Choosing your employer - there is a choice
Finding out about employers
How many employers can you name that offer jobs in your chosen field? Finding out about different employers is an important part of job-hunting. You need to find out what information is available and then find some criteria as a basis for using to comparing them.
Sources of information about employers
Some of the most commonly used sources of information about employers are listed below. Much of the hard information is available through your local university Careers Advisory Service (CAS).
- Company directories
- Career publications
- Company presentations
- Promotional materials
- Internet
- Videos (at presentations and CAS libraries)
- Recruitment fairs
- University networks: lecturers, careers advisors
- Direct work experience or contacts who work there
- Articles in the media
- Reference books
- Libraries
There can be several problems with some organisational promotional material. Organisations want to present a positive image but the high rates of staff turnover and the disillusionment of many graduate entrants is sufficient to be wary.
In assessing promotional material apply the following 4 tests:
1. Origin of material/authorship
Ask who wrote the material and why. The majority of graduate recruitment literature is written to attract you. View this as the organisational equivalent of a CV. The same rule applies when you read material in professional journals and in some newspapers. How objective is the information you are reading?
2. Accuracy
Some promotional material can quickly be out-of-date; circumstances can change inside organisation following take-overs and mergers that radically change prospects. Some organisations are so large and complex that general descriptions cannot do justice to enormous differences between parts.
3. Depth
How much detail are you being given, does the brochure talk generally of training or does it set out exactly what is on offer?
4. Omissions
There is probably a lot going on inside organisations that you are not told. There may be worries or concerns about commercial success, re-structuring or ongoing problems of morale or high staff turnover.
- Recognise it happens
Graduate recruitment brochure and adverts are often part of a wider PR campaign to raise the company profile investors, customers and competitors. - Get off the beaten track
Don't just rely on the traditional graduate sources of information. Think of some alternative sources of information about firms. Use the internet and your university libraries to find out as much as you can about companies. Good sources include: The Financial Times and other broadsheets, professional journals, trade magazines. - Get an inside picture
The best way of finding out about a company is to have worked there yourself. If you are still an undergraduate, you could target a particular organisation for your dissertation, project or a vacation job. Second best is to get in contact with someone who works there. You can try your CAS some keep contact with recent graduates for this very reason. Your university lecturers may have contacts with recent graduates or with staff unconnected with the recruitment process. - Resourceful researching
Go to company presentations and recruitment fairs armed with probing questions. In particular, ask recent graduates specific questions about the organisation and how it has met their expectations. If you get through to an assessment centre, you will probably have an opportunity to do this at some length.
Other published sources about employers include books such as The 100 Best Companies to Work for in the UK.( Nightingale Multimedia, Millennium Edition). This book measures organisations on the basis of: pay, benefits, communication, training, career development and morale. It also lists the number of graduates employed each year and other facts such as the annual staff turnover rate.
When you have decided your general area of occupation interest, the next big job is to decide which employer. There are so many to choose from and organisations vary in many ways such as culture, size, and location. Please bear in mind the importance of finding out as much as you can about the organisational culture and what it is really like to work for.
You can identify positive characteristics which you would wish to find in an ideal employer and use this as a checklist to compare different organisations.
This material has been taken from the Graduate Career Handbook, published under the FTPH imprint © Pearson Education Ltd.
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