OXFORD

DEVELOPING YOUR CAREER IDEAS
B
It’s important to consider which functional roles you might be
most interested in. For some people, the function becomes
their primary goal, and so remember that the same functional
role can frequently be found in many diverse industries:
Charities need IT specialists, marketers and HR managers as
well as front line volunteers, fundraisers and policy makers. In
the HR and recruiting industries, more graduates will take on
account management, training or web-developer roles than
become HR managers. Data analysts are needed as much
in the advertising and retail sectors as in academic research,
opportunities which you’d be interested in taking on. If you
do not limit yourself by exclusively targeting industries that
seem to have the right label, you may be surprised at the
years later. For example:
] Would be journalists can learn valuable skills in a PR role in
any sector, and by blogging.
] Considering a career in IT? IT roles now existing in virtually
IT professional work outside the computing and IT sector.
] Consider local government alongside the civil service (Fast
Stream).
Sam Stoll
Balliol College, BA Mathematics
and Philosophy, 2013
Software Engineer, Ensoft
"Look for companies that are happy
to invest heavily in your training
and long-term career. It’s a fast
moving industry with new tools and
technologies coming out all the time, so it’s important to
keep spending time experimenting and learning."
CHANGES IN DIRECTION
It is also true that careers develop over time. Whatever
direction you start out in does not tie you to that industry or
function for life. It is quite natural for your ideas to develop
as new opportunities present themselves.
A change of career doesn’t mean wasted time: most of your
skills will be transferable to other careers. Some graduates
choose to gain specialist expertise through a graduate scheme
in general management say, or marketing or accountancy, and
use this as a stepping stone into an industry where graduate
experience that is highly valued but which tends to be hard
to come by as a new graduate entering directly into the
alternative sector.
this Guide (pp.56-168) to see the reality that shifts in career
direction are quite common, and that even a radical change of
direction is possible.
The Careers Service only tracks leavers’ initial career directions
with any accuracy. However, we have surveyed alumni ten
years after leaving and this revealed that:
] On average alumni had worked for three employers since
leaving Oxford.
] The sector that alumni worked in after ten years could be
very different from the sector they initially entered.
Service provides access for alumni to the majority of our
events and services for life. We also have a Careers Adviser
and strategies for managing career change.
WHY DO SOME SECTORS SEEM SO
VISIBLE AT OXFORD?
Whether it’s the advertised listings in this Guide, company
presentations on our termly Events calendar or sector
specific careers fairs, you will probably notice recruiting
firms within the four ‘City’ sectors are highly visible in
Oxford. So why do Accountancy, Banking & Investment,
Consultancy and Law firms stand out so much if they each
account for only 3% to 5% of all the destinations of leavers?
There are a few reasons for this apparent imbalance.
] In some sectors, such as Media, Retail, FMCG, and
Energy, a few big organisations dominate – and many
are already household names - think BBC; Google;
John Lewis; Shell and Unilever. These companies don’t
need to advertise their names to become known, and
students find their graduate opportunities unaided. In
contrast, large City firms can have significant graduate
programmes but aren’t well known outside their field, so
need to promote themselves more.
] Smaller organisations – which account for perhaps
85% of all graduates level jobs - generally have less
predictable recruitment needs, smaller recruitment
budgets, and may not have a ‘graduate programme’ to
promote. Instead they will hire into specific graduatelevel
positions, advertising these individual jobs as and
when positions arise.
] In some sectors – for example, Advertising, Arts
& Heritage, Charities, International Development,
Marketing & PR and Media & Journalism – only a
limited number of ‘graduate schemes’ exist. A lot of
recruitment is done from the network of people known
to the company, often from people seeking relevant
experience and visibility through volunteering (Charities),
or being runners (TV) or field workers (Development).
Paid and unpaid internships tend to be very important in
these industries sectors and both direct approaches and
speculative applications are often expected.
www.careers.ox.ac.uk 23