How to land a graduate job unrelated to your degree 💭

1. Participate in an internship or work experience

If you’re applying for a graduate job unrelated to your degree, you might be at a competitive disadvantage over other candidates who have more knowledge and expertise in the field from their degree.

To help combat this issue and to boost your employability, it’s useful to first get work experience within the industry to gain workplace skills and relevant experience.

If you’ve secured work experience at a company, be sure to visit our guide to office life and how to prepare for your work experience.

Or, if you have an upcoming internship, it’s important to know your rights and internship laws, visit our blog for more information on internship rights.

Employers look for people who will be able to fit in easily to the work environment and pick up skills quickly.

Gaining experience in a similar work environment will equip you with the transferable skills required for graduate roles as well as demonstrating to employers that you have a genuine interest in the field.

All helping to give you a leg-up when it comes to graduate employment opportunities.

Completing an internship is one great way to land an entry-level job, for more ways to find graduate jobs, check out our complete guide, or watch our video below for some top job-hunting tips and secrets:

Tip: change the playback speed in the settings at the bottom right corner, to suit your learning requirements. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more great videos!

2. Acquire further education if necessary

If you’re finding that despite having industry relevant work experience, a lot of the graduate jobs you’re applying to require you to have a degree related subject, you don’t necessarily need to start over.

Instead, you can pursue further education, such as a Master’s degree, which typically lasts one year and means you don’t have to spend another three years completing another undergraduate degree.

Choose a Master’s degree course that is related to the industry you want to work in, and a subject that many of the graduate jobs you’re interested in require.

Post-graduate studies are expensive and require a lot of independent work, so it’s important to consider before applying if this is something you definitely want to complete and if it will be worth your time and resources.

If your university course permits, another great way to gain further education and experience related to your future career, is completing an undergraduate placement or a year in industry.

Check out our blog for more information on undergraduate placements and how to find one.

3. Network and improve your LinkedIn profile

Social media is a great way to network with potential employers.

LinkedIn was built for this main purpose; to help employers find employees and vice versa.

If you haven’t done so already, sign up to LinkedIn and update your profile. For helpful tips to boost your LinkedIn profile, check out our blog for 10 tips for creating a good LinkedIn profile.

Reach out to people within the industry and connect with them.

Once you have built up a network, you can create posts asking for opportunities, even internships to help get your foot in the door.

Alternatively, you can set your profile status as currently ‘Looking for job opportunities’, which makes it easier for employers to find you.

Aside from LinkedIn, reach out to people within your own network, such as family, friends, university/school lecturers and ask if they may know someone within the industry that could help kickstart your career.

It’s not always what you know, but who you know, so don’t be afraid to reach out to people in your network, you might just get lucky and find someone who can help get you an opportunity.

For networking tips and guidance, visit our blog for 5 steps to successful professional networking.

4. Go through your social media

When you apply for any graduate job, there’s a high possibility that employers will be looking at your social media presence.

Make sure to go through your photos and remove anything that could potentially jeopardize your career and put off potential employers.

Carry out a Google search of yourself and see what information is available to the public and if you haven’t already, adjust your privacy settings so that only friends can see your photos.

Consider how potential employers may react to seeing this and use your best judgment and think to yourself “what would you not want your employer to see?”

Having spent a lot of time on job applications, you don’t want a photo on your social media to ruin your chances of securing a role

5. Update your graduate CV

Your graduate CV is an integral part of the job application process, and if you don’t have a degree related to the job, a standout graduate CV can really impress an employer and make the difference from your application being in the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ pile.

If you don’t have previous education that is directly related to the job, you need to highlight how your previous experience, skills and extra-curricular activities have equipped you and make you an excellent candidate for the role you are applying for. Whilst you may not have a degree in a relevant subject, university has most likely taught you many valuable skills for future employment. Make sure to list any skills you developed at university and if you need help, visit our blog for 7 skills university teaches you outside of your degree.

Look carefully at the job description and highlight any key skills and qualities employers are looking for. Incorporating and highlighting these skills on your CV will demonstrate to an employer you are a great fit for the role. After applying for several jobs and reading through their descriptions you will become more familiar with how to decode the job description. For more tips, we’ve put together a handy guide to decrypting the job description and knowing what employers are really asking for.

If you need to update your graduate CV, visit our CV guide for CV tips and free CV templates to download for a range of graduate roles.