5 Alternatives to Graduate Schemes
Some ideas from Adele Barlow on doing something different after university
It’s so easy to freak out if you haven’t got a job offer lined up for after graduation. When everyone around you seems to be fixated on graduate schemes, it’s easy to believe that they’re the only route to success. The truth is that working for a large company is simply the most well-publicised route to success.
Corporates tend to have enormous resources dedicated to advertising their pathways to university students, compared to small businesses and startups. Having worked with Escape the City for several years, I witnessed what happened to people after the shine of the corporate grad scheme had faded: they were often lost as to what to do next.
There are plenty of other interesting, fulfilling routes you can take after university — they are just less publicised.
1. Start your own business
If you’ve always dreamed of being your own boss, there’s never been an easier time to test a business idea. (Before anything else, read The Lean Startup).
Take it from startup investor Paul Graham. In the 90s, he built the very first online store application. After selling that to Yahoo, he founded Y Combinator, now widely considered the world’s foremost startup accelerator and seed fund. He also writes a series of thoughtful essays on starting a business.
In A Student’s Guide to Startups he talks about how age shouldn’t be seen as a barrier and points out that the average age of the founders of Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft was 24. He tells students:
“If you start a startup soon after college, you’ll be a young founder by present standards, so you should know what the relative advantages of young founders are. They’re not what you might think. As a young founder your strengths are: stamina, poverty, rootlessness, colleagues, and ignorance.”
Besides Graham’s insights and inspiration, there are plenty of practical resources to help with navigating the startup landscape as well as job boards that specialise in advertising startup roles.
Check out:
- London Startup Resource List: 350+ Accelerators, Incubators, Investors, and more
- Unicorn Hunt: a platform for finding and listing jobs in startups
2. Work at a non-corporate company
In his popular career guide Recession Proof Graduate, Charlie Hoehn helps people find work straight after university. He dispels a lot of the myths that permeate the traditional education system: namely that you have to have certain grades in order to succeed and that you have to wait for someone else to give you an opportunity before you can progress.
Hoehn had struggled to find meaningful work (or any work) after graduating. He spent months spamming his resume to hundreds of companies he didn’t want to work for and never heard back from them:
“I’d been turned away or completely ignored by every single company I’d applied to over the course of 12 weeks. I was even rejected by a company I’d done a three-month internship with…. Is this what we’d spent the last four years preparing for? Did our degrees really count for nothing?”
In his book, he outlines a step-by-step formula to get great work. He gives graduates a metaphorical map and compass for approaching smaller companies, pitching projects, and building a portfolio career.
Check out:
- Recession Proof Graduate: How to Land the Job You Want by Doing Free Work: read it online here or buy it here.
- Still not found a graduate scheme yet? Alternative ways of Finding Work After University
3. Work on creative projects
Sometimes creativity can feel like a luxury as opposed to a career option but the truth is that plenty of people work as artists, writers, and designers (even if they didn’t study creative arts at university).
Debbie Millman is an educator, strategist, and host of the Design Matters podcast. She wrote six books and is the President Emeritus of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. As a result she works with many young creatives. When asked what surprises her most about them, she replies:
“Their fear. Young designers have so much runway! They have so much time! I am not only surprised by this, I am also heartbroken when I hear young designers or (worse yet) student designers tell me that they are afraid to go after what they want because they don’t think they can actually ever achieve it.”
Her advice?
“Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time. In order to strive for a remarkable life, you have to decide that you want one. Start now.”
She has plenty of other useful insights here for those who aren’t quite sure where to start.
Check out:
- The Dots: a diverse community of no-collar professionals including creators, entrepreneurs & freelancers.
- Jessica Hische’s client email helper: a handy tool to help you say “no” to free and low-budget work
4. Retrain into a tech career
Clearly we’re biased in recommending this route, so maybe it’s best to allow a former Maker (Dania) to explain more:
“Makers is one of Europe’s best coding bootcamps located on Commercial Street in London. It’s in one of the hippest areas (no surprise as anything new, bizarre or trending in London ends up in this area) that pivots one’s life to becoming a developer and part of the tech industry in London.”
Software developers are in high demand and Makers sets you up to become one of them. We’re big believers in self-directed learning, which means that you finish the course as a confident and independent software engineer ready to hit the ground running.
We guarantee a job offer being in place within six months of graduation as long as you have successfully completed your job hunting activities, with an average starting salary of £30–32K.
If you’d like to learn more, come to one of our events.
Check out:
- Train with Makers — kickstart your career as a software engineer
- Course Report — reviews of Makers from the graduates themselves
5. Travel
“If you’re thinking about what to do after school — go travelling; see the world; be curious; find problems to solve,” says our MD of Apprenticeships Spencer Ayres, who also used to be a teacher.
His argument is backed up by journalist Emma Sarran Webster, who wrote 6 Reasons Everyone Should Try to Travel After Graduation.
“Living abroad can not only help crystallise your ideas of what you want to do, career-wise, but it can also introduce you to newfound passions or bring to light something you never realised you loved,” she shares.
“Regardless of how independent you may be now, or have been since childhood, living abroad builds on and cultivates that independence in a whole new way. When you’re separated from family, friends, and everything and everyone you know by oceans, and thousands of miles, you’re forced to fend for yourself and learn how to thrive in ways you never thought possible.”
Check out:
- Jack’s Flight Club — cheap flights to amazing destinations around the world;
- International Volunteer HQ — a trusted and affordable volunteer abroad organization.
