Yesterday evening saw 105 female students arrive at the very glamorous offices of Deutsche Bank wondering and eager to learn what a career in investment banking might be like - thanks to our Fresh Look event! With 9 of the world’s best investment banks attending it was an amazing opportunity for all the girls involved.
After months of planning, recruiting students and arranging representatives from the banks, it was great to see the evening come together! Everything ran to plan from the insightful overview of investment banking to the panel discussion where the girls could fire any question at the real women on the panel. The evening ended with a really enjoyable informal networking event (complete with wine and canapés, naturally!) where the students had the opportunity to speak with the reps from each of the banks and find out what their future careers within investment banking might be like.
All of the banks involved felt the evening was a massive success and all were pleased and impressed with the students that attended. Hopefully the banks will be meeting with some of them again soon.
After a glass of wine, a canapé or five it was time to head home, satisfied with all our hard work and the great success of the evening. Bring on Fresh Look 2011!!
As the celebrations of graduating are in full swing, many graduates fear the employment market ahead. A recent survey has revealed that the graduate job market is more competitive than ever with vacancies down by 7% and 69 graduates chasing each graduate job. Those lucky enough to secure a job are likely to have at least a 2:1 as three quarters of employers require these grades. It was found that degree classification is used more as a selection criterion than relevant work experience (34%), degree subject (33%) or going to a particular university (7%). Making matters worse are the graduates from 2009 also competing for this year’s graduate jobs.
With such a pressure to achieve a 2:1, students are becoming disheartened when choosing their degree subject and university. With university choice and degree subject becoming irrelevant to employers, students wish they had chosen to study less challenging degrees at average universities in order to secure a 2:1.
Campus Ali says: The graduate job market is currently a huge concern for students and recent graduates and puts added pressure on students to achieve at least a 2:1. Hopefully the coming years will bring better things for graduates, but 2010 remains, like last year, an employers market.
Hi, I’m Olivia and I am doing work experience with Stafford Long, having just finishing my GCSEs. I have recently chosen my A-Level subjects – Art, Psychology, Biology and Geography and am hoping to go to university in 2 years time; however I do not know what I wish to study.
After just relieving myself from the stress of GCSEs - it felt like it was all over until I went to a sixth form taster day at my school, where I only got intimidated by more work to be done in the following year and exams which are soon to come.
Being a teenager, I have yet to make decisions about what I want to do with my life. I have friends who have a life plan for themselves, and they know exactly what they want to do. However, I have not made decisions on what career I want to go into, and so I chose the subjects I enjoy for A-Levels, not thinking about what career options they give me and I am hoping I will discover what I want to be, sometime soon.
At my age we start to get pressurized for decisions we should be making for university and what to do to prepare ourselves, which is all rather intimidating to me, as I still feel young and naive to the big world of work.
Doing work experience with Stafford Long has made me realise what work life is like, and it has finally hit me that time will fly, and before I know it, I myself, could be working in a company similar to this one, in only a few years.
Scope’s ‘This Ability: Inside Investment Banking’ event is set to be an insightful experience for students who consider themselves to have a disability and who are looking to work in investment banking. Watch out for it this November!
For more info visit:
www.scope.org.uk/news/whats-on/information-days/thisability
High Fliers Research recently released their annual review on the 2010 graduate market with a particular focus on graduate vacancies as the economy improves. They revealed that as the recession hit, graduate vacancies dropped by 17.8% in 2009, 23.3% less than that in 2007. Such cuts were particularly evident in investment banks, IT and telecoms, chemical and pharmaceuticals and media companies where graduate vacancies were halved. Worryingly, the impact of this decline in graduate jobs meant that 100,000 graduates under the age of 25 were out of work.
2010 however, brings a new mood of optimism. The survey revealed that leading graduate employers have increased their recruitment targets for 2010 by 11.8%; however half of these organisations are likely to cut entry level recruitment. Despite improvements in graduate intake, the effects of the recession will cause a slow recovery. Even though the healthy growth in vacancies in 2010 restored recruitment to where it was in 2005, there are an estimated 60,000 additional students set to graduate this summer.
Like previous years, top employers have been marketing their graduate vacancies at the top 10-20 universities through careers fairs and campus recruitment presentations. Smaller budgets in 2010 however, have brought innovative marketing strategies including interactive training sessions, business games, networking events and skills training events, all of which have proven very successful. 75% of organisations reported greater application numbers than in 2009 thanks to such new marketing.
High Fliers Research conclude that 2011 is set to bring better things as employers are more optimistic about graduate recruitment in the coming year.
Too many young people are working for free in certain sectors, according to The Institute for Public Policy Research.
In order to gain much needed experience, to land the best jobs, students have to do real work for free at many businesses across the country. According to the TUC, a third of those on work placements and internships are completely unpaid. Furthermore, one in five businesses will offer work placements this coming summer, but many students who do productive work are likely to be unpaid.
Worryingly, due to the financial burden of work experience, including travel expenses and living costs, student budgets aren’t allowing some of the best candidates to apply for work experience which means employers are missing out on a great talent pool.
Campus Ali says: Work experience can be a really useful tool to spot attractive candidates, seeing how students work on real life projects is a great way to see what they would be like as a future employee.
A recent report by the agency in charge of widening access to higher education suggests that young people from poorer backgrounds are still struggling to get into top universities. Such figures revealed wealthier young people are seven times more likely to obtain places at England’s top 20 universities than those who are disadvantaged. What is particularly worrying is that there has been no significant change in the percentages of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds accepted into universities since the mid-1990s.
In order to improve this situation, Sir Martin Harris, director of the Office for Fair Access, claims that potential students from disadvantaged backgrounds need to be identified and supported from an earlier age, before GCSE decisions are made, as such bright youngsters do not realise their own potential. He adds that the UK’s top universities need to provide better advice and guidance for prospective applicants so as to encourage disadvantaged youngsters to apply in full knowledge of what is on offer to them, including bursaries and scholarships.
CampusAli says: Bright prospective students from any background need to be identified so their skills and abilities can be developed to their true potential. It must be recognised that bright individuals can be found outside of privileged public schools and must be sought out by universities and potential employers.
The latest IAB/PWC figures show ad spend on mobile has doubled year on year. This has been fuelled by an increase in users accessing the internet on their mobiles and by the new possibilities presented by smartphone devises (phones offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality). One hotly discussed topic in this area is the development of applications (known universally as apps).
Over 1.5bn apps have been downloaded from Apple’s app store since July 2008 and many brands are keen to get in on the act. While branded apps can provide a novel platform for your target audience to interact with your organisation, it’s important for companies to first research the mobile behaviour of their audience before getting carried away with the hype.
For example, the iPhone currently only holds a 4% market share in the UK (around one million people have an iPhone). Of these people, how many are within the student population and how many regularly download apps? Also, smartphones from other manufacturers (such as Nokia and Google Android) are gaining in popularity and mean that it will soon be hard to build an iPhone app in isolation.
Ali says: For a mobile app to be successful it needs to be compatible with the most relevant smartphone devises, should be well marketed and easy to find, provide instant utility, have a high frequency of use and encourage word of mouth.
Hi, I’m Katie and I’m the new events co-ordinator here at Stafford Long. I’m really excited to join Stafford Long and am looking forward to the next few months! I’ll be looking after the Greenlight events and the first one is on the 9th June!
Students from the top Russell Group universities are up in arms after the chair refused to publish evidence it’s given to the official fees review. The most recent review has stirred so much interest because there’s a real possibility that fees and interest rates for student loans will increase. They are due to deliver a protest letter today.
Campus Ali says: Students deserve to know the outcome of this review because it’s probably one of the most significant changes to higher education funding in decades!
