For those of you who aren't aware of The Graduate, it is a special project
run by the West Yorkshire Branch of the BCS to aid in employability of IT
students / graduates. The BCS has had both universities and national
graduate employers approaching it with concerns around the employability of
IT graduates. Whilst the graduates seem to have the relevant technical
skills, they struggle with their soft skills when they get to typical
graduate recruitment processes.
As a result of lengthy discussions with some universities and employers,
last year we set up The Graduate. The Graduate is an event which gives
students/graduates essential experience with soft skills in a mock graduate
recruitment process. This year our partners include Yorkshire Water,
Deloitte, IBM, KPMG, Graduates Yorkshire, techmesh, Capgemini, Centrica and
many more. These partners join together to make up the experienced judging
panel that assess the candidates at the final.
The main aim of The Graduate is to give the applicants feedback on their
performance. Every candidate who applies will receive feedback on their
application form, and each candidate that makes it to the final will receive
personalised feedback on each stage of the assessment (application form,
interview, group exercise, psychometric test and presentation). This then
gives them areas of focus to improve on when applying for "real" jobs at a
later stage.
The "official" deadline for entries to The Graduate is Monday 30th January.
We will be announcing an extension of two weeks (13th Feb) on Monday.
Please do not announce the deadline extension before Tuesday 31st.
Applications thus far have been very slow. By not announcing the extension
until Monday, we should have a much better idea of how many applications we
have at that point.
The event is free to enter, and is open to IT Students in all years, as well
as recent Graduates who have not yet found work. The deadline for
applications is the 13th Feb, and the final is in March.
Now that we have gone some way to prove that The Graduate works, we are
looking to expand the event and make it even bigger. In order to do this, we
really do need the support of the universities. We would really appreciate
it if you could advertise the event as widely as possible and encourage as
many students to apply as you can.
There is a video on our website which gives you an idea of what we got up to
last year (www.thegraduate.bcs.org).
University of Greenwich, a charity and company limited by guarantee,
registered in England (reg. no. 986729). Registered office:
Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, Greenwich, London SE10 9LS.
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