If you missed the Interviews talks I did last week for Masters and PhDs, they’re now available here and on the On-Line Talks page on this blog. They’re also on the postgrad pages of the Careers Service website.

It’s quite a long slidecast but you can take it in bite sized chunks and skip or go back to slides of interest and the audio should follow. One warning though – when you first view it, it takes a little while to buffer all the audio, so you won’t immediately be able to skip to the later slides. Should only take a few minutes to load it all up though (depending on your internet connection).

Just to tempt you, within the slidecast are hints on talking about salary (see slide 14, “Your Questions”), my views on the oft quoted “fact” that “70% of communication is through body language” (see slide 15, “Presentation” – you’ve probably already sussed out my view…) and recognising and talking about your natural talents (see slide 9, “Forensic Interviewing”).

Right, only got Assessment Centres to do now (aiming for early next week for recording and editing).

If you’re interested in becoming a consultant, Deloitte are running a case study event at the Careers Service to give you an insight into how they work with their clients. You’ll work alongside consultants from different areas of Deloitte’s work (eg. Technology Integration, Enterprise Applications, Strategy etc) on a realistic business scenario.

• Date : Thursday 19th November
• Time : 12.00-14.00
• Where : Careers Service, Crawford House (5th floor)

You’ll need to sign up in advance, and do some preparation by reading their website describing the range of consultancy work at Deloitte. I’d also get to the event in good time, as I suspect it will be very popular (and the first to get there get the seats).

Public Policy Competition

While you’re on the Deloitte website, you might also want to have a look at their Public Policy Competition. This is an essay competition, open to all UK students (it explicitly mentions Masters and PhDs) where you’re asked to tackle a great big complicated problem facing the Government (of whichever flavour) over the next 10 years:

“The current economic climate and an ageing population present significant challenges to Britain’s public services. If you were in charge of a government department dealing with these issues, what key changes would you implement over the next ten years?”

Come up with an answer in under 2000 words and you might be in with a chance (and no, I don’t think “I’d stop paying consultants” is going to get you very far…). You need to register by 15th January at the latest and the closing date for entries is 29th January. Prizes allow you to choose between work experience at Deloitte – or holiday vouchers.

UK and International Applications

Deloitte, like many other consultancies, are open to applications from UK and international students, subject to work permit restrictions. They are happy to consider those who can work in the UK through the Tier 1 (Post Study) scheme, so that could apply to most of our current postgrads. Their website clearly states their stance on work permits and it looks like the only area where they explicitly state you need a UK passport is for their “Enterprise Risk Services Technology (Security & Privacy)” roles.

UK and International Equivalent Qualifications

They also have clear requirements of the level of qualifications needed, including undergraduate degree level, and A levels or the equivalent qualifications which got you to university. Unusually, their website also clearly lays out the international equivalents – worth a look if you’re confused about how your non-UK school qualifications compare to UK equivalents, even if you’re not planning to apply to Deloitte. Just be aware that they do set the bar pretty high (especially for their consultancy roles) so other employers may not be quite so demanding.

At last, in one place – the closing dates for “graduate schemes” of over 130 recruiters.

Jenny, one of our information & IT specialists (and a postgrad herself) has selflessly trawled through the two major paper graduate employer directories (Prospects and GET) and summarised the results in this Word document:

Graduate Scheme Closing Dates 2009.

It includes a good number whose closing dates are in the New Year, who have no official closing date, or who do year round recruitment. However, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, many of those employers may be filling up places as we speak. Worse, they may have already made offers on all their jobs, even as you’re slaving away into the small hours, trying to get your application in just before their stated deadline. Apply sooner rather than later to be sure of being considered.

If you’re interested in reading the ads or profiles of any of the employers mentioned, you’re welcome to pop in and pick up your own free copies of Prospects & GET from the Careers Resource Centre.

Quick Update: 5th November
Hear Chris Leigh of Real Time Race interviewed on the Chris Evans radio show tonight (BBC Radio 2, 5-7pm). Don’t know who’ll be more enthusiastic, Chris or Chris (they’re two of a kind!). If you miss it today, I’m sure it will be on iPlayer for the next week.

Want to see what can be achieved with a lot of entrepreneurial passion, some very smart technology, plus a few added PhDs working part-time for the sheer love of it (and the possibility of future stock options)?

Real Time Race was featured this week on “Click“, the BBC news technology programme. They’re demo-ing a platform which has the potential to let you race a virtual F1 car alongside real F1 racing drivers – as a real F1 race happens. Instead of using CGI to recreate the track, they use video footage, laser positioning, GPS and real-time telemetry from the other cars (I think – hey, it’s complicated!). The programme is available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer until Monday 9th November and features Real Time Race as the first item.

The company behind all this is based at Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus near Warrington, which I visited a few weeks ago. I got the chance to talk to the CEO of Real Time Race, Chris Leigh, and as well as enthusing us all with his company, I felt he epitomised the challenges and excitment of setting up your own small (but with potential to be huge) hi-tech venture.

The company finance was (at that stage) Chris’s mortgage, so recruiting expensive postgrads wasn’t an option. However, he had 3 PhDs working with him, including someone who was working as a full-time consultant, whilst working on Chris’s project part time, and another PhD working part-time from a distance – Adelaide in Australia. They weren’t getting a salary, but working for share options, partly because they could see where this company could go, but also, I’d guess, because they were excited about working on the application of cutting edge technology.

Want to have a play with their technology yourself? You can download a demo from their website.

We saw several other hi-tech small businesses and I was encouraged to hear most of them talking about needing postgraduates – one business had 17 employees, 14 of whom had PhDs (Perceptive Engineering, working on process control, energy efficiency and pharmaceutical manufacturing).

However, what they really needed, in addition to smart brains, were people who were entrepreneurial, dynamic, could think for themselves and move at the lightning speed at which small companies operate, and ideally who were confident enough to be able to interact professionally with the senior managers who were the customers or backers of the business.

It was this last skill which they struggled to find, so if you can spend some of your time as a postgrad improving your commercial “nous” (more about understanding how businesses tick than management theory) and improving your confidence and business etiquette, you’ll be particularly sought after.

For more ideas of up and coming employers, have a look at some of the other Daresbury Campus tenants including Link Information Technology, Probio Healthcare, Web Comms, Applied Computing and Engineering, Calon Associates and Slainte Technologies, all of whom spent time talking to us about the jobs they have to offer and the skills they need. There’s more info about the event we attended and the skills these companies need in a recent Daresbury blog post (yes, they blog, and tweet too).

Small businesses are definitely a great source of new jobs and those based on Science or Innovation Parks are likely to need the higher order skills which postgrads can bring. They’re normally cash strapped in the early days, so with most, you won’t get rich quick – but you might get very rich long term.

Quick reminder that I’m doing two more talks this week in the “Career Essentials for Postgrads” series:

• Interviews for Masters Postgrads – today (Monday 2nd Nov) at 1.00pm, LT 1.4, Kilburn Building
• Interviews for PhDs – Thursday 5th Nov, again at 1.00pm, LT 1.4, Kilburn Building

Next week is the last talk in this series, on Assessment Centres. As there’s normally a smaller audience for this talk, I’ve combined Masters and PhDs into one talk:

• Assessment Centres for Postgraduates – Monday 9th Nov, at 1.00pm, LT 1.4, Kilburn Building

Again, I’m aiming to make a version of the Interviews and Assessment Centre talks available on-line (audio plus slides) after the face-to-face talks.

So, did anyone else get one?

Thanks to Andy from www.FindAPhD.com/www.FindAMasters.com for the freebie – and for producing a useful web resource which I do recommend frequently.

Their website is especially comprehensive for biological and chemical sciences but also has lots of opportunities for other subjects.

However, the one area which is less well represented is humanities PhDs, so I challenged Andy about this. He pointed out that for most humanities PhDs, you have to come up with your own proposal – so there are far fewer pre-defined PhD projects to advertise. Obvious really, if I’d only engaged my brain before asking.

Tomorrow is the big Postgraduate Study Fair at Manchester Central (G-Mex as was).

Good reasons to go:

• You’re thinking about continuing with postgraduate study (for most of you, this will be a PhD – or maybe another Masters?)
• You want to talk to almost 100 exhibitors, face to face, about applying to their institutions, what funding they have, what their university is like etc.
• You want to investigate studying outside the UK – there will be representatives there from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland, in addition to lots from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England.
• You’re interested in some professional study programmes such as News Associates Journalism training or MAs from Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
• You want to talk to careers advisers about where postgrad study might fit in your career plans.

Bad reasons to go:

• You’re looking for postgraduate jobs.
  This is about doing postgraduate courses. There isn’t a purely “postgraduate jobs fair” – all the graduate jobs fairs include jobs open to postgraduates.
• You need to talk to someone about a specific PhD or research topic.
  They’re unlikely to have your potential supervisor in attendance, but may be able to talk to you more generally about support for postgraduates.
• You’re looking for more of those freebies you picked up at the last two fairs.
  Hmm, these are universities, so you might strike lucky with the odd pen or cardboard coaster but don’t expect lavish giveaways (though I have heard that someone will have mugs which you can write on with chalk, like blackboards – but I’m not telling you who’s got these until I’ve been there first…)

If you fancy being your own boss, there’s a new one day event aiming to help you, taking place in Manchester, with free places for graduates and postgraduates.

The thing I particularly like about the Flying Start “Make It Happen” programme is that it recognises that whilst some of you might want to set up your own businesses, others are more interested in self employment or freelancing – and they have follow on programmes for each of these approaches. In addition, they are offering 12 months mentoring support to help get you started.

The initial Manchester programme is on Wednesday 18th November at the Manchester Conference Centre (right next to North Campus) from 10.00am until 3.00pm, and in addition to Flying Start, they say there will be representatives from Business Link and HSBC. You have to sign up beforehand for a place. I suspect this offer will be popular, so if you’re interested, I wouldn’t wait too long to register.

In a slightly different sort of Question Time to the one in the news at the moment, there will be a Careers Question Time for life scientists next week. This is the chance to talk to life science graduates and postgraduates who have gone into careers in :

• Patents
• Pharmaceuticals
• Clinical science
• Science communication
• Clinical trials
• Medicine (as a graduate entrant)
• Business development
• Environmental strategy (come and meet Erica, former zoologist, who I met at Yorkshire Water)

It’s taking place on Wednesday 28th October, from 2-4pm, in Stopford Lecture Theatre 1. Come armed with all your career questions.

Following the slidecast on “Finding Jobs for Postgraduates”, I’ve now created an on-line version of my Applications talks, covering CVs for Postgraduates, Covering Letters and Application Forms, with both slides and audio commentary.

You’ll find them embedded in this post, archived on the “On-Line Talks” page on this blog (later today), and with a bit of luck – available soon from the Careers Service website as a rather nifty playlist widget on the Postgrad pages.

There’s always lots more I could cover in the talks, so inevitably there will be things you might want to know about applications which are missing – there are always plenty of questions in a face-to-face talk. So, if you have questions on anything in these talks, or things you think are missing from the talks, just drop me a comment and I’ll try to answer them. If there are lots of questions, I’ll find a way of presenting them together as FAQ s.

Note: To get the best out of the CVs talk, I’ve suggested having a copy of some sample CVs to refer to. The clickable links on the presentation refer to our standard CVs handouts, CVs From Scratch and CVs for Research Students which both have example CVs at the back.