The Guardian London Graduate Fair

I decided, for want of better things to do, to attend the Guardian London Graduate fair last Tuesday (19th October). I really shouldn’t have bothered. Ok so although I sort of already knew that this fair was really targetted towards final year undergraduates I thought I might learn something by attending. But let me tell you I was horrified.

I arrived at the Business Design Centre with my printed email confirmation so I could get fast-track entry from 12pm. Get ahead of the crowd right? Wrong! I arrived to find a queue, one of those that gets so long it has to double back on itself. Young, aspiring and enthusiastic the hopeful undergraduates, professionally dressed, waited patiently in line (and in the freezing cold might I add). Well I wasn’t having it, I was already starving so decided to grab some lunch first.

1.15pm and there is still a queue. Shorter this time and manageable. So my boyfriend and I get in line and eventually through the doors. We are welcomed with the sight of hoards of students, scrambling to get to the front of each employer’s stall. Desperate to impress would be the best description. I actually got stuck in a crowd of people, the type of stuck where you are utterly squashed on all sides with no means of escaping.

The employers stalls were tiny and the representatives simply drummed out the same old information, more easily found using a little thing called the Internet! My boyfriend asked a white-faced representative from GCHQ ‘What if I wanted to do a graduate programme that crossed the boundaries between Management and Linguistics’. The answer was basically no, said in a few more words.

So we come to my conclusion. Some of the grad schemes out there are just too inflexible. They create ready-made schemes with a development plan, career path, progression etc. They do all this before they have even met you. ‘We don’t care if you want to do Management with Linguistics you can only do EITHER Management OR Linguistics, don’t confuse us!’. I urge all you undergraduates out there to make sure that you are accepting a grad scheme that is right for you, not right for them! Overall, as I stood at the Guardian Graduate Fair I realised I was staring my competition in the face. When you’re submitting that application, you know they’re there submitting one too. But I actually saw them, in their thousands... How can anyone possibly stand out?