A wake up call for a recent graduate interested in a career in accounting

How true is this?

When you read about graduate unemployment rates being so high or stories of people sending out 100 or 300 application forms and still not getting anything back it is easy to push it at the back of your head and say “I am at university, college it won’t happen to me.” But when you do graduate and you start sending out those CV and cover letters and even worse you spend all day completing that dreaded and long application form only to receive a rejection email. That is if you are lucky enough to get anything back it hits you.

Rejection is deflating.

Then for me I went through a phrase where after I graduated I felt free. I had gone to school, college and university and completed it. I could do anything that I have always wanted to do (previous posts will show some of those thoughts). I tried some of those ideas, I thought extensively about other ideas and nothing ever came from that. I looked at other career options such as recruitment since on every job site they are so many jobs advertised. I applied to around 30 recruitment jobs and got 4 telephone calls that ended there.

Still, it is more than the response I got from actual jobs in accounting and finance. I even sent out speculative CV and cover letter’s to accounting firms and I received 3 emails back saying they do not have anything.

Luckily, I had my CV checked by a professional and they enlightened me on a lot of things I could improve.

 And this got me thinking about my career in accounting.  If I am being honest with myself I haven’t been 100% with this process. I know my CV needs improving and I haven’t improved it. I know that I need to fully research a company that includes fully utilising my LinkedIn account and creating a twitter account so that I can get updates about companies that I am interested in applying to.

In addition, just the application forms and the processes I have not practiced on anything. Is my grammar and punctuation good enough when completing the forms and if I ever get far enough to an assessment centre I have seen that some companies ask for you to write a report. Will I be confident enough to do that? Again, online assessments are my weak point and so far I have not done much to improve on that.

On a positive note I have just googled myself and only my linkedin picture comes up.

So this year, my gap year I am going to work on myself. To increase my knowledge on accounting practices, on the application processes and also I am going to carry on learning French. I did it for 5 years in high school and I feel as though to get in or to be successful in the business world you need to be global and having a knowledge of other languages will help with that.

I have my first AAT exam on September 1 and I have gone through the first chapters and it looked like the stuff I did in my first year of college. So, I need to revise that and pass the exams first time because this is money coming out of my pockets.

But one thing I am learning is patience. It takes some people 1 year or even more to get the job they are qualified for. I have to fight for that job. It’s me and 1000 people fighting for that one job. It is a sad reality but I need to make sure that that employer notices me and thinks “I need this person, no matter what.”

Bonus: 

Job hunting.....I mean real job hunting. Part 1

Unemployed once again and this time it's easier and I have grown from the previous experience. I have been unemployed for two months now.

The unemployment rate in the UK for the youth is almost or around a million. Imagine a million people are jobless like me, that's scary. But from my experience I would say there are people who are really trying to find a job but there isn’t any and then there are those who don't know how to go about finding that job. They don't have a good CV or even a CV and so on and then there are some who just don't want a job. I remember at the job I had there were people who didn't want the job because they had to look after their dog every three hours. Some people were forced by job centre to apply and they were rude and had been unemployed for 11 years and 8 years. That's crazy but that's what I have seen.

Anyways, for me the first part is actually applying properly and regularly. Right now I have sorted different CV's and a cover letters. But I know I need to do more. The thing is in a weird way I expect the jobs to be there waiting for me. Even though I haven't applied for them. But being unemployed sucks, you don't do anything because you don't want to waste money and you feel like a prisoner in your home because you are always at home.

I made a promise to myself that by the end of February I will have a job. I am a beggar and beggars cannot be choosers. I will do anything at this point.

Time will go by and no one is going to knock on my door and say “hey you want a job.” If I try and fail at least I am in there. I might become lucky one of these days. Let these games begin.