Futureboard Consulting

16/11/2022

Attention: STEM students graduating in 2024 and looking for a summer internship in 2023. See Hymans Robertson for internships in London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

01/08/2022

Right work, right career?

About to enter your final year at university and wondering what’s next for you?

It’s summer! Many of you are on break, taking some much-needed rest and relaxation before starting the next ‘chapter’, whatever that might be. Whether you are deciding what to do with your gap year, how you will start your career search during your final years at university or continue down the academic path, the subject of the ‘right career’ can feel like a daunting decision(s). Where do you start? What should you be looking for from a career?

Sigmund Freud said “love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness, therefore it pays to get them right.” But what is right for you?

The world of careers can seem like an endless choice of possibilities, for many it’s hard to know where to start. Candidates we speak to often get stuck on trying to find the ideal profession from the get-go. To me, the better approach is to think of your career as something that will evolve, that might take twists and turns, it’s rarely one hierarchical straight path. It’s worth figuring out what drives you and to create some priorities.

The focus should be on laying strong foundations as we graduate from university. The foundations of successful work are feasibly: purpose, livelihood, and personality. Let me explain…

Purpose at work gives our day to day meaning.
We frequently hear advice along the lines of “follow your passion in life”, “follow your dreams...” “you can do anything you put your mind to”. The Holy Grail of work is to find something you love to do, ideally if work feels stimulating and fun, it won’t feel like work.
For most of us passion is developed. The more you chase passion, the more elusive it becomes. You need to invest and work at a skill/interest/profession to find that passion. Passion is something that grows, it is energy that is stimulated over time.

As Mark Manson, Self-Help Author and Blogger says: “Finding the passion and purpose in your life is a trial-by-fire process. You don’t simply wake up one day and become happy doing one thing forever and ever. It’s a constant work-in-progress.

An important consideration is the mission and values of the professions you are exploring, ie. how does this profession add value to people, to a community or society at large? The same goes for any organisation that you apply to. Purpose and meaning gives us hope for the future and helps us stay motivated on days that are more challenging.

A good place to start can be to think about issues or areas of life that you already care about. The world is full of problems, pick one that matters to you, then think about a career that can help solve it. Let purpose lead and passion will follow.

Livelihood
Most people need to work to pay the bills. It’s a fact of life! How much emphasis you place on the level of money you wish to earn and the lifestyle you aspire to lead, is of course, more of a personal choice. Admittedly some careers take a lot longer to achieve a ‘livelihood’. Earning an income, creating your own financial independence is really motivating for many university graduates starting their careers. It’s less lofty than purpose; it’s practical, realistic and really highlights that work/career are not the only source of joy in our lives. For most of us, a livelihood can provide the security that enables and nourishes other areas of life, eg love, family, service, community etc.

Personality – what’s at your core?
By this stage of your studies, you should be building a better picture of your natural strengths or personality traits. Your career can be plotted from not only your education, but also your strengths, innate skills, personal interests, and your values.

What type of person are you? Highly analytical or creative? Generalist or specialist? Cerebral or practical? Investigative or Social? Conventional or Entrepreneurial?

If you find these questions difficult to answer, there are some simple tools available to develop your self-awareness. I am a huge fan on the personality questionnaire: 16 personalities. Access via the website: https://www.16personalities.com/ The assessment takes 10 minutes to complete and it’s free! You will end up with an informative report about your personality traits. I’ve yet to meet someone that has not derived some value from completing this. From here you could discuss your results with friends, family or professional contacts if you are trying to sense check what it is telling you. Asking for feedback from others is a good way to deepening self-awareness.

The 16personalities website also provides ideas of careers/professions that each profile is potentially suited to.
If your work is aligned to your natural strengths, you are much more likely to be good at it and being good breeds success, confidence, motivation…passion.

Give some thought to the three areas above, invest some time in getting to know who you are now. Looking inward is a worthwhile endeavor at any age and can truly help you create the outward success you aspire to. It’s summer… grab a journal…take yourself to a sunny park bench and ask yourself these all-important questions.

Resources:
See our recent article on the benefits of a Gap Year and ideas for how you might spend that year. The summary is, whatever experience you have, it will no doubt be valuable wherever you end up.

Visit the careers service, talk to recruiters, talk to professionals in fields that you are intrigued by. Read LinkedIn articles about specific professions and even review profiles of people in industries that you find interesting.

Book: From Paycheck to Purpose, Ken Coleman
Book: What Color is your Parachute? Your Guide to a Lifetime of Meaningful Work and Career Success, by Richard Bolles
Blog: 7 strange questions that help you find your life purpose, by Mark Manson
Website: https://www.16personalities.com/

26/07/2022

The benefits of taking a gap year

There are many educational and employment advantages to taking a year out. It’s good to be aware of the benefits as they could influence how you choose to spend your time. Here are some of the important ones:

Improve your CV/resume - Enhance your CV by gaining work experience and professional skills, which can help build your CV and give you valuable material to talk about at interviews.

Consider potential career paths/further study - You may already have your short-term goals in mind before taking a gap year. Use this time to consider potential career paths/or study and carry out activities that relate to the course to explore and ‘test’ your career path ideas.

Self-growth - You can use this time to have new experiences and adventures, which can in turn develop self-confidence and self-awareness. Self-awareness is key to future life/career decisions and is always worth investing in.

Learn new skills - You can use your gap year as an opportunity to learn valuable new skills for future career success.

Health and Well-being - Use this time as an opportunity to reflect and enjoy yourself, to reset after intensive studies and the pandemic. A gap year is a great way to rest and rejuvenate your mind and body.

Now for the fun bit – coming up with ideas for your gap year. Here’s a few to get you started…

Gap year ideas

Spend time volunteering - Whether its locally or internationally, volunteering is a great way to develop practical and communication skills and this type of experience can significantly add value to your CV. This shows how you are dedicated to helping others, gain new perspectives and increase your confidence in people skills. Think about causes you care about and review their websites for volunteering opportunities. For example, https://reachvolunteering.org.uk/i-want-volunteer https://www.ncvo.org.uk/ are great places to find out about volunteering opportunities.

Gain work experience - Gain some internships or contract-based employment and target specific companies that you would like to work in. Larger corporations run summer internship programmes but there are also many companies that have interns all year around. https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/work-experience-and-internships/internships https://www.internwise.co.uk/

Go travelling - Spending time travelling is a great way to develop your independence, confidence, and time management skills. Visiting different countries and exploring cultures around the world can really help give you perspective. Any travel to developing countries develops humility but should be undertaken with thorough research in advance.

Part-time jobs while you are away can be a great way to help fund your trip and simultaneously develop professional/life skills that you can add to your CV.

Time for personal development - Enrol on a course that you’ve been wanting to do, learn a language. There’s a variety of free online courses to consider: coursera.org, www.FutureLearn.com www.edX.org. Or finish the DofE you’ve been meaning to complete, or set yourself a goal such as, training and running the marathon, which requires lots of time for training.

Earn money to fund travel/study - Consider different ways to earn an income to help fund further travel or study.

Start your own business – a simple e-commerce idea (great for building digital skills), dog walking, landscaping, cleaning services or home tutoring.

Work in retail/hospitality – great to develop customer service skills, working with people, problem solving, developing confidence dealing with people.

Labourer – assist your local building company or work for a local farm

Whatever you decide to do, remember this an opportunity that may not come around again in the near future; so enjoy yourself and really embrace that old saying “the world is your oyster.”

14/07/2022

Ch-ch-ch-changes…in the graduate job market

During the pandemic jobs were put on hold, graduate contracts were withdrawn and there were fewer graduate opportunities to apply for. It was a tough year (2020/21) for students graduating from university, and even tougher for those of a similar age without a degree. The number of applicants per vacancy went up dramatically, resulting in many students deciding to stay on and study for a masters while COVID-19 and the associated economic slowdown eased.

This year has been completely different. It’s widely accepted that we are now in a candidate driven market: with vacancies increasing, salaries rising, candidates reneging offers as employers struggle to fill roles.

What does this mean for recent graduates still looking for a job? What does the forecast look like for 2022/23? Given the political/economic landscape, is the candidate driven market likely to continue?

Read on for some of Futureboard’s insights.

Are we in a candidate driven market?
At the graduate level, we are certain that we are in a candidate driven market. The demand for graduates and junior talent has increased this year; according to the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) vacancies have been 20% higher than in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of job vacancies in the wider job market rose to a new record of 1.3m across the UK in March to May 2022. The ISE also reports salary increases, unfilled roles and an increase in candidates reneging offers.
Our clients have made a notable shift this year to focus on what they can do to attract candidates as they have seen application numbers drop, particularly for less desirable functions or geographic locations. This has meant extending application deadlines, more proactive search, flexible start dates, flexibility on starting salaries and more openness to explore candidates from varied academic backgrounds.

What does it mean for you as a job seeker?
In simple terms, you have more choice. The power has shifted from the employer to the job seeker/graduate, this means you can be more selective about which roles to apply to and which roles to accept. You have negotiating power.
According to a recent article in Bloomberg, UK 2022 graduates will compete for jobs with salaries 7% higher than their equivalents last year, although each role is still very competitive, fighting off an average of 35 applicants to secure a role. We know from experience that unfilled roles at a more experienced level, has a positive, trickle-down effect on graduate vacancies – large employers look to expand their graduate intake to compensate for gaps at more senior levels.

If you are a computer scientist from a high-ranking university or a data scientist with an interest in artificial intelligence, chances are you might not have noticed much of a difference in the market from 2019 to now. There are certain scarcer skillsets that have been consistently in demand, even in 2021, however, if you are one of those people, you will now be able to really focus on what company you see yourself in, what culture is a best fit for you and really explore the wider benefits a potential employer can offer you. This is a good market to step back and really evaluate what you want before jumping into something too quickly.

If you are late to apply for graduate roles, don’t worry, there’s still lots available. Companies are still hiring over the summer for this year’s intake, or for deferred starts, which indicates how difficult employers have found hiring graduates this year. BP, PwC, Cap Gemini, BT, KPMG TikTok and Amazon are still actively recruiting graduates.

Looking ahead…
What do we think is likely to happen over the next 12 months? Well, the war in Ukraine, ongoing issues relating to Brexit, the change in Conservative leadership does not make for a positive forecast for the UK economy. The pound has weakened, interest rates are up, and many financial institutions are suggesting that the UK may be heading for a recession. This of course is likely to have a direct impact on the job market, and in turn on the graduate job market.

That said, we may not see an impact on numbers until the hiring year 2023/24. A survey by the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) and Handshake revealed that 47 per cent of organisations that employ students and graduates are intending to increase the number of hires they make in the next 12 months. That’s good news for the class of 2022 and 2023. In previous recession years, we saw a slight delay in the decrease of vacancies at the student level. In 2007/2008 we also saw a steady demand for the scarcer skillsets. We think that’s very likely to be the case in the next few years, especially as the UK focusses on developing itself as a skilled economy.

In summary, if you are graduating in the next few years, your job prospects are likely to be good to great; good for graduates from non-STEM backgrounds and great for those individuals from STEM subjects as employers seek to fill talent gaps. Our best advice for all students is make sure you use your time wisely at university – study well, but also get involved in extra-curricular activities and seek out useful internships during your breaks. Regardless of academic background, it’s important to build soft skills in addition to acquiring knowledge as part of your degree.

If you are someone looking for a job and want to chat about your options, feel free to follow Futureboard on social media or to get in touch via [email protected].

Thank you for reading!
Co-Authored: Katherine Travell and Karen Berry

10/03/2022

Hymans Robertson are hiring Graduate Trainee Consultants in the Actuarial and Investment business areas, starting in September 2022 in London and Glasgow.
Get in touch if you would like to find out more information.
More details on our application process can be found here

We’re confident that our early careers programmes offer something really different.

11/02/2022

Hymans Robertson are hiring Graduate Trainee Consultants in the Actuarial and Investment business areas, starting in September 2022 in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Application closing date - 25th February 2022.

Get in touch if you would like to find out more information.

More details on our application process can be found here http://ow.ly/hrbV50G8W2F

22/11/2021

If you have a passion for data analytics, and an understanding of how the Earth’s climate system works and the potential impacts arising from climate change, then we could have the perfect role for you. Contact me: [email protected].

10/11/2021

We are actively working on student recruitment campaigns for September 2022, please reach out if you are looking. We are particularly interested in students from STEM backgrounds.