The Great Placement Race

At the weekend I did something that I had not done before in my life. With a number on my vest and a timing chip on my shoe, I lined up to run a 10km race. In the holding area before the starting gun was fired, you could hear a number of different conversations; some looking to record personal bests, others just hoping to last the course. As I stood there taking it all in, the best bit of advice I heard was to ignore what everybody else is doing and just concentrate on running your own race.

This was something I tried to take on board and in many ways offers a good analogy for where most of you are now at the start line in a search for a placement. Summer 2014 seems like a long way off, a bit like the finish line before the race starts, and while every student starts from the same point (effectively now), not everybody will reach the end at the same time. With that in mind I've identified 5 distinct 'runners' who make up the field in The Great Placement Race

The Pacesetters

There will always be those who surge ahead and get to the finish line first. In athletics this can come down to natural physical prowess or dedicated training regime, while in job hunting it may be an excellent academic record or prior internship experience that helps them to run away from the rest of the field. They will probably have already got applications made and in some cases have interviews or assessment centres lined up. In the next month or so when many students are still finding their feet with a placement search, they will hear about Pacesetters who have already secured a job. Don't let their success discourage you as there is still plenty of time to get to the finish line.

Steady Runners

These are the students who get on with the task at hand, make their applications, see their placement officer and will get their reward in a due course. As with my 10k at the weekend, this is the largest chunk of the field. They have seen the speed merchants running ahead, but rather than chase their shadows have gone about their business in a pragmatic manner. There will be obstacles to overcome during the race, but with a bit of determination these will be overcome.

Grafters

In any race, the people I have the most admiration for are the grafters, determined to reach the finish line no matter how long it takes. At the weekend there were people completing the course more than an hour after the first finishers, but refused to be denied their moment. I see lots of students like this during each placement cycle. Rather than let unsuccessful applications get them down, they come back fighting and through sheer will power and self-motivation keep going until they cross that finish line.

DNF

Of course while the Pacesetters, Steady Runners and Grafters all get to the end, there are also those who Did Not Finish. Looking for a placement is a demanding discipline requiring time and commitment, and while nobody intentionally wants to be in this category, inevitably not everybody who starts the placement race will cross the finish line to secure a placement. Maybe it was a more difficult challenge than was anticipated at the start, or perhaps there just isn't the never give up mentality of the Grafters. Either way, lots of students who make applications in the next few months will hit an obstacle, and rather than pick themselves up to keep going, will let their placement search end prematurely.

DNS

Then of course we have the Did Not Start group. More than one thousand runners registered for my 10k, yet only 800 or so began the race. The same thing happens with placements up and down the land. Some students will register to do a placement, either when applying through UCAS or at the start of their second year, and then fail to show. No applications. Non-attendance at placement lectures. Don't reply to invitations to meet with their Placement Officer. In many ways these are the most frustrating group, as they remain an untapped source of talent and there isn't a Careers or Placement service that doesn't try to reach out to this disengaged group. The fact is though, they do exist. If you're reading this article, it probably means you don't fit into this category, but I'm sure you know a few people in your class who do. Be a friend, and give them a nudge about placements.

So there we have it. 5 distinct groups, each with a different approach to completing (or non-participation) in The Great Placement Race. There isn't a one size fits all method for being successful with your search, but do take on board the advice I received while waiting in the start area - run your own race. Don't be led by the crowd, find your own way and keep going to the end.

The starter gun has fired. Good luck to you for the journey ahead.

For those with curious minds, I finished in a respectable 56 minutes 38 seconds and together with colleagues have raised over £900 for the Lynda Jackson Macmillan Centre. www.justgiving.com/teampcc

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Come Back Brighter

The beginning of term is nigh! It is hard to fathom how things have come around again quite so quickly. In the next couple of weeks students across the country will take the first steps of their placement journey with organised lectures and the scrum to book a CV appointment with their placement officer. It tends to be an extremely busy time of year so please be patient but persevere!

One topic that may be touched upon but is unlikely to be covered in detail at this early stage of the process is rejection. Funnily enough when pitching the idea of undertaking a placement year to an audience mixed with keenies and the apathetic, the 'R' word is not one of the most encouraging in the dictionary. And yet for me it is probably one of the most important words that arise from the placement hunt because it is often how a student responds to rejection that will determine if they will ultimately be successful in securing a placement.

Of the 160-odd students from my courses who secured a placement during academic year 2012/13 I would estimate that 95% of them tasted rejection before receiving an offer. Very few students secure the first placement they apply for, so unless you are positive that you will be in that lucky 5%, it is something that you are going to have to come to terms with.

I'm not going to pretend that rejection is a good thing. I know from my own personal experience just how frustrating and demotivating it can be to throw your heart and soul into something and not get the rewards that you feel your efforts merit. But there are two ways to react to a setback when job hunting. You can throw your toys out of the pram, be angry and halt all applications to protect yourself from future disappointment, or you can come back brighter, harnessing all negative feeling and using it as motivation for future challenges.

The second option is what I will be encouraging my students to follow as they begin their quest for a placement starting Summer 2014. There is a long way to go between now and then, during which time most placement seekers will experience setbacks. As most of my students who secured a placement last year can testify, the first hurdle is not the end of the race. Get past it and there is still a reward to chase down.

Good luck to everybody looking for a placement this year. Keep your eye on #PlacementChat throughout the coming months where RateMyPlacement, a range of employers and I will be on hand to answer your placement questions. Hope to see you there.

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• Who's that calling you?

We've come a long long way together

Cover via Amazon

If you are a student who has been looking for a placement since the autumn and not yet secured one, you're probably a little bit fed up by now. You've made dozens of applications, endured those pesky online tests, maybe come up short a couple of times at assessment centres or just missed out in interviews. If this sounds very familiar, you have every right to feel disheartened.

With the end of year exams fast coming up on the horizon, you may even be thinking about throwing in the towel and giving up on the placement dream, feeling understandably bitter at the hours and days lost without reward. Nobody likes being told 'thanks, but no thanks', particularly if you're getting that Bill Murray Groundhog Day sensation of deja vu.

So if you've had enough of placements, I sympathise with your frustration. But before you call it quits, I just want to let you in on a little stat. I was going through my placement spreadsheet (supergeek!) from last year to see when my students secured their roles. What month do you think it was that was the most successful in terms of numbers? Well, I can tell you it wasn't any time before Christmas. It wasn't January. February? No. It wasn't March or April either. The single most prolific month for my students in securing placements during 2011/12 was May.

Check your calendar folks, we're not there yet. You might well have been doing this now for more than 6 months without reward, but I urge you to stick with it a while longer. Every application made, every interview taken, every rejection email received will have made you battle hardened and ready to strike gold. Whereas earlier in your placement journey you may have lacked interview experience, you'll now be more confident in answering questions and presenting yourself to companies as someone they want to employ.

If you give up now, all of your efforts to this point will have been in vain. I can't promise that if you keep going you will be rewarded for your endeavour, but just as my students couldn't see where their placement offer was coming from last year, yours could be just around the corner.

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Guest Post - Preparation overkill

My guest blogger returns with this little story about the dangers of over-preparing for an assessment centre. Just because you think you know it all, doesn't give you a green light for success......

Knowledge is power, use that power carefully..

Picture the scene; you have just been invited to the assessment centre for your dream job and so
you start searching Google, high and low for anything that you can find to prepare you for the day.
Aha, you seem to have struck gold, you find a WikiJobs post detailing everything that happens on
the day, including the questions that will be asked and details of all of the assessment tasks. You pat
yourself on the back, for your most excellent research skills!

You read this information religiously, analysing all of the answers on the WikiJobs post, building
a picture in your head of how the assessment centre will be. You feel confident, memorising your
responses to the questions that you know will be coming up. After all, the post on WikiJobs is
detailed and the original poster has confirmed that they have been successful at this very same
assessment centre.

The day of the assessment centre arrives and it is going well, in fact it is just as you read online; a
couple of individual tasks and a group task. In the group task you know the answer before even
reading the brief and so you recite what you have been practising to the group. Other members of
the group don’t seem to understand, but you push on regardless as clearly you know the correct
answer. You feel good, leading the group, finishing the task early, you must have impressed the
assessors. You feel your preparation has paid off, all the revising and reciting, you know you have
given all the correct answers.

A couple of days later you receive a phone call from the company to let you know that you have
unfortunately been unsuccessful at the assessment centre.

What went wrong here? This is a worrying trend that I have been hearing about recently where
candidates have over prepared, so much so that they have blinded themselves to the reality of an
assessment centre or interview, often they have no idea what went wrong. In the scenario above,
even though the candidate correctly completed all of the tasks at the assessment centre, they
committed the gravest sin of them all; they failed to demonstrate their key competencies.

Because this person was so sure they knew what was coming up they didn't listen to what they were actually asked to do on the day. E.g. in the group task, all focus was on going for the right answer. The recruiters weren't necessarily looking for this; they wanted to see how you work together with the group to achieve a shared goal.

Preparation is vital to achieve success in interviews or assessment centres. Just be careful not to take your eye off the ball and allow your eagerness to impress cause you to miss the point of the task.

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Sorry George, its a hard knock life!

And the Award for Best Actor goes to………

If you are George Clooney, the chances are that you feel gutted today. For the third time, you have been nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards, and for the third time you have left empty handed. It seems at the moment George, you are destined to be the Bridesmaid and never the Bride.

It may seem a slightly leftfield comparison, but there is a lot of similarity between the Oscars and the final stages of placement recruitment. After sifting through however many dozens of CVs, telephone interviews and assessment centres, a recruiter may find themselves with a difficult decision to make. They may have 5 or 6 outstanding candidates, all of whom would do a fantastic job in a placement year, but there may only be one position to fill. In this scenario, it may just be intangible qualities that separate the successful candidate from those who miss out.

It can be difficult for students to pick themselves up from a rejection, having seen their application progress to the latter stages. However there are positives that should be taken from the experience. Advancing to the final rounds of the interviewing process is to be commended in itself. The bigger name companies receive a ridiculous ratio of applications to opportunities, so to progress to the final stage but come up short should provide some comfort. You have already proven that you can write a good application, pass online tests and get through interviews. This should boost your confidence in your approach to your next application. You have done this once before, now go out and do it again.

There is no disguising the fact that at some point in your career, you will be overlooked for a job, whether that is when looking for placements, graduate jobs or whatever. I have been unsuccessful with applications myself and while it is only natural to be disappointed, it is better to channel your disappointment into positive energy so that your next application is better than the last, rather than become bitter about the experience.

It is a hard knock life, and like George Clooney students may find themselves waiting patiently while all those around them are getting their rewards. But in the same way that Clooney will continue to give great acting performances, students need to keep motivated and make strong applications, because their prize may be waiting just around the corner.