to once the academic work was done, which meant I was drafting CV’s and cover letters late in the evening or switching between to my coursework. Underestimating how much applications actually ask of you has a way of making an already full schedule feel unworkable.
The comparison problem
Graduate offers came up constantly and it was difficult not to measure your own progress against everyone else’s. I made decisions I would not make again, including prioritising application deadlines over exam preparation because the recruitment calendar felt urgent in a way that coursework did not.
Not every final year end with a graduate scheme offer
I did not finish final year with a graduate scheme offer.
I want to say that plainly because most people writing about graduate applications did and the advice tends to reflect that. What I finished with was a non-graduate role and a job search that continued after graduation rather than concluding before it. That is a more common outcome than the content around this topic would suggest.
It doesn’t end here
If you are in final year without an offer, or you finished without one, that is not the end of the road. The recruitment cycle that felt so fixed and urgent during third year turns out to have more flexibility than it appeared to from inside it.
This article was written by Somtochi Ohakah.
